National media campaign to promote well-being of black boys comes to Oakland
- October 4, 2010
A series of startling statistics flashed on the screen in a documentary about black boys shown Saturday at East Oakland's Allen Temple Baptist Church. The numbers underscored the low graduation rates, high incarceration rates, declining life expectancy and prevalence of disease among African-American males in the United States.
"This is a group that's seriously in trouble," John Jackson, president of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, said in the film, "Beyond the Bricks." A recent Schott report found that 54 percent of black males in California graduated from high school, compared with 78 percent of their white counterparts. It also found that, nationally, white male students are twice as likely as their black peers to participate in gifted-and-talented programs, and half as likely to be classified as mentally disabled.
But Jackson and other experts interviewed in the documentary -- and in the panel discussion that followed -- observed that the reality behind those alarming figures is commonly accepted as normal.
"When you see the figures in this video, you should be infuriated right now," said Daniel Mastin, a 17-year-old Skyline High School student and senior class president. But, he added, "we've become so comfortable with being a permanent underclass that we don't even pay attention to it."
Dozens of parents, students, teachers, scholars and community leaders, including 麻豆传媒社区入口 President Mo Qayoumi, attended Saturday's event, which was part of a national tour organized by the filmmakers, Ouida Washington and Derek Koen. Oakland was its second stop on a 10-city tour. Next up is Baltimore, followed by Atlanta, Detroit and Chicago.
Washington told the audience the team wanted to "pull all of the pieces together in one room so you can see where you fit in."
The national media campaign coincides with a local initiative for black boys. Last week, Oakland Superintendent Tony Smith announced he had created a new position in his Cabinet: director of African-American student achievement. He named Chris Chatmon, education chairman of 100 Black Men of the Bay Area, to the privately funded post. Chatmon was on Saturday's "Beyond the Bricks" panel.
The Rev. Daniel Buford, of Allen Temple, said the church would hold more forums in the coming months, and that youths would be involved in organizing them.
"We must go beyond the bricks of the school system," Buford said. "We must rebuild and repair the opportunity gap. We must rebuild and repair the responsibility gap."
And, he added, "it's not enough to build something if you're not willing to fight for it."
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