Our On-Going American Holocaust of Young African American Men
The recent reports on the situations of NYC young African American men -- fewer that half finding employment and the rest tending to end up with long prison sentences -- are totally depressing -- particularly for those of us who hoped for much better many decades ago. I am one of those.
When I was a young teen I had several years of experience with young kids as a camp counselor in Vermont and NY State -- working often with my lifetime best friend, Dan Huden, who went on also to become an academic. I also briefly as an exchange student to a British public school spent a school break working with comparable teens in the East End of London in a community center. Many of the latter were partial or full orphans from the war.
During my first year of studies at Union Theological Seminary in 1956-7 I opted to do as field work what I knew well -- working with teens in West Harlem at the Manhattanville Community Center. That experience was a shock in comparison with U.S. summer camp kids and British teens from the poorest of London communities. Our West Harlem kids were growing up in nightmare conditions. They were deprived of decent medical care, decent housing, and even enough support for decent meals. Many of their families had been broken up by the "No man in the house" rule which applied to those receiving welfare -- the returning veterans had displaced both minority men and women generally from their factory jobs which they had been encouraged to take during the manpower shortages of of WW2.
I soon acquired a little gang of about 12 whom I tried my best to assist. Rather than sports I soon learned that the best activity that we could take up was cooking -- I would bring a cake mix. They were all hungry 12-13-year-olds. The were also scared most of the time by the violence in the 'hood. I persuaded them at one point to leave all their improvised weapons in a bottom drawer in my UTS dorm room. I came home one night and found them all gone -- a special threat to them had come up.
In one case two of them had their lives totally disrupted by a literally insane social worker -- grad of Vassar. I saw her madness first hand -- she was terrified and kept insisting that every male she saw was a communist. I saw her threaten the mother of two of my kids in front of them that she would take them away if she had another child. When she attempted an abortion with a coat hanger a bit later I got to take Brother Boy to the Orangeburg State Mental hospital -- the only place for African American kids who had been orphaned.
The upshot was that I became big brother/father figure for about 12 kids. The only other positive role model was the sole African American cop in the 26th Precinct. All the other men were doing things that led to prison sooner or later where nearly all of my little gang were to end up eventually. Nearly all had died violently by their forties -- I met one of the survivors, Odell Terry, the most violent then who got into the Marines without a prison record and then went on to a career as a hero NYC cop. He told me that of the rest 9 were dead, one was homeless on the West coast, one had made it and was living on Long Island, and he had just retired from his 20 years as a cop. I will spare the details of some of them for reasons of space -- armed robbery, male prostitution, etc.
I felt terrible abandoning these kids after my year with them to get married and pursue my next year of studies at Oxford. I only ran into the rest occasionally here and there to hear the generally latest bad news. The one thing I could do was to fight for higher education for these kids which I did briefly working as Aid to J. Raymond Jones, Harlem political leader as he was working with blue collar union leaders and Kenneth R. Clark:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Clark_(psychologist)
to open up CUNY (The City University of NY) to all. And as soon as I could I started teaching in CUNY colleges -- Hunter, CCNY, and finally Brooklyn where I have been since open enrollment formally started in 1970. My classes now have students from all backgrounds, but there is about a 3/2 ratio of African American women to men at CUNY. And I am not sure that even that figure is not blurred by the mixing in of those better educated in Africa and the Caribbean. I see little kids who come to special events at Brooklyn College with obviously harassed and over pressured teachers -- the turn over rate is immense for them and many either switch careers or move out the 'burbs where the teaching life is better paid and less stressful.
The bottom line is that SOME of my kids' generation of children and grand children are making it into our CUNY classes. But NY has lost its blue collar jobs and there is obviously a terrible class divide that is still killing off our young African Americans. This is our on-going American Holocaust!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
When I was a young teen I had several years of experience with young kids as a camp counselor in Vermont and NY State -- working often with my lifetime best friend, Dan Huden, who went on also to become an academic. I also briefly as an exchange student to a British public school spent a school break working with comparable teens in the East End of London in a community center. Many of the latter were partial or full orphans from the war.
During my first year of studies at Union Theological Seminary in 1956-7 I opted to do as field work what I knew well -- working with teens in West Harlem at the Manhattanville Community Center. That experience was a shock in comparison with U.S. summer camp kids and British teens from the poorest of London communities. Our West Harlem kids were growing up in nightmare conditions. They were deprived of decent medical care, decent housing, and even enough support for decent meals. Many of their families had been broken up by the "No man in the house" rule which applied to those receiving welfare -- the returning veterans had displaced both minority men and women generally from their factory jobs which they had been encouraged to take during the manpower shortages of of WW2.
I soon acquired a little gang of about 12 whom I tried my best to assist. Rather than sports I soon learned that the best activity that we could take up was cooking -- I would bring a cake mix. They were all hungry 12-13-year-olds. The were also scared most of the time by the violence in the 'hood. I persuaded them at one point to leave all their improvised weapons in a bottom drawer in my UTS dorm room. I came home one night and found them all gone -- a special threat to them had come up.
In one case two of them had their lives totally disrupted by a literally insane social worker -- grad of Vassar. I saw her madness first hand -- she was terrified and kept insisting that every male she saw was a communist. I saw her threaten the mother of two of my kids in front of them that she would take them away if she had another child. When she attempted an abortion with a coat hanger a bit later I got to take Brother Boy to the Orangeburg State Mental hospital -- the only place for African American kids who had been orphaned.
The upshot was that I became big brother/father figure for about 12 kids. The only other positive role model was the sole African American cop in the 26th Precinct. All the other men were doing things that led to prison sooner or later where nearly all of my little gang were to end up eventually. Nearly all had died violently by their forties -- I met one of the survivors, Odell Terry, the most violent then who got into the Marines without a prison record and then went on to a career as a hero NYC cop. He told me that of the rest 9 were dead, one was homeless on the West coast, one had made it and was living on Long Island, and he had just retired from his 20 years as a cop. I will spare the details of some of them for reasons of space -- armed robbery, male prostitution, etc.
I felt terrible abandoning these kids after my year with them to get married and pursue my next year of studies at Oxford. I only ran into the rest occasionally here and there to hear the generally latest bad news. The one thing I could do was to fight for higher education for these kids which I did briefly working as Aid to J. Raymond Jones, Harlem political leader as he was working with blue collar union leaders and Kenneth R. Clark:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Clark_(psychologist)
to open up CUNY (The City University of NY) to all. And as soon as I could I started teaching in CUNY colleges -- Hunter, CCNY, and finally Brooklyn where I have been since open enrollment formally started in 1970. My classes now have students from all backgrounds, but there is about a 3/2 ratio of African American women to men at CUNY. And I am not sure that even that figure is not blurred by the mixing in of those better educated in Africa and the Caribbean. I see little kids who come to special events at Brooklyn College with obviously harassed and over pressured teachers -- the turn over rate is immense for them and many either switch careers or move out the 'burbs where the teaching life is better paid and less stressful.
The bottom line is that SOME of my kids' generation of children and grand children are making it into our CUNY classes. But NY has lost its blue collar jobs and there is obviously a terrible class divide that is still killing off our young African Americans. This is our on-going American Holocaust!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
posted by Ed Kent at 3:03 AM
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