Homilies asserting that poor Black children can be anything they want to be must be based on an understanding of the assets required for success. Children need Forty Developmental Assets – Twenty External and Twenty Internal. (Search Institute)
External Assets are provided by families and local communities and must be present before children are glibly told, “If you can dream it, you can achieve it.” Education, mostly informal, is core to asset formation. By 18 years of age, children will have spent 92% of their lives outside the formal education system. And 75% of the External Assets are found outside children’s homes. If adults have fulfilled their responsibilities in providing External Assets, children are much more likely to develop Internal Assets. But if adults have failed to provide community assets, words alone will be ineffective for driving children to success.
When young people’s hopes, dreams and self-esteem are fostered, but unrelated to actual preparation for achievement, their aspirations often morph into assumed entitlements and unrealistic expectations. Unrequited hope can lead to despair and anger as children become aware of what to want and what they deserve immediately! When they are not able to be all they want to be, or have all they want, their decline in self-esteem may be so profound that they begin to commit educational, social, psychological, and physical suicide.
In addition, over-confidence about strengths, ability and entitlement often leads to a rejection of hard work in favor of fun things: playing video games now is more fun than studying English, mathematics and science in preparation for future success. Certainty about ability, however false, coupled with an entitlement mentality that is devoid of reality-thinking, frequently leads to more risk-taking behavior, often getting perpetrators into trouble. For certain Americans, there are no second chances, even following minor violations. Our prisons, streets, emergency rooms, and morgues are filled with such violators.
If, however, youth have been solidly taught that hard work, not genetics, controls outcomes, they can strengthen their capacity to delay immediate gratification and overcome adversity, as well as learn to use truth in the ethical decision-making process; to set realistic, success-oriented plans; and learn how to implement their plans and persevere.
Although we often hear that the decline in Black children’s behavior was caused during the sixties by the disintegration of the “traditional family;” I am convinced that the disintegration of the “traditional community” preceded and caused the decline of the family. In the early years after slavery, Black Families were embedded in supportive communities; families were not left on their own for child-rearing or the other necessities for surviving, even thriving, in America.
To this very day, students whose parents are appropriately involved in their education at home and in school are more likely to attend school regularly; have better social skills; adapt appropriately to school environments; enroll in higher-level core courses; pass their classes; earn high grades and test scores; graduate; and go on to postsecondary education.
If youngsters graduate high school, get fulltime work, marry after 22, and delay childbearing until after 25, they will have only a 2% chance of being in poverty and a 72% chance of joining the middle class.
Not all families can provide their 25% of the External Assets. Nevertheless, if the community’s Assets are properly constituted, clarified and constant, children from families deficient in resources are more likely to be saved. Where community assets are highest, children who are doing well in school sustain and increase their performance; children who normally perform poorly are encouraged toward greater success; violence and classroom disruptions are lower; and neighborhoods are safer for children and adults.
African American children are not born genetically defective, with a predisposition to be: exploited as athletic entertainers, put into worthless special classes, dependent on Ritalin, school failures, violent, criminals, sexually promiscuous, or poor and full of despair. Nor are they born angels, just, potential human beings. Their experiences after they arrive among us will determine for nearly all of them the essence of their humanity, positive or negative. The degree of an entire community’s asset strength and morality can be determined by looking at the level and sub-categories of youth failures.
I confess, again, that my conviction about External and Internal Assets resulted from my growing-up in Roanoke, VA. I know it was easier for children like me to gain assets in those bad old days when our Black community was more like an extended family. It may be difficult, in fact, impossible, to reconstruct such communities today geographically, but I have seen ample evidence that it is not impossible to do so spiritually.
