As I was chatting with a teacher friend about a number of Black male students, I realized that it was a conversation I had had before and written about before. Our conversation was about how to teach young Black male students we both had in our classes. I teach a range of English courses, and most college students, Black and White, claim English as one of their most difficult subjects. For male students another dynamic is at work, and it is that dynamic that my friend and I discussed.
     America and its institutions have not been kind to young Black males, whether they have realized that unkindness or not. Many have not, yet Blacks have learned to parent their children in certain ways that are different from other parents. One particular way Black parents condition their Black male children for prudent living in an unfavorable environment is to make them aware of the negative aspect of this society. The idealists think that giving a child such an outlook is to condition that child to a hostile self-fulfilling prophecy. They are idealistic about the justice of this society toward Blacks, but Black realities defy their idealism. James Baldwin once said, and I paraphrase, if a Black person in America is not a little bit paranoid, he is a big bit crazy. We have no reason, even today, to think that justice will run down like a mighty flood upon us. The systems of aggression have not been removed or torn down in any large measure. Instead, this society has retrenched into its old ways and has used surrogate Blacks to assist in their effort, viz., the Ward Connerlys of America.
     I have written about prudent parenting elsewhere. It is parenting that should be used as a result of the harsh American environment that our young Black males must grow up in.
     Black parents teach their children that they can be anything they want to be if they work hard and apply themselves; this is the Horatio Alger ethic usually given to all youths. Beside this Horatio Alger ethic, there is a philosophy peculiar to Black parenting: most Black parents teach their children the ABC’s of relating to the police departments of America and the institutions of this society. And those ABC’s are not the same as those taught by White parents to their children. White parents teach their children that the police are their friends; if they find themselves in an awkward situation or lost, call on the police. For them this is a reality they can usually count on, because most police are White males and females. 
     Black parents teach their male children that they should try to have as little contact with the police as possible; if they are lost, go to another Black person and ask for help. The police are the last people they want to go to. If this concept is not spoken, it is implied: the police are hostile to Blacks’ interests, well being, and often they are hostile to Black males’ lives. 
     Along with these admonitions to the Black male child is another warning: the systems of society--public school, social services, etc.--are hostile to him, do not care for him, do not respect him, and if he is to succeed in these institutions he must be twice as smart or as qualified as his White counter-parts. These are some of the messages given to Black male children; our children are socialized with these notions throughout their lives. Black parents usually fortify them in preparation of the adverse systems and people set against them.
     When that child moves beyond his family and friends, he realizes that those precautions were not self-fulfilling prophecies; instead, what is at work is a hostile society. By the time he makes it to college he may have been mildly to severely traumatized by  one of the systems set up against him.
     Knowing that the public school system is generally hostile to him, he should realize that regardless of how brilliant he is, it is rare that he will ever be properly commended for his brilliance. Such words as brilliant, genius, etc., are considered inappropriate for Black students by teachers; even many Black teachers are slow to define and name brilliance among Black male students. It is an American conditioning process he has to live with until maturity overtakes the majority of Americans. That conditioning seems to be a deliberate institutional effort to reduce the achievement level of Blacks. These institutions  will always attempt to acculturate him, dismiss him, or declare him a behavioral problem; educating him is not a priority.
     Many young Blacks I see in school are relieved to see a black face on their instructor; there are so few Black males [or females] in many schools. But upon seeing me, a curious apprehension comes over them: It is a fear of failing; that fear is for me to not fail them or embarrass myself, which would also be to embarrass them. They desperately don’t want me to make a mistake, they want me to be intelligent, honest, Black, and for me to truly care about them as a real Black person.
     Most have not experienced a caring environment, so
their hopes are raised at the introduction of a Black instructor. They wonder whether his degrees really betoken brilliance that they we can take pride in; has he really mastered the material (they hold their breaths); can he withstand the attacks they know from their brief histories are an ever-present probability in academia and America? These are the attitudes of young Blacks who have no knowledge of Black history and are without the benefits of good Black parenting that would instill within them the idea that Blacks in positions traditionally held by Whites are usually twice as competent  to have secured that position.      
     This is a disposition they come to college with, and as a result, they are fit for a fight; their attitudes and faces are not free, as they assume their White classmates’ faces are. They behave as if they are the only ones outside their comfort zone, not knowing that their White classmates are similarly uncomfortable in this new environment as well. Because of their socialization and lack of familial college experience to guide them, their guards are up, they are armed, but for a different kind of fight.  
