Too Many Black Males Have Given Up

by Dwight Floyd, Editor of SportsEdit.Org

I can only look back to a period in Tallahassee, Florida’s history when the all black Lincoln High School sat in the heart of an economically poor community called French Town, just down the road from an area called Good Bread Lane. Across town there was the all black FAMU High School where kids from the poor neighborhood known as Bond community frequently attended.  Kids from middle class neighborhoods attended these schools too. Growing up in that environment you knew people cared about you and you had many reasons to care about yourself.

Today, too many black males have given up on life and too many others have given up on them.

For the black male the environment is not too encouraging. Fourteen percent of Florida’s population is black, yet forty-eight percent of prison inmates are black. There are over 102,000 inmates in state prison alone and less than 8,000 of them are female. Do the math. More than a majority of that 48 percent are black males. From a criminal justice perspective, logic would require then that if you are a black male you are guilty until proven innocent—a catch 22 known as profiling.

In the 1990’s researcher and Harvard Professor William Julius Wilson wrote a book called When Work Disappears. Wilson noted how individuals turned to crime as an alternative when resourceful ways were not as available.  Economist Jawanza Kunjufu in a book of his own noted that in 1910 ninety percent of black families were two parent households. Compare that to today when more than half of black households are single parent and in the scheme of things an accepted occurrence in American culture.

Things I got in trouble for as a youth would likely today end with some type of detention. Then, it was like the days of Opie on the Andy Griffith show. Opie would innocently and sometimes not so innocently get in trouble in the neighborhood. In my youthful days, adults, including those in authority, would use common sense and work together to redirect a lost kid. Now, kids are too delinquent or the rules too strict to let such a thing occur.

These are just reflecting thoughts, not excuses.

The black male does not need excuses, but much like the team that has become used to loosing he does need encouraging and adequate coaching. If you are a fan of a sport like football or basketball, perhaps you have seen a team struggle to win so much so that they begin to give up. The referee appears to call the game against them and as much as they try, they cannot get a fair whistle. In their frustration they just stop trying and pretend to be injured just to get a spot on the bench. A good coach will speak up for his players when he thinks the referees are calling it against his team and say just the right things to get his players to persevere and play a little harder.

At both Lincoln and FAMU High Schools there were confident black male teachers, more than a few, and an institution that was connected to both the church and the community. Of all those students only a handful ended up in prison and even the least literate turned out to be good citizens and able themselves to raise decent families. As for today where are the coaches, the family of adults that will encourage and guide the black male in face of adversity? For it is not the adversity that has changed, but the will to overcome.

Dwight Floyd is currently Editor of SportsEdit.Org and a careerist in the law enforcement field. He is a gifted writer that publishes a widely read Blog at www.sportsedit.org, which focuses on three of his five primary interests: Sports (FAMU sports in particular), his children (his son Ashanti, aka "The Mad Violinist" is occasionally featured on his site) and quality of life issues. 

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