If a black boy is born in the US today, he will have a 33 percent chance of going to prison in his lifetime. Stated another way -- one in three black boys born today will face prison time. It has become a sad normality, almost a backwards rite of passage, for black young men to enter the penal system and never return to our communities. And if we are "lucky" enough for them to return, they usually are much hardened criminals than they ever were before. Black men represent 8 percent of the population of the United States but comprise 3 percent of all college undergrads, 48 percent of inmates in prison and are five times more likely to die from HIV/AIDS than white men. 50 percent of black boys do not finish high school, 72 percent of black male dropouts in their 20s are unemployed and 60 percent of black male dropouts are eventually incarcerated.
To respond to this deepening crisis, the Open Society Foundation founded by George Soros developed a grant-making fund to improve black males' life outcomes. This fund is called the Campaign for Black Male Achievement (CBMA). While CBMA has had great success in building initiatives around fatherhood and family, education, living wage, and other areas, the campaign recognizes it needs to invest more in strategic communications to promote positive messages and frames about black men and boys.
CMBA and the Knight Foundation are partnering with the American Values Institute (AVI), founded by Alexis McGill Johnson, to create a conversation on December 7 and 8 called "Black Male: Re-Imagined," to explore opportunities to invest in art, culture, and communications to change the negative perceptions of black men. The questions guiding this conversation are: If we could create a campaign or set of campaigns that would change the way we look at black males over time, what would that look like?
What is "Black Male: Re-Imagined"?
"Black Male: Re-Imagined" is a two-day, invitation-only, closed-door, summit of 60 of the most thoughtful and creative media influencers, foundation executives, and the organizations they fund. We are gathering together to consider what kind of real financial investment can be made to influence media and culture to change perceptions about black males. We are honored to take part in this.
Our goals will be to: 1) discuss campaign strategies to "rebrand and re-imagine" black men. 2) explain the business models of various communications methods so that foundations can invest wisely. 3) Develop a working group to continue the conversation.
We have built brands our whole lives, that is what we do. It is time we reinvent the brand of the black male and stop the cradle-to-prison pipeline and replace it with a world that is much more hopeful and optimistic for young black men. For no child should ever think that they have a one in three chance of going to prison. There has to be another choice on the test.
Co-authored with Andre Harrell. Andre Harrell is founder of the record label, Uptown Records, who signed Mary J. Blige, Heavy D amongst many others. Harrell also served as president/CEO of Motown Records.
Follow Russell Simmons on Twitter: www.twitter.com/unclerush
Robert Denham: Continuation Education Deserves a Place in Reform Conversation
Do you agree or disagree?
Marc Sims
willielynch2013@yahoo.com
Imagine a child born into utter poverty, generational ignorance, unbroken since Ma and Pa. Imagine that child growing up in a fertile field of violence, and "bullying" (don't you just love how something is not an issue until a certain demographic experiences it). Why is that child "likely" to fail? It seems it does not matter, and it will not until it does.
Thats where most of these young men make their mistake , trying to skirt the system or take an easier way to " make it".
There is no better way than hard work and education is part of it , not apart from it.
Such has been the case since the abolition of slavery in this country.
Among the most prominent arguments from the proponents of the slave trade was:
Unless the 'Negroes' are forced to labor they will become shiftless & unproductive w/out the leadership & 'sense of purpose' slavery provides.
No matter how hard we have struggled & worked....three,four times as hard as anybody else to accomplish those many GREAT achievements, they will be ignored for that false narrative that makes the culpability of an institutionalized system set up against us more palatable.
Thus, making the end results of centuries of structured hate(including internalized/self hatred) become the norm, having relieved those who have profited of off society's 'imbalances' of their guilt.
Russel Simmons program is about taking the responsibility we have to ourselves, by reclaiming our power to define ourselves...instead of accepting what the status-quo [people like you] have/has designated for us for centuries.
America needs to realize---we are only ten generations away from slavery & look at all we've achieved thus far. I never would have thought a black president that's for sure!(let alone one w/ genetic ties to the most blue-blood 'Mayflower' bloodlines & an African scholar/political activist).
I suppose w/ him being so unpopular currently,you'll be calling him the laziest POTUS yet.
& TSC.
Mr. Cosby was correct. He said in effect -- if you are ill you need to get better. That is the same thing the Republicans say. Mr. Cosby said it with empathy, but with a certain distance or removal from the epicenter, likely due to being far down the road from what it is like not to be Cosby, Jordan, Oprah, and on, and on, and on....and the Republicans say it with a certain distance from credibility and compassion due to a flawed theory.
