We have long assumed that young Black children are motivated to achieve success during Black History Month events. They see, many for the first time, the great achievements of Black people that go beyond the typical sports, music and acting luminaries. But, documentaries, movies, and other events also show African-American children what people who look like the forebearers of their white classmates and teachers did to their ancestors.
Black youth are reminded 365 days a year that America still holds a low view of them. Police assassinations and a myriad of violent hate crimes in the news might go over the heads of their white classmates and teachers, but such acts may cause Black children to inculcate self-destructive tendencies; to hold America in low regard; and, worse, to be incensed with Black adults and leaders, including their own parents, because the crimes against their humanity have worsened in recent years.
The children should know our whole history, but we should not assume that the desired outcomes of revelations have been achieved without doing stringent evaluations. Knowledge of history without current application can be dilettantism. Too many Black kids still lack the historical cultural armor that will protect them and induce them to strengthen themselves to mitigate the impact negative social and political forces inflict on the ill-prepared.
Older Black Americans consider themselves to be more strongly American than do the younger generations because the African American culture with which we were infused from post-slavery through the sixties was responsible for one of the greatest transformations of a people in the history of the world. That culture equipped the first few generations to achieve excellence in an America that was considerably more openly brutal to Black people then it has been to current generations.
We must do more to help youngsters understand the difference between physical abuses against their bodies and symbolic ones against their minds so they can develop the level of psychological power to withstand metaphorical assaults thrown at them and continue building successful lives.
For African American youngsters, awareness of their inherent potential for personal power is the key starting element for their success. Then comes character development, or spiritual strengthening, the surest means, perhaps the only means, of countering the harm intended by arbitrary and superficial in-group/out-group designations that place some entities above others and give rise to racism, which often result in self-annihilation. Each Black child must build personal power in the human spirit; if not, the forces which produced inequities in times past will continue to retard progress, regeneration and success.
No matter what we do to try to convince youth of their inherent personal potential, power and value, until the children gain the personal strength to assert themselves for themselves, there is no way they can know what they can be; and until they know what they can be, they will never know what and who they should and can be. If they do not understand and accept what and who they should and can be, they will never become self-defining, self-controlling human beings, able to withstand the onslaughts from their environment.
The achievement/behavioral gap, which is preceded by material and spiritual gaps, separates poor children from non-poor children irrespective of race. Material poverty does not lead inevitably to spiritual poverty, but spiritual poverty if unaddressed will lead to quite awful human conditions.
The spiritual gap fosters the inner voice which says: I cannot so I won’t even try; instead of: if anyone just like me has achieved, then so can I.
The irreplaceable traits so necessary for young people to develop themselves into the kinds of citizens who can advance themselves, their families, their communities, their people and their nation are not taught to them in the formal teaching-learning process. Although we should continue forever to “teach and preach the theory,” we must know that it is not what they are taught that counts, but what they understand, inculcate and employ in their behavior that will advance them. “Modeling” by adults is the easiest and most effective means of teaching the strengthening cultural tenets. This teaching must be done 365 days a year!
African-American cultural ideals and America’s founding ideals, though applied differently for us in times past by our elders, were quite similar during the period of our most fundamental advancement.
The children will begin and sustain the effort to excel, despite signals of disrespect from classmates, teachers, community residents and America, only if they have a well-developed sense of self- respect, pride, and self-worth; have an abiding respect for the worth of their own people; and if they respect America’s professed ideals. “Hyphenated” children must develop equal regard for each side of the hyphen, as well as for the entire hyphenation: e.g., African-American. It is not possible to hate half yourself and succeed.
