Black males and the opportunity gaps closing the divide
1. Black Males and the
Opportunity Gaps
Closing The Divide
Macheo Payne, Ed.D., MSW
2013
Closing The Divide
2. Introduction/Check-in
What opportunities have you been
afforded?
What opportunities have you been
denied?
What has been the result of
opportunities afforded you vs. denied
to you?
Closing The Divide
3. Training Goals
1. Frame the Opportunity Gaps for
Black boys and discuss solutions.
2. Develop a shared understanding of
what impacts our work with Black boys
3. Build critical questions that can
inform our continued work with Black
boys
Closing The Divide
4. What Happens & Why?
1. Discipline Gap (disproportionality & bias)
2. Achievement Gap (the inequity curve, zero sum)
3. Experience & Training Gap (newest teachers)
4. Hard & Soft Resource Gap (Infrastructure, PTA, Basic
Aid, etc.)
5. Curriculum Gap (Arizona, etc.)
6. Innovation vs. Stability Gap (Nola Charters vs. BAU)
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5. What Happens & Why?
Question: Why do students get sent out of class?
1. Disproportionality in out of class referrals &
suspension of Black boys
2. Research shows 3 main reasons:
1. Cultural Mismatch (3 D’s: defiance, disrespect,
disruption)
2. Teacher Bias (stereotype threat)
3. Institutional Bias (zero tolerance, parent
compliance)
Closing The Divide
6. The Back of the Book
Question: What are Best Practices that you know about and have used?
1. Health- Integration of attention to mind, body, personal in all pursuits of the
spirit. (Positive psychology, happiness & hope scales)
2. Racial Esteem–Village Nation, OFS, Camp Akili
3. Education- Equitable Reform/Transformation
4. Housing- Identify SWOT’s of environment to make high leverage
improvements
5. Art & Culture- Epistemological integration into foundation of society .
Values, beliefs and systems of civilization.
6. Employment- Balanced pursuit of sustainable, purposeful career
development and integration into future economy.
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7. The Back of the Book
Question: What are Best Practices that you know about and have used?
1. Authentic Caring –Angela Valenzuela
2. Control the Environment: Environment controls
behavior. -ABA (classroom management: arrangement,
procedures, structure, engagement, etc.)
3. Culturally Responsive (student centered) –Sharroky
Hollie
4. Strengths Based: All behavior is strength or hidden
strength
5. Be Explicit: Openly challenging negative stereotypes &
biases in, through, with your class
6. Measure it: Keep track of your out of class referrals for
objective offenses. (the 3 D’s)
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8. Why My Bootstraps Broke Off
I understand there’s a common fraternity creed here at Morehouse: “Excuses
are tools of the incompetent used to build bridges to nowhere and
monuments of nothingness.” Well, we’ve got no time for excuses. Not
because the bitter legacy of slavery and segregation have vanished
entirely; they have not. Not because racism and discrimination no longer
exist; we know those are still out there. It’s just that in today’s
hyperconnected, hypercompetitive world, with millions of young people
from China and India and Brazil — many of whom started with a whole
lot less than all of you did — all of them entering the global workforce
alongside you, nobody is going to give you anything that you have not
earned.
Closing The Divide
9. Why My Bootstraps Broke Off
“The boot of racism is still on your neck… but that’s no excuse for passing
out.” or
“You better earn every penny… unless you are white America.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N--xg-w-e-4 (6 – 8 min.)
President Barack Obama
Dr. King:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG_XRVUNplI
We earned what we are still being denied hundreds of times over.
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10. How are they targeted?
Question: What are the problems impacting our students?
Safety Health Education
Homicide
Prison
Environmental
hazards
Profiling
Disease
Illness
Low quality of life
Discrimination is
psychological
warfare
Suspension/
Expulsion
Drop out
Low graduation
Special Ed/
ADHD
Remedial/
Tracking
Closing The Divide
11. The Gaps
•The Achievement Gap (test scores, dropout rates, higher ed)
•The Discipline Gap(suspension and expulsion)
•The Wealth Gap(net worth, income, rates of poverty)
•The Health (mortality) Gap(life expectancy, excess death)
•The Prison Gap(incarceration rates, sentencing, profiling)
•The Employment Gap(unemployment and underemployment
rate)
Clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVmPKvhsNVk
Lincoln Monthly Training
Attribution of Disparities
Question: Why are students unsuccessful?
Dominant public paradigms explaining disparities: “bad apples”
Defective culture (Bill Cosby, President Obama, & Co.)
