EDUCATION & BLACK MEN: Moving Forward  

In a new year, new you kind of focus, the men of The Black Men's Xchange-New York pondered our relationship to education in the following questions::   

While it's true that 'college isn't for everyone,' what is education for?

"We need to understand who we are...We are natural men...We are very creative...We have the intellectual capability to be leaders...[We need to] have voice..."

{Facilitator says, "Each of those things [you propose about us] is a process...What are the resources needed to take up those processes?...Can you learn without a teacher?..."}

"By us being in this room [with each other right now,] we are learning from one another...We are all teachers...You don't have to be certified...I did a research study on why [Black youth] use the 'n-word'...[For my part] I didn't have role models... All I had were the club scene and Christopher Street..."

"Yes...A lot of thoughts come through this room...I have notebooks full...It kind of reminds me of our African American story...Where we were not allowed to learn to read, but we learned [anyway] and then we advanced ourselves...That's what we have to do [as SGL men]...the education is never going to be for us...My formative development wasn't here, but I wanted to come here to learn because everyone I saw who came [and studied] here were just brilliant..."

{Facilitator says, "Can we change the system?[so that the education is for us?]...Do we want to?..."}

"Yes...Every year in the spring in Harlem, there's a lottery...and hundreds of parents come and wait and see if their kids get picked for charter schools...Vouchers is what give the parents power..."

{Facilitator says, "That's changing how the monies [for education] are distributed...But, the system [under that framework] is the same..."}

"You just made me think...What I could do is take the bibliography we use in the library every year during Black History Month and book-mark it...And, because not everyone reads, make a list of Youtube videos people can go to where people who look like us will be teaching...that's one thing that I can do to change the system...Using the neighborhood as an instructional tool, instead of just having a flat list of sites next to the book you're not interested in..."

{Facilitator asks, "How is it that [on average] two-thirds of Black men don't graduate from high school [nationally?]...The logical next step after high school is college or a career...and more young Black men are in prison than in college?..."}

"All colleges are not for everyone...Back in the 70s when so many kids petitioned to get into City College, they didn't have the right skills...Let's go back to high school......If they don't sit a certain way...or act a certain way...[the message they get from the teacher is] I don't want you here...While they don't say it outright...the grades tell them that...So, let's not just look at the child or the individual...Let's look at what's in the environment...What happens when people are supposed to help you and they don't..."

"Education is learning...When you mention [what] is the reason there are more Blacks in prison than In college...Is that by design?...Yes...When we were protesting [for better education we didn't reallize]...The system works on dollars and cents...The rules are made up to protect the people who set them up...We don't even talk among ourselves...the way we should..."

"I am a school teacher...What [somebody] started saying about, they're taking away school supplies...that is true...The budget has been reduced...And when the budget is reduced [certain items] are going to be cut..."

{Facilitator says, "That's not true...[What get's cut] is a matter of the leadership...the school Principal['s choice]..."}

"The budget has been reduced...So, what's  been said about teachers not getting paid...We haven't gotten a raise in three years...[Reading] In the dictionary it says {education is] 'Instruction and training in an institution of learning'...So, it's saying the only way you can learn is in an institution...Some kids learn at different paces...Like me...I can't learn by just having something told to me...I have to see how something works...let me see how you make the bike and watch me make the bike...I work with this autistic kid...You're going to hear about him...He draws...He's already in the Metropolitan Museum of art...We all have different gifts..."

{Facilitator asks, "Where do we find ourselves as a people...As teachers?...Leaders?...Policy-makers?..."}

How would you characterize your educational experience, historically?

When I was in high school, my family was an integrationist family...Everywhere we moved, we were the first Black family in the neighborhood...I used to play hooky...The LGBT Center was Maritime High School...I loved it because it was all-male...My maternal grands' had a school in North Carolina, and [racist Whites] burned it down...My grandfather was rebuilding it and they killed him, and [then] my grandmother had a heart attack and died...In 2004, the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, I went to a celebration [where they shared that] the first names on the Clarendon County subpoena were my family...The reason for education was economics...The way they did the Native Americans...they could either kill them or let them put them on the reservations where they controlled the schools...We always had our own Black schools...We have to have our own schools...They never educate us...They have no interest in educating us..."

"Everyone can go to college...Not everyone wants to go to college...I was not the smartest kid...I was in the skills program...I got left back twice...It was hard for me to learn...My mom made me sit down and read until I got it...No TV during the week...I had to sit down and read until I got it...[But, in the end] I got a regents diploma..."

