The Path Not Taken

African-American males are few and far between on college campuses. And among those who do arrive, not many are graduating. That problem was the underlying theme of the John Hope Franklin Symposium held at Duke University in late June. Sponsored by the magazine Diverse Issues in Higher Education, the symposium is held annually in honor of John Hope Franklin, historian and professor emeritus at Duke.

Unfortunately, only cautious and piecemeal solutions were offered to the problem of missing African-American males. Panelists scarcely addressed the two major impediments to better education for these young men—weaknesses in family relationships and weaknesses in public education.

This was surprising because one of the individuals honored at the symposium was Alvin F. Poussaint, a noted Harvard Medical School psychiatrist. His book Come On People, written with comedian Bill Cosby, is a call for African-Americans to take greater personal responsibility for their lives and especially their children’s education.

And even though speakers repeatedly said that boys must be rescued before they derail from the education track, very little was said about the education track itself or why K-12 institutions are so ineffective.

Much was said about the problem, however. In his presentation “The Vanishing Male,” Andrew C. Jones, vice chancellor of the Dallas County (Texas) Community College District, reported not only that black males are underrepresented in college but that their graduation rates from high school are abysmally low—41 percent according to figures in USA Today. Sounding a theme heard frequently during the two days, Jones said that the problem starts early in life. For example, African-American males are diagnosed as needing special education twice as often as white males and thus are “labeled for life,” he said.

Norman C. Francis, long-time president of Xavier University of Louisiana and an honoree of the symposium, said that black males have been ”expelled and shuttled from an early age” and “left to struggle on their own.” Poussaint was even gloomier. He said that his wife, a principal at an elementary school, can go into a kindergarten class and predict which children will become high school dropouts. There is already a two-year difference in achievement between some children at that age. Some of the kids know the alphabet; others cannot even name colors.

Panelists agreed that for youngsters who have the potential to achieve a college education, intervention by middle school is needed. One method would be to insist that boys learn math and science. If a student doesn’t take algebra by ninth grade, he (or she) is unlikely to enter college, said Poussaint, who cited the Algebra Project created by the 1960s’ civil rights activist Robert Moses. In a number of cities, this project attempts to encourage young blacks to study algebra.

For most young African-Americans, and perhaps most students of all races, however, math and science are poorly taught. Education schools do not teach their graduates to teach math and science, said Xavier’s Francis. “All students are being shortchanged,” said Poussaint.

In a sort of parallel to this lament, panelists observed that black women are moving into college in large numbers, with about twice as many African-American women in college as African-American men. Thus, the high numbers of black women in college underscore the low numbers of black men, although John Hope Franklin, who is 93 years old, offered some historical perspective. He said that as far back as 1899, there were more women than men at historically black colleges in the South. The reason? Families wanted to place their daughters “out of harm’s way.” In college, they would not be as vulnerable to sexual assaults by white boys, who faced little, if any, punishment in that era.

So what is being done, given the low numbers of African-American males in colleges? This is where the surprises came in: not as much as one would expect.

A few panelists described programs designed to correct the imbalance. The African American Male Initiative (AAMI) at the University System of Georgia attempts to increase African-American males in Georgia’s university system and has had success in increasing enrollment and retention over the past few years. It is too soon to assess graduation rates, however.

The Student African American Brotherhood (SAAB) is a nationwide, on-campus organization that aims to support minority students by developing leadership and encouraging positive self-image.

There’s even a Hip-Hop Initiative at North Carolina Central University. Although it includes scholarly study of this kind of music, which has been around for more than 30 years, long enough to have its own interesting history, the program also uses hip hop to reach out to “at risk” males.

But little at this meeting was said about how to correct the problem on a systemic level. The failures of the public education system in the United States seemed obvious from many remarks (such as “teachers want the easy route”; teachers “are not taught how to teach math and science”). Yet no one proposed changes at either the K-12 level or education schools, which produce most public-school teachers.

A member of the audience asked if vouchers and charter schools have a place in addressing these problems. Only one of four people on the podium responded. Speaking specifically about New Orleans following Katrina, Francis praised charter schools (partly staffed by young college graduates from Teach for America) for filling the vacuum left by the public schools. And he emphasized that the public schools were “dysfunctional” even before Katrina; 102 schools had been taken over by the state of Louisiana.

Yet almost in the same breath, Francis defended the public schools against vouchers, saying that they might serve as a complement to a public school system, but “if a voucher system starts to erode the public school system, it’s bad.”

Finally, a member of the audience asked Alvin Poussaint to share the message of his 2007 book, Come On People. Poussaint answered the question by saying that throughout black history there was always a struggle “against the odds” but “we’ve lost some of that struggling against the odds.” People need to be better parents and avoid a “totally victim attitude.”

Certainly an apt comment, yet it was muted, perhaps because Come On People—along with its high-visibility co-author Bill Cosby—has evoked controversy for its explicitness about problems among poor African-Americans.

Poussaint’s comment came at the end of a session that could have been a ringing endorsement of change on the personal level. But there was no such ringing endorsement, just as there had been no exploration of how to improve public education. Indeed, the entire symposium seemed a little too quiet. No one there, it seemed, was outraged enough to explore change very deeply.