I do not mean to single out the GOP, for the Democrats have issues deserving disdain as well. But on this issue of race, the GOP is low hanging fruit for what is wrong where it concerns hypocrisy.
Here's a suggestion. When choosing the "role models" for this initiative... no more sports or rap stars, ok? You can easily find black doctors, lawyers, scientist, and business owners. You're in NY. Why not contact someone like Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director of the Hayden planetarium?
Obama won't even discuss this failed policy. He shrugs it off as a nonsensical topic. He couldn't possibly be more misguided
What happened to that, to the understanding that education was the best way out of poverty, the best way to a better life, and one would do anything to get it? Not what's taught in schools only, thought that should be cherished and not wasted, but a personal passion for learning and achievement and honor and pride?
As for the second paragraph, I think any broad brush answer would be insensitive to the complexity of the issue or challenge. First, please define a better life beyond having the ability to access the "things" of survival. If you make say -- one hundred and ten grand a year, have two cars, a home, and you are a hard working, tax paying, law abiding citizen, and yet, you can walk on an elevator in the office tower where you work, and have some bigot respond negatively to your simple presence, when that person could actually be a subordinate...well, as I said, define "a better life". The good life does not concern access to a good job, secured via a "good education" but such may be a byproduct of said good life. The good life is mental. Much of the self destruction we see and cite revolves around self esteem. Homes are fatherless, street corners and jails are full, classrooms are empty, and blood runs red because spirits are broken, and environments of nurturing (individual homes or communities) are still contaminated and gripped by the ghosts and poisons of ignorance, self hatred, and all sorts of other dysfunction past.
There are wondrous people who are not literate or well educated -- most people through time -- but to live in this time, with so much access to knowledge (in contrast to most of history) and not take advantage of it seems so foolish.
Yup, we've got a lot of healing to do, and money, beyond basic need, isn't the fix -- ever. Thought, reflection, deep feeling based on a broad view encompassing paradox and uncertainty, and the uplifting intangibles of love, honor, compassion and integrity -- those are a few things I think education open up to us. To choose ignorance, especially when you have a larger legacy of achievement despite incredible opposition, just dumbfounds me.
Back to saving the world. Always glad to meet my allies :)
I mentor young african american males - what a blessing to find one that wants to pursue education. But the pressure that they get for doing well in school - it makes it tough for these kids to keep pushing forward.
I noticed that a small part of the group bullies the other kids about doing well in school. Is there any way to nip that problem in the bud and make the pursuit of education an easier pathway for these kids?
Oakland loses 1/2 of the African American kids from their school system before they graduate - maybe 60%. Growing up in Oakland is like putting them into a machine that ruins their futures, spits them out and leaves them intellectually defenseless and completely unarmed in the life-long battle to build their futures. What do we need to change to give these kids a better chance? Is mentoring one kid at a time the only answer? The best we can do?
But lets not just go that far. Just look at the local neighborhood. Black kids are likely to go to a school where a large percentage of the teachers are black. They interact in a world where solid middle class jobs are held my blacks. Odds are, the bus driver in their area is black, the people working in the post offices are black, and a sizable percentage of police in minority areas are black. These are solid middle class jobs, right there staring a person in the face.
Perception is important. When you choose to focus on the degredation and the abject poverty, that's what you see. When the music focuses on the crime and drugs - using some false label like "street reporting", that's what you'll see. If the parents, in an self-deluded excuse, states they didn't move up because of the "system" (while many others have moved out of poverty), and they feed that defeatist attitude in a child's mind, then that's what they child bases as his reality.
A child can go to the library and imagine another world. They can access the internet in these libraries and see what's possible. I did. Others can too.
It IS truly a shame that so many people CHOOSE to overlook those choices---BUT the responsibility lies with them just as I am responsible for the bad choices that I made as a youth (and I made many) so should they take responsibility for the choices that they may make as well. To incinuate otherwise is to convey the message that whatever bad behavior they may do will certainly be condoned and overlooked.
I have never written before this fact of human organizations. There is always a surplus of humans relative to work in the best of times. Since the industrial revolution, there has generally been a dangerous surplus of labor that only great wars could rid nations. In our automated nation, we must create millions of jobs through the public sector or an indispensible leader will turn millions of our young and middle-aged men and women into cannon fodder. One way or another humans have been and will again be provided jobs. Idled humans refuse to remain superfluous.