{Facilitator says, "Let's factor in our experience as Black men and the secret that most of us carried through school..."}

"I went to a Seventh Day Adventist School here in Harlem...not because we were [Adventists,] but because it was a parochial school...It was all Black, and they did a damned good job...I left and went to P.S. 186 and the difference was night and day...I was at the top of the class...Kids were acting out...I didn't have a Black teacher again until [I was in] the military...Now I'm an adjunct...I've learned there are different modes of learning...At 186 I didn't trust what the teachers were teaching...Some people have great memories...Education isn't for everyone, but it is for a lot of people...If they really had an interest, they might do well...But, if it doesn't seem relevant to you...Because of the way I used language, they would say I was either gay or White, which was the same thing as gay in their view...

"When I went to college, it wasn't relevant...I had an aptitude for computer science, and that's what I took...But, they have these core classes...And they certainly didn't have African Studies, except as electives...And there was the money [they were charging me]...I have to go to college and I have to pay for it and I'm not taking anything I want...I had a History course...They were talking about Napoleon...I wasn't in the least interested...[I wondered] 'Where am I in all this?'...The second thing is, I learned better through visual representation...There's the theory about right-brain, left-brain orientation and how Black people tend to be more right-brain..."

{Facilitator says, "Four Brothers have described four different learning styles...In school, we are expected to sit still...be attentive...raise your hand...be polite...these qualities are attributed to White girls...What is education?...People say all the time, 'I'm not religious, I'm spiritual'...So, when I think about education versus learning...the system is not attentive to our needs...and then I'm not being taught anything about myself...Paolo Freire conceived a methodology called pedagogy of the oppressed..."}

"I came by a Baldwin quote in a wonderful book I'm reading which goes as follows, [Reading] 'The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.  The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.  But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around.  What societies really, ideally, want is citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society.  If society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish.  The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it - at no matter what risk.  This is the only hope society has.  This is the only way societies change.'...So, education is to facilitate our forging an identity...Like self-determination...'I will name myself, define myself, create for myself and speak for myself...As opposed to being named, defined, created and spoken for by others'...That's the challenge for us..."

"The purpose of education...You get education to get the job...Or, is it about self-realization?...While college may not be for everyone, it's a good damned jumping off place..."

"I heard people say college is not for everyone...They usually wind up dropping out of high school..."

"We shouldn't encourage our kids to believe that [college isn't for them]...We should encourage them that there are no limits to their intelligence...The people who do go to college, on average do much better...Most of us will not be Jay Z or Steve Jobs who can drop out and become a billionaire...Napoleon was the one who went to Egypt and started teaching that Egyptians were White...So that, all history is connected..."

Is there anything you could learn that might help you to be a freer, more empowered same gender loving man?

"I wanted to come here because I think it's important to bridge the generations...There's stuff I want to learn from you, and there may be stuff you can learn from me too..."

{Facilitator says, "You talk about bridging the generations...You are twenty...Even for me, [a different generation] we are oftentimes in the prison of our own minds...When we talk about systems, we're talking about schools, libraries, media...Change starts with self...When you think about [one's] world view, where does that world view come from?...When we talk about formally changing the system, [that] leads to assassination...[Some questions we have to ask ourselves are] Whose developing curriculum?... Why?...What is their agenda?......There are many teachers...Time is a teacher...When I speak to you, you are teaching me..."}

"You can learn a lot from great civilizations...They taught their history...{This Brother] was saying his core curriculum was not allowed to be African History...That's where we  as same gender loving men come in...If you believe Mis-education of the Negro is real, we don't need to go back...We need to go forward...[and insist] 'I don't feel this [African History] should be an elective...this should be part of the core curriculum..."

What, if anything, should SGL youth be taught to prepare them for success?

"What we can do to prepare SGL youth...I've been studying LGBT History...there was a guy who helped Martin Luther King, and he was gay...You have to teach yourself [so that] you can show them that there is another way of life beyond the clubs and voguing...[We] were part of the Harlem Renaissance...In the groups we normally go to we talk about HIV and all this relationship stuff all the time...But, at the end of the day, do we really know anything about ourselves that is empowering?..."

"You go to college 1) to get an education, and 2) Society demands that you get an education...When I was in high school my parents sent me to an Afro-centric community school...Uhuru Sasa...what I gained from that was a sense of self-worth...[I have questions about] the Teaching Fellows [Program]...the whole idea of Cathy Black coming in [as Chancellor] and the mistakes Bloomberg keeps making...It's a joke...We need to teach our own children...The Jews have their own schools in addition to the Department of Education..."

"I was thinking about that Baldwin quote yesterday and it occurred to me that being an American African, you mission, should you choose to accept it, is to puzzle together an identity...Create an integrated, actualized self from a fragmented...partial self...I'm determined to find out which part of Africa... which cultures my ancestors are from...Because education and self-determination are connected...Education is to help us fashion our identity..."