Young black males need demonstrators, not protestors

Published February 1, 2015

by Bill Massey, retired teacher and principal, published in News and Observer, January 31, 2015.

During my years of teaching middle school, I taught more than a thousand young black males. I saw many of them come into sixth grade from elementary school smiling but leave eighth grade for high school scowling. During those three formative years, they increasingly encouraged one another to resist all attempts to educate them, accusing those who demonstrated intelligence in class of “trying to be white.”

A few years ago, one of my black male eighth-grade students, the purported “gang leader” of a group of young black males who had adopted one another as their “pseudo family,” came to my classroom to thank me for a birthday card I had mailed to him, as I always did to all my students. He chose to speak to me during my planning period so his peers would be unaware of his purpose. “I appreciate the card,” he said. “And I’m sorry I’ve been disrespectful in your class, but I had to,” he added as he turned and walked out.

From that brief exchange, I learned to no longer try to force him to participate in front of his peers, thus removing from him a perceived obligation to respond with defiance. Unfortunately, the only thing he might have learned from me that semester was that I understood and respected the position in which he found himself.

That mindset among many young black male students remains unchanged, except perhaps to get worse. That attitude about education still permeates much of black male middle school culture quite effectively and follows many into high school quite destructively.

Even those black males who don’t completely subscribe to the “being smart is being white” philosophy are forced by peer pressure to dial back their classroom participation, and their educations suffer accordingly.

The core contributor to the detrimental attitudes of young black males toward education is a woeful lack of black male role models in any facet of their lives, be it home, school, work or church. This problem is self-perpetuating .

The tragic deaths of Michael Brown in Missouri, Eric Garner in New York and 12-year old Tamir Rice in Ohio reopened the long festering wound of tensions between young black males who are highly distrustful of law enforcement and police officers who are highly suspicious of young black males. Yet as a society we continue to avoid the candid discussions necessary to answer the inevitable question, “Which is the chicken and which is the egg?” The truth is, both parties are locked in a vicious cause-and-effect cycle that makes both part of the problem. Both must become part of the solution.

Way too many unarmed young black males are shot and killed by police, but way too many young black males in our society are armed – not to protect themselves from police but from one another.

The black community cannot continue using undeniable past injustices to justify undeniably illegal actions of black males, a practice showcased by the O.J. Simpson acquittal in 1995 in an attempt to “become equal by getting even.”

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting death of Michael Brown, a bevy of cable TV talk show hosts descended upon Ferguson to lead protests against the use of excessive force by police during confrontations with black males. When asked by a reporter why he did not also go to Chicago the previous weekend when seven black males were shot and killed by other black males, one replied, “The black community does not air its dirty laundry in public” – a reply that begs the question: But shouldn’t the black community be attempting to clean up its dirty laundry? That is a cultural responsibility that cannot be outsourced to society as a whole.

Out of the recent spate of tragic deaths of young black males resulting from confrontations with law enforcement have emerged several rallying cries of public outrage.

“Hands up! Don’t shoot!” was born of the Michael Brown shooting and makes for good TV, but it is hyperbolic, inflammatory and divisive.

Practically everyone has seen the disturbing video of Eric Garner being choked to death by police officers as he gasped, “I can’t breathe!” no fewer than 11 times, but that mantra is too specific to that one incident to be an effective call-to-action for all prejudicial injustices.

“Black lives matter,” on the other hand, addresses the overarching issue quite succinctly, and we should all pay heed, but it must become far more evident that the lives of young black males matter in middle school rather than waiting until they reach the morgue.

To make a more positive and permanent difference in the lives of young black males, we need less reactionary protesters in the streets alleging that black lives don’t matter to law enforcement or the white community and more proactive demonstrators from the black community – especially black males – present in our schools proving that black lives do matter to them at an age when young black males need support most.

Bill Massey of Raleigh retired 

February 1, 2015 at 7:23 am
Frank Burns says:

Yes it should. Speaking the truth is needed. Good analysis.

February 2, 2015 at 11:37 am
Rip Arrowood says:

Fine....let our leaders "demonstrate" that providing jobs is more important than social issues like same sex marriage and abortion.