     These young Black males know that the school system does not care for them, other than for their strong bodies on the football field or the basketball court, making the school look good athletically. So they exhibit their fitness, their physical strength and their unsmiling faces. But beneath those veneers are beautiful Black young men, if anyone took time to see their beauty. Instead, those unsmiling faces and flexing muscles breed a certain apprehension in many non-Black teachers, and the stereotypes about Black males being dangerous are triggered. They are dangerous, and even more, they are un-teachable. Next, the dumb athlete stereotypes set in—they have muscles everywhere except their minds. When stereotypes set in there is no expectation for these students; there is no challenge given to them, and since there is no educational challenge presented, there is  no nurturing, no caring, no educating of these strong and vibrant Black males to intellectual excellence. Instead, condescension is the order of the day.
      Years ago in East Palo Alto, CA, the school district was ready to abandon Black children,  but Ms. Gertrude Wilks (1) said defiantly, “Our children can learn!” Educating demands challenging the learner, but that school district was afraid of Black learners, so they offered no challenge; they opted out and declared that the children could not learn.
     Teaching is not merely giving information that students receive. If it were that simple anyone could read a book, memorize information, and teach. Teaching is an adventure, a process that takes place between a student and instructor; it is a set of circumstances, a milieu that takes hold of the mind and elevates a student to a higher level of idea discovery, manipulation, processing, and appreciation. It is a type of ethereal art on the canvass of the mind, and as a student paints, carves, or performs in growth, an instructor too is elevated to new realms of epiphanies and delight as he/she imbibes the beauty of truth unfolding in the mind of a young, hungry learner. 
     There are fewer joys I recall experiencing beyond that of watching the natural confusion associated with a student’s earnest attempt to grasp a concept and shrug in a momentary impatience at his/her lack of understanding, then I maneuver his/her mind and the material slightly to watch enlightenment flood the face, after it has overtaken the mind. This is a rare beauty that is the reward of an instructor regardless of what level that teacher works at. This beauty is especially enjoyable when it is seen in young Black males who have been unhelped. 
     These Black males must be disarmed. They have been armed for social battle, for a nation that is indifferent to them, even openly hostile. If they are to learn, they must be disarmed by an instructor. And that act is not as difficult as it seems. Teachers know that teaching and learning take place in nurturing environments. Those young Black faces are not smiling because society has removed their smiles—“Ain’t no angel gonna greet me. It’s just you and I, my friend.”(2) They know there is no nurturing environment in these institutions for them, other than on athletic fields or courts. There they know they can dominate; those are fields that offer a
modicum  of fairness  and comfort. And there they exhibit their strength and brilliance. But that is just part of them; why not provide that same comfort level inside the classroom and allow these same young men to develop and excel to their full intellectual brilliance? That is the other part of them.   
     They are so beautiful in their young, yet to be developed Black strength, but few care to see and develop their beauty. Their strong, alive, restless energies call to the teacher in me to nurture and summon their minds to attention and discipline. Surely, if they can bring their bodies into physical subjection, they can transpose that same discipline to the mind. And they will, if they are summoned and nurtured correctly.
     These young Black males want to know that someone cares for them; they want to know that someone believes that they can achieve intellectually and that someone is willing to work with them and show them the path to enlightenment. What they ask for is not something that is not already required and given to others, yet these natural aspects of the learning environment are not given to them with the same regularity and care others have needed and received. Our young have to be touched emotionally. That is the disarming of the young Black male.  
     One need not be Black to disarm them. But it is easier and more understood by a Black teacher who sees their beauty. Some years ago, I was disarmed at City College of  San Francisco by a White professor of English. Until that time brilliance was not known or bestowed upon me just as it was not attributed to many brilliant Black males. That instructor scrawled on an assignment I had handed in to him the following words: “You are the most brilliant student I have had the opportunity to teach. An instructor is fortunate to have such a student.”  I was simply amazed, and my little fire was stoked by his words into a flame; I determined that I would leap over walls, burst through balustrades and barricades (3) in search of our historical and contemporary Black excellence and brilliance. I would realize my full intellectual potential. He had touched me and disarmed me with the belief that there was something special within and about me. And with that disarming, I realized the cost of brilliance and paid it.
     As it was true for me then, it is still true for other Black males: if our young Black males are to learn, they must be disarmed of the negativity that we and society have placed upon them; that can be done with less effort than most imagine. They are young, beautiful, restless lions, and their strength is their beauty, but a teacher, Black or White, cannot be afraid of it; that teacher must see their beauty and nurture their brilliance. Nurturing takes time, but they will respond; they will rise.(4) 

_________________Notes

1.) Ms. Gertrude Wilks is a Black mother who still lives in East Palo Alto, CA. The Nairobi Schools, which she started, afforded many young Whites the space and subject matter they sought and needed to get their advanced degrees. I also did part of my internship at Ms. Wilks’s Nairobi School, and she welcomed me too.
     When I went there and talked to her about what I wanted to do, she responded: “It about time some Blacks started getting their PhDs from us; Whites have been coming here for years getting theirs. Welcome, boy!” That felt good to me; it felt like home.   

2.) A line from the poem/song , Philadelphia, by Bruce Springsteen, that indicates the loneliness of a man suffering from AIDS.

3.) A line from a poem by Rod Mc Kuen, Harvest Moon.

4.) A reference to poem by Maya Angelou, Still I Rise.

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