Individual faults (Bootstraps, agency, free will & choice)
Personal racism (isolated incidents, generally equal)
Overlooks policies and arrangements: “diseased tree”
Structures (Competition rewards advantage. Privilege bestows advantage, social reproduction)
Institutions (White supremacy, Brown v. Board, School to Prison)
-Paul Hirshfield, Preparing for Prison: The Criminalization of School Discipline in the USA
Cumulative causation (multisystemic inequity, doll test)
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12. The Opportunity Gaps
•The Achievement Gap (test scores, dropout rates)
•The Discipline Gap (suspension and expulsion)
•The Wealth Gap (net worth, income, rates of poverty)
•The Health Gap (life expectancy, excess death)
•The Prison Gap (incarceration rates, sentencing, profiling)
•The Perception Gap (stereotype threat, post race rhetoric,
reverse racism)
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13. The Intersection
•The Achievement Gap (education)
•The Discipline Gap (education)
•The Wealth Gap (education & employment)
•The Health Gap (education & environment)
•The Prison Gap (health, environment & education)
(75% & 19% are illiterate & mental health issue)
•The Perception Gap (education & exposure)
Closing The Divide
14. Who is the Oppressor?
Question: What impacts our students the most?
• Primary Oppressors
• Ways of thinking (ideological
oppression)
– White supremacy (white privilege)
– Any thoughts of superiority over
others
• Institutions (institutional oppression)
– Police brutality
– “ism’s”
• People (interpersonal oppression)
– Act of bigotry
– “ism’s”
• Overt domination and exploitation of
people, resources, and thought
• Secondary Oppressors or
sub-oppressors
• Internalized oppression
– Inability to name source of
oppression
– Black on black crime
– Negative self image
– Inability to identify the existence of
being oppressed
– Acceptance of negative stereotypes
and labels into self concept
– Inability to actively resist structural
oppression
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15. What does oppression look like?
Question: What does this oppression look like in our schools?
• Negative presupposition
• Escalation
• Ultimatums
• Leverage power and authority
• Threats of consequences
• Deny them a ‘choice or a voice’
• Forget they are children
• Refuse to apologize
• Treat them like adults
• Intimidate them
• Fail to hold them accountable
• Black boys are limited culturally,
in what they can express and
how they can express it
• Care, concern, fear, hurt,
sadness, shame, embarrassment,
• Most of our students are acutely
aware of their positioning in U.S.
society (social reproduction)
which is the bottom.
Closing The Divide
16. Risk vs. Protective Factors
Question: What are the push pull factors in their environment?
• Risk Factors
• Low SES (poverty or working class)
• Environment (liquor store, shots fired)
• Race (“old and black”)
• Poverty
• Community violence
• Trauma
• Neglect
• Poor schools
• Lack of nutrition
• Protective Factors
• SES status (middle & upper middle class)
• Education
• Access to resources
• Supportive caring relationships with adults
• Positive engagement, healthy self-esteem
• Tangible Skills and Prosocial skills
• Internal motivation, drive, determination,
talent
• Resilience
Closing The Divide
17. Strength-Based
Seek to see all behaviors as strengths or hidden strengths
• Name some of the hidden strengths
that Black boys exhibit (harmful behaviors)?
– Flashy < Creative & expressive
– Persistent < Resilient
– Bold < Courageous
– Outspoken < Honest & transparent
– Moody < Passionate & compassionate
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18. Strength-Based
"Men are whipped oftenist who are whipped easiest.“
• “The strength of someone
who has endured the
greatest hardship is best
equipped for creating great
social change.”
• Fredrick Douglass was born
into slavery. A ‘foster’ child,
dropped off at 6 by his
grandmother who disappeared.
• At 16, he fought back,
struggling for 2 hours.
• Douglass escaped slavery and
rose to become an advisor to
President Lincoln during civil
war.
•
Miss. Sen. Blanche Bruce, former slave
Ala. Rep. Jeremiah Haralson, former
slave
21 elected to House, 10 former slaves
2 elected to Senate, 1 former slave
Mississippi, Alabama, Virginia, Florida,
North & South Carolina, Louisiana
From 1870 - 1901
Booker T
Washington founded
Tuskeegee in 1881 &
met with T. Roosevelt
in 1901
WEB DuBois earned
a Ph.D. from Harvard
1895
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19. America’s Response
Minstrel, Jim Crow 1876, Birth of a Nation 1915 & Lynchings
mostly targeting urban Black males
Slide 13
Closing The Divide
20. Nothing New?
Lincoln Monthly Training
Negative Stereotypes
Nothing New?
demonized/criminalized aspects of culture
Big, Black, Dangerous, Savage, Animal, Vicious, Beast,
Immoral, Lazy, Ignorant, Careless, Indiscriminate, Oversexed,
Crazed, Deranged, Lowly, Simple, Stupid, Inferior, Subhuman
Closing The Divide
21. Modern Criminalization/Dehumanization
The myth of the juvenile Superpredator:
-John Dilulio, Princeton 1990’s
“Crack baby myth, immoral and beastly violent”
“Tough on crime” laws target urban Black Males
3- strikes, juveniles as adults, crack laws, gang laws
-Mike Males, The Scapegoat Generation: America’s War On Adolescents
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22. Staff Goals
Question: What are your goals as a team?
