Black Men, An Endangered Species

Please thank you Lord for taking care of me. Thank you Lord for taking care of me. Thank you Lord for taking care of me. I'm Bob Ray Sanders. I'm not average for my age, sex, and race. If I were, chances are I would be unemployed,

in prison, or dead. The most likely cause of death, murder. Recently, two scholars put it succinctly when they settled a research paper like men and endangered species. It is a problem that is grown slowly but alarmingly. It has been denied as African Americans have sought equality and self-respect. But today society must face the fact that the average African American male must it by odds to succeed in school, find a good job, establish a stable family, and to avoid an untimely death.

It has become a tragic cycle which diminishes all of American society. Billy Ray's shepherd is a taxi driver in Dallas. He sees evidence of the problem all around him and it troubles him. What are you talking about? What's so much to be standing out on the street to talk about? What do you see? Do you see anybody that you would like to be like him? I look at those people there who don't wait to be walking. No particular place to go, nothing. Just a pretty day, I just get out, just a lot of gear going around. It's sad. But we keep saying it's black, we shall overcome. Now you show me how we're going to overcome that.

We got a lot of stars in this town, we got at least a basketball team and a baseball team and a football team. We got stars. But your stars didn't come over here. You fit ball players. I bet your black football players, cowboys, they don't come over here. Are you going anywhere in the neighborhood and see what you see? You don't see people running loose, walking around doing these young people. Look at these young boys there. Look what you see over here. I can't believe you're going to see playing dumb enough. Being a cab driver, you ride through the neighborhood and you see some things that make you break down and cry. You say, Lord, they don't have to be this away. On April 29th and 30th, more than 700 people who agree it doesn't have to be this way, gathered at the World Trade Center in Dallas for a two-day conference. The conference was sponsored by the Meadows Foundation and the Dallas Regional Alliance of Black Educators. It was entitled Black Men, an endangered species.

On behalf of the City of Dallas, City Manager Richard Knight delivered a welcome and a challenge. Thank you, Brother Allen. Good morning. On behalf of the Mayor of the City Council, City Staff, I'd like to welcome you to this conference. The Black male, as father, teacher, friend, role model and mentor, is vital to the Black family as you will recognize. While Black men make up 6% of the total U.S. population, they make up 50% of the prison population. A majority of the nation's 20,000 homicide victims are Black males. 35% are age victims, 25% of all Black males in American cities are drug addicts. 46% of Black males, 16 to 62, are unemployed. 32% of Black men have incomes below the poverty level. Those of you assembled here today have an opportunity as well as the ability to affect in a positive way these figures.

I'm looking forward to seeing the results of your presence, for as you will recognize that the next generation of Black folks, given the statistics that I just shared with you, is seriously in jeopardy. And without the Black males influence, that figure only becomes worse. Thank you very much. The Morning's keynote speakers set the tone for the conference. Scholar and educator, Dr. Gerwanz of Kunjuthu, spoke of cultural identity, education and self-esteem. Our children and adults are still being told more about Greek culture than they are about their own. See, every other race makes sure they're children still having a moment of glory. We have the only one to start off in a dismal period like slavery. In other words, hypocrite was not the first doctor. The first doctor's name was Em Holtep. You know, we were the one that built those pyramids.

You know the ones that go 48 stories high, 755 feet wide, 2,300,000 stones, each one weighing three tons, each perfectly balanced, perfectly right angle, and all before butthagoras. Jimmy DeGreek believes this nonsense. They were only talented in music and sports. But the problem is, we believe it as well. You didn't know in America only 1% of the engineers in this country are Black. But 86 NBA basketball starters are Black. Our children believe this nonsense. Your own Margot Glyer said there were million brothers. They won his job last year in the NBA. Now this million, only 400,000. We even make it to play high school ball. Of this 400,000, only 400,000 will make it to play college ball. Of this 400,000, only 35 will go to the coverage of NBA. Of this 35, only seven start. And the average life in the NBA is four years. You got a million brothers looking for seven full-time jobs that last four years. And yet last year, we had 100,000 jobs available to be a computer programmer,

