A sunlit classroom served as the perfect setting for a group of black youths being schooled by a “village” of black men last Saturday at Zion Travelers Missionary Baptist Church.
The dreaded N-word and its negative meaning and origins occupied one chalkboard, alongside two book titles, The Isis Papers and Behold the White Horse, provided as must-reads for the young black men in attendance.
A number chart dominated an adjacent chalkboard, which attendees later learned represented adverse percentages of social and economic conditions of blacks.
“In school, we were not taught to critically analyze ourselves, so it’s time for us to study ourselves,” said Reggie Jackson, board chairman of the Black Holocaust Museum of Milwaukee.
“You can’t expect young black men to succeed if you don’t teach them how to be successful,” he said at the chalkboard.
Other panelists schooling the youths were non-traditional teachers: an ex-con, rapper, clergymen, police officers, board chairman, authors, entrepreneur and youth advocate.
Their subject: “The State of Young Black Brothers: Real Talk for Real Times,” presented by 100 Black Men, the Men of Zion Travelers and Youth Development Services.
The boys and men discussed African origins, sagging pants, jail, drugs, gang-banging, mortality, family, education, spirituality and economics.
“How many CEOs do you see sagging?” said Lt. Troy Doyle of the St. Louis County Police Department.
The boys couldn’t name one person.
Kenneth “Kenny Boy” Boyd, an ex-felon, author and prison activist, interjected, dismissing the popular belief that sagging started in prison.
“I was there almost 20 years; it didn’t happen there,” said Boyd, who now speaks in prisons and has written the book, Know Thyself Psychologically.
“When you went through those doors, you kept your pants up – if you didn’t, you were bid on,” Boyd said.
Another panelist, William Polite, an author and district principal of Confluence Academy, pointed that sagging is just another symptom of a lack of education.
“Many of us are having unprotected contact with society,” Polite said, referencing his book, Hood Infectious Virus, which plays off of HIV.
“Your peers, recording artists and TV are infectious – that’s why you start to sag,” Polite said.
Crack, according to Polite, has had a monumentally negative effect on blacks, as they become counterproductive, deceased or incarcerated.
“They need to keep the dope and gang-bang flowing,” Polite said, adding the prisons are multi-billion dollar businesses and black youths are the products.
The Rev. Linden Bowie, pastor of the church, said he’s tired of preaching funerals of young boys. He called prisons modern-day plantations.
“Slavery is back,” he said.
While black men, 18-55, make up only 3.1 percent of the population, 46 percent of the same group make up the U.S. prison population, Jackson pointed out in his chart.
“In Missouri, 40 percent of the prison population is black,” according to Jackson.
St. Louis is leading the nation in black-on-black murder, according to FBI stats released earlier this year.
“We’re in a state of emergency,” said the Rev. Tim Hughes, executive director of Youth Development Services.
“This is a crisis situation and we have to act in urgency to do what we have to do to reach our young men as much as possible,” Hughes said.
All the panelists agreed that if young men knew their ancient African history, they could be better people.
“Schools aren’t teaching the essentials – like our great history,” said St. Louis County Police Officer Ray Rice.
“They don’t know that Ben Carson is the greatest brain surgeon alive, but they can tell you how many points Kobe Bryant scored.”
Rice said he noticed that when he used to work part-time in a library, many of the youth spent more time on a social website than reading books.
“Self, family and community takes a backseat to all the images they see on TV, radio and the internet,” Rice said.
Jacque Land, president of the local 100 Black Men, told the young boys to write down their short- and long-term goals.
“That way you will know what you’re striving for,” said Land, also president of the Platinum Group.
A woman who took her son to the forum said she had been looking for a positive male role model. Before she could finish speaking, Demond Turner of 100 Black Men said he would mentor the boy.
“Someone helped me, so I want to help someone else, because what would I be without a mentor?” said Turner, who is a schoolteacher, barber and clothes designer.
The boy, Devon Washington, said what he learned at the forum is “it takes a village to raise a child, but the village is broke, so we have to fix it.”
“What we did that day is what the village does,” Rev. Hughes said of the forum.