1. Building relationships with students
2. Culturally responsive strategies for engaging
students in the learning process
3. Dealing with misbehavior:
What are some behaviors?
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23. Building Relationships
Question: What are the best ways to build appropriate relationships?
1. Address your fear of your students
2. Look at your judgement of parents and family
structure & community
3. Look at your personal biases, prejudices, dislikes
and pet peeves
4. Examine your motivations for being here
5. Challenge negative hidden assumptions &
beliefs
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24. Building Relationships
Question: What are best practices for building relationships?
1. Authentic Caring vs. Aesthetic Caring
–Angela Valenzuela, Subtractive Schooling
2. Know their parents & caregivers first and
last name: community centered
-Gloria Ladson-Billings, Dreamkeepers
3. Disclose mistakes or errors and apologize
quickly
4. State your motivations for your actions,
give real reasons
–Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of American Empire
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25. Culturally Responsive Strategies
Question: What does culturally responsive mean to you?
1. Be clear about who you are: (race, class,
gender, etc.) because it speaks more than what
you say –Sharroky Hollie, Culturally Responsive
2. Be Student Centered: Their class or your
class, their assignment or your assignment,
their education or your education? Are you
facilitator or Director of learning?
3. Cultural Consultation: Consult someone
who is in the business of addressing a
particular group
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26. Common Explanations for Misbehavior
Question: Why do students act out?
1. He just wants attention (essential for survival)
2. He just wants his own way (as he should)
3. He’s manipulating us (not exactly)
4. He’s making bad choices (developmentally appropriate)
5. His parents don’t provide enough structure (neither do rich parents)
6. He has a bad attitude (unmet need)
7. His brother was the same way (we have no control over our genes)
8. He’s testing limits (that’s necessary for growth)
Closing The Divide
27. Applied Behavior Analysis
Question: How can you analyze their behavior?
1. Create an optimal environment (culture) BIP’s
2. Whatever behavior is reinforced the most, will occur the most
3. Behaviors are reinforced by Adult energy & attention
4. Setting events (2-6 hours) and Antecedents (30 seconds)
Behavior and Consequences (natural are preferred to imposed)
5. Analyze when disruptions occur
6. Distinguish the type & kind of disrespectful outburst
7. Sharing Approximations: Clapping exercise
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28. Crisis Management and The Crisis Cycle
Question: What happens in a crisis?
1. Baseline
2. Escalation phase and the reverse cognition effect
3. Crisis mode
4. Heightened baseline
5. Cortisol
6. Shift thinking from escalation to maintaining baseline
7. Adult escalation cycle out of sync with students’ cycle
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29. Collaborative Problem Solving
-Ross Greene, The Explosive Child
Kids Do Well If They Can
This is the most important theme of Collaborative
Problem Solving: the belief that if kids could do well
they would do well. In other words, if the kid had the
skills to exhibit adaptive behavior, he wouldn’t be
exhibiting challenging behavior. That’s because doing
well is always preferable to not doing well.
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30. Collaborative Problem Solving
-Ross Greene, The Explosive Child
What's Your Explanation?
Your explanation for a kid's is challenging behavior
has major implications for how you'll try to help. If
you believe a kid is challenging because of lagging
skills and unsolved problems, then rewarding and
punishing may not be the ideal approach. Solving
those problems and teaching those skills would make
perfect sense.
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31. Collaborative Problem Solving
-Ross Greene, The Explosive Child
Being Responsive
The definition of good parenting, good teaching, and
good treatment is being responsive to the hand you’ve
been dealt. Notice, the definition isn’t “treating every
kid exactly the same”.
Closing The Divide
32. Collaborative Problem Solving
-Ross Greene, The Explosive Child
Check Your Lenses
Challenging behavior occurs when the demands of the
environment exceed a kid’s capacity to respond
adaptively. In other words, it takes two to tango. But
many popular explanations for challenging behavior
place blame on the kid or his parents. Not
Collaborative Problem Solving.
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33. Collaborative Problem Solving
-Ross Greene, The Explosive Child
Three Options for Solving Problems
There are three ways in which adults try to solve
problems with kids: Plan A (which is unilateral
problem solving), Plan C (dropping the problem
completely), and Plan B (that's the one you want to get
really good at).
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34. Dealing With Misbehavior
Question: What’s the difference between student behavior and adult/staff behavior?