engineer, or doctor, and only 1,000 brothers' qualify. And then we asked the high school brothers in the back, now which one do you have a better chance of being? A million of you looking for seven jobs in the NBA, or a 100,000 jobs in math and science, and only 1,000 brothers' qualify. Come on, brothers. Which one do you have a better chance of being? Which one, brothers? Math and science. But remember, that that you do most will be that that you do best. If you play basketball from three o'clock to nine o'clock, you'll be a very good basketball player. But there only be seven jobs. If you stay at home and went to the library, you'll be a very good student. That that you do most will be that that you do best. Kunjufu told the conference that it's time for schools and the community to cheer as loudly for its scholars as its athletes. Thank you very very much. Then conference participants split up to work on specific areas of concern.

Among the top priorities was education. In Dallas, the public education system has been at the center of controversy over desegregation for more than two decades. Academic achievement, especially for African American students, has suffered. In 1987, only 35 percent of all black male second graders in Dallas schools scored in the upper 50 percentile on standardized reading comprehension test. Another fact raises a serious question about the effectiveness of the education system. Among male white students in Dallas, test scores dip in junior high school but improve significantly in the upper grades. But the school district has found for black males the average reading comprehension ranking in the 11th grade is even lower than it is in the second grade. The numbers might be even lower if many of the least successful students stayed in school. About 40 percent of all black male students drop out.

The dropout rate for white males is 21 percent. The conference workshop on education faced a formidable task. It was headed by Dr. Wright-Laceter, president of L. Central College. We're going to look at the current educational system, analyze it, say what is good, what is bad, propose some strategies and see if we can build a platform for us to move dollars forward. The workshop included several students from Dallas high schools. My name is Rodney White, 19, Carter High School in Dallas. And being a party of DISD, I was wondering why we spend so much of our class time studying English and European writers such as Emerson and Thoreau and why we don't focus mainly on our own heritage like Langston Hughes or James Baldwin and why we have to do that research for ourselves.

Why do we have to find that out on our own? I speak of this morning alluded to that. A part of the failure is that any great writer writes about what he has experience. Mark Twain was a great writer because he wrote about that experience. But black kids are never given an opportunity to write about their experience. They want you to write about something you don't know anything about. And then when you fail, they want to label you as being inferior. But when you get allowed kids to write about what they have experience in the language that they speak from, then they're very eloquent in what they have to say. Dr. Lasseter raised the question, why are fewer and fewer black students choosing to enter the field of education? A teacher in the audience asked the high school students to answer. First of all, how many of you are at the great levels of 11 or 12? 12th grade, very good. How many of you are aspiring to become a teacher?

Okay, now we want to know why. I believe that the reason why I'm not really interested in the teaching profession is that it seems that teachers are not as respected as, say, a doctor or a lawyer or, you know, an engineer. And then too, in my experience with teachers, I feel that, you know, they don't make enough money. I don't want to, you know, that's what we always hear. That they don't make enough money. And I'm not saying that I based my values on money or the acquisition of a lot of money. But you have to make a living. And it's true that you do want nice things. And I'm not saying that teachers don't have nice things. But it seems like society puts teachers at a lower level, I should say. I have a mother, that's a teacher right now.

It's working at South O'Clif High School. And she comes home and she's all stressed up and she's really mad. And I know I call her trouble. I know that because that's what students do. But I sometimes go up there and I see the problems that she has deal with, also in my own classroom. And sometimes I just want to go to those kids and say, she's my mother, not yours. The basic reason I don't want to become a teacher, where I had, like for the past two years, inspired to become a teacher. But my father and mother are teachers and I have nothing against teaching. But every day, every night they come home and they head to different stories about the problem of kids. So many in schools today and most of them are black children. Black people tend to stray away from education. Because students are just not taught at home the basic values of life. And that's the basic reason for all the problems in education today. And that's what I don't want to become a teacher.