Putting the most energy where you have the most control
1. Manage your own reaction: You always have more
options than they do
2. Gather information about the environment (the
setting they encountered) and disposition (what they
brought to school) in that order!
3. Consider more than 2 ways to look at what happened
to be as objective (accurate & non-biased) as possible
4. Use Plan B! Mutually beneficial –Ross Greene, The Explosive Child
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35. Alignment
Question: Where do you meet the students?
School
Needs/
Goals
Student
Needs/
Goals
This is
where the
work should
be
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36. The Service
Question: What are the pitfalls? How do you know if it’s “right”?
1. Too hard on them, negative assumptions
2. Too easy on them, low expectations, feel
sorry for them
3. Afraid of them, reinforcing stereotypes
Service must be Firm and Caring
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37. Vaccum/Silo Approach
Question: What definitely doesn’t work?
Not effective
•Work harder, longer
•Increase focus on punishments
•Punish their parents
•Get stricter, doing more of what
doesn’t work
•Consult with no one
•Retreat to one’s authority and power
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38. Organic Approach
Question: What works best?
most effective
1. Gather as much info as possible.
• Get the facts
• Ask questions
• Listen, listen, listen
2. Be upfront, transparent & explicit
3. Work with & in partnership
• Constantly check in
• Offer options or even choices
• Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate
• Value the process as much as the goal
4. Seek cultural consultation
5. Reflect
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39. Strengths Based Practice
Question: How can we raise OUR bar?
1. What do you do well with Black boys?
2. Where can you improve?
3. How can you strengthen your work with
Black boys?
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40. Strategic Approach
More effective
1. Be deliberate about method & approach
2. Evaluate effectiveness
3. Prioritize strategically
4. Firm caring
5. Be responsible
6. Stop what’s not working or making
headway
7. Work smarter, work differently
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41. Empathy Activity
You should not present yourself to students everyday unless you can do the
following.
Imagine the following:
• Your teacher being afraid of you and as a result unable to comfort you
appropriately
• Never feeling safe when you see the police even when they are there to
“help”
• Any enthusiasm that you express being interpreted as aggressive or even
violent
• Passion or excitement that you express being cast as sexually deviant
• People not getting on the elevator with you or getting off as soon as you
get on OR moving to the corner, grabbing purse and avoiding eye
contact at all costs
• People treat you as if you are going to steal something
• Not being allowed to be angry without being viewed as dangerous
Closing The Divide
42. The Culture (of black male success)
The Agencies that support Black
Males
-Youth UpRising
-Leadership Excellence (Camp Akili,
Freedom Schools)
-Mentoring Center
-100 Black Men (Man Up!)
-OUSD, Office of African American
Achievement
The Research that feeds Black
Male policy
-Urban Strategies Council
-Policy Link
-Alameda County
-Black male scholars
-US Census
Closing The Divide
43. Empathy Activity
You should not present yourself to students everyday unless you can do the
following.
Imagine the following:
• Your teacher being afraid of you and as a result unable to comfort you
appropriately
• Never feeling safe when you see the police even when they are there to
“help”
• Any enthusiasm that you express being interpreted as aggressive or even
violent
• Passion or excitement that you express being cast as sexually deviant
• People not getting on the elevator with you or getting off as soon as you
get on
• People treat you as if you are going to steal something
• Not being allowed to be angry without being viewed as dangerous
Lincoln Monthly Training
Cultural
Consultation
Just a few individuals to consult about Black males in Oakland
Shawn Ginwright, Ph.D. Professor SFSU
Darrick Smith, M.A. Director, June Jordan School for Equity
Tacuma King, Artistic Director, Malonga Center
Hodari Davis, M.A. National Director Youth Speaks
Arnold Perkins, Retired Health Director, AC
Afriye Quamina, Ed.D. Equity Institute
Chris Chatmon, AAMAO, OUSD
Baayan Bakari, Filmmaker
Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Ph.D. Professor SFSU, OUSD teacher
Jason Seals, M.A. Professor Merritt College
Wade Nobles, Ph.D. Professor SFSU, Black Family & Life Institute
Saleem Shakir, Executive Director, Leadership Excellence
Ronald Muhammad, FOI
David Muhammad, AC Probation Chief
Michael Gibson, AC EMS
Jerome Gourdine, Principal Frick Middle
Greg Hodge, Former School Board Member
Organizations
Leadership Excellence
Mentoring Center
Youth Uprising
100 Black Men of East Bay
Urban Strategies Center
Policy Link
Children’s Defense Fund, Oakland
Alameda County, Health Dept.
ACLU Bay Area chapter
NAACP, Oakland Chapter
Urban League, Northern California
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44. Thank You
• Questions?
• Comments?
• Reflections?
• Feedback?
• For a copy of the powerpoint email
• Training@lincolnchildcenter.org