Out of the discussion grew several recommendations. The community groups be established to work with schools in teacher recruitment, curriculum development, and textbook selection. That the parent teachers association become educated and involved in issues that affect African-American male students. And the most ambitious. To establish a city-wide Saturday academy offering courses in African-American culture and history and enrichment programs in math, science, and language arts. It's a fact of life in America that lower educational achievement correlates with lower income and a higher unemployment rate. The current unemployment rate among young black males in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is nearly 40%. The bottom line is this. In 1980, the average black family income in Dallas was half that of the average white family. The conference employment workshop faced a difficult challenge.

What we would like very much to do is talk to the issue of the problem of under-employment and employment in this particular session. Also, devise some intervention. What do we do to talk in terms of some prevention? One of the things that Marvin and I were talking about is intervening in the system as it exists right now to ensure that the opportunity is there after that black male gets the education in the background. Sometimes that opportunity evaporates because one, there is no system that ensures that the black male who's looking for a job finds out where the job is. Once he finds out where it is, there are hurdles placed in his way that keeps him from properly finding out what the real requirements are for the job. Sometimes there are artificial hurdles that just absolutely ensure that even if he finds out where the job is, he can't get it.

There's still the myth that black kids can't learn and it bugs the delights out of me because what is happening is that we keep perpetuating the myth. We keep allowing that to be a fact. What did you do that enabled you to be prepared to go to Morehouse Young Man and the majority of your peers are not going to go. The majority of your peers are not even learning. What happened to you? From the time that I was very young, my parents pushed me to go to college. I just started to go to college. I was like, okay, I'm going to go to college since they told me to, but it was like I wasn't going for me. My father, he doesn't have a college degree, but he still is a great role model. I still look up to him, still want to be like him. But it wasn't until I reached my high school, you know, I said about the 10th, 11th grade, until I finally met different males with college degrees who that I can relate to and talk to and find more, they could tell me more about how it's like to get a college degree and work and get a good job, you know what I'm saying. Was it those role models that really turned you around internally?

They made me want to go to college for me, not just for the fact that my parents were going to push me. I was going to go to college without wanting to go or not, but now I'm going just because I want to go. Good. Among the employment workshops recommendations, organized professionals and successful business people to mentor students as early as the third grade, develop a corporate adopt a youth program to expose young black men to career options and establish a job network to assure that qualified African American males find out about job opportunities. Young black men who become frustrated in school and frustrated again in the job market are often drawn into crime, drug and alcohol abuse. Black youths are nearly five times as likely to be admitted to the Dallas-Covino detention center as white males. And black men are much more likely to be arrested than whites.

Once arrested, they are more likely to be imprisoned than whites. Today, Texas adult prison system holds more than one and a half percent of the state's black male population. It holds just over two tenths of one percent of the white male population. Complicated in the picture, several shooting incidents involving Dallas police have increased tensions and suspicion between the African American community and the police department. Good morning. The workshop on the criminal justice was chaired by George Bedford, a member of the Dallas Police Department and the Texas Peace Officers Association. To be a police officer in the city of Dallas, you must be 20 years of age. You have 18 weeks of training. Six months of FTO has failed training. You got one year of supervision with a senior officer. And your synthesizing courses for different ethnicities, you got approximately eight hours of training.

It takes you eight hours to understand the cultural of a black, understand the culture of Hispanics. And now, as it is, we are understanding the cultural of Asians. You got eight hours to understand that. Then you wonder why we have problems in the community at large. We have several storefronts placed throughout this city. These storefronts should be community relation oriented, but we are finding that they are not serving the purpose that we think community relation is. You got like an eight to five type of environment there. Most people work doing eight to five. You know, when they are off, you know, you're gone.

So who are you serving? What are you serving? How can we bridge that gap? That's the question that I have to pose to you being the community at large. Until all police see themselves as a part towards all of the community and not apart from one word apart from the community they serve. We are going to continue to have these problems. Policemen are trained for whatever reason and by socialization among themselves. Not to believe that they are part of the society they serve, yet we don't hire them from Mars. We hire them from the community, whether it be the Dallas community or Alabama community. We go out to the community at large and hire them. When they come into the force, they are so trained and they are so brainwashed in the socialization process. By the time they get on the streets, they already see the public as being different. They don't understand my job.

They don't know what I'm doing. It sounds like a joke, but it is a fact. Judge Cleofa Steele expressed concern about the lack of police involvement in the African American community. I would think that there would be better police community relations if there was some requirement that police officers live in the community they serve. At least within the city limits because it is my understanding that some 57% of police officers live outside the city of Dallas. It would be better I would think that if you hired police officers from South Dallas and let them patrol South Dallas, that they would better understand the community they are serving, I guess I wouldn't go so far. At least make them live in the city. I like to go and record it, saying my organization support the idea of residential requirement. We think that it is ludicrous to come in and police a community and leave that community and then come back into that community. We think it is ludicrous for you to even get into the politics of that inner city or the workings of that city and trying to affect change within that city and not live in that city.

I guess something that is kind of bothering me, especially dealing with drugs. We talk about what the kids see as potential role models, the drug dealers being successful. If you look at it from that vein then don't you think that the youth see the police as being fairs because they are not able to control what is going on in the community. They say like these crack houses you have, the police know they are there, the kids know they are there. The police rest these people and the courts put them back on the street before the police can get around and do their job. Don't you think that gives the kid a negative image about the police and say they are really not doing anything. You look at police and you don't find us all riding around in Mercedes and wearing $400 or $500 suits. That is just negative in itself. You see most police officers are on a mere salary.

I have had instances where I have interviewed young black males in regards to drug trafficking and they don't worry about it. It is so what I am going to jail. I will be out before you get back out on the street. I don't worry about it. I have stashed $5,000, $6,000. I can do my time and come back. They are going to take care of me. My money can draw interest. You got some cunning people out there that have taught these kids that they can be the system. The criminal justice workshop concluded that top priority should be given to developing community forms with the police department and to establishing crime prevention programs which attack not just the symptoms but the root causes of crime. After two hours of deliberation and discussion, the participants in the conference broke for lunch and an opportunity to hear from two scholars whose work inspired the conference.

Dr. Roderick McDabis of the University of Florida and Dr. Thomas Parham of the University of California at Irvine co-authored a professional journal article entitled, Like Men and Endangered Species, Who Is Pulling The Trigger. One of the things that's important to understand about being a professional who is managed to attain a number of degrees and working impressive jobs and get a number of awards and published research articles is, and this is particularly to the young people. It feels good to stand up here on a podium and hear people clap when they call you doctor. Yes? I'm going to tell you it feels good. Now, young people pay particular attention to this. All the professionals in the house, MD, PhD, DD, whatever kind of DUR, please stand up. Now, any professional in the house who doesn't like it, who doesn't feel good when they get addressed as Dr. DD or whatever they are, sit down.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. It feels good to be called Dr. Lloyd, whatever you might be. One of the incentives that we try to provide for our kids to work, to strive to achieve, to make a difference for themselves and for their communities is because it gives you that sense of achievement because it feels good. But be very careful, my friends, about being corrupted with that sense of ego fulfillment that goes along with being recognized as a doctor and a lawyer and a dentist and a preacher. Whatever you might be, we spend too much time trying to wrap ourselves in accolades.

And one of the interesting things that that does, and we have no sense of how young people view this, is it creates a lot of distance between ourselves and the young people. Because the young people look at us, and the more accolades we stack on, the higher we get on the plateau. And the more they look at us, they look at us and they say, I could never get to be that. You stand up on the mountain, I can't even see the top up. And each doctor McDavid's echoed a theme heard often during the conference. I want to go back to a time in the black community, when we knew each other, when we could knock on each other's door and ask for some food or ask for some advice.

I want to go back to a time when we called each other brother and sister and meant something, wasn't just some fancy thing to call each other, but we meant it. I want to go back to a time in the community, when we understood what it was about to care, to care deeply about our grandparents. We got too many young black kids who when they see the elderly in our black community, they don't even have the courtesy to speak. You understand what I'm saying? When they get to a door, they don't have the courtesy to open the door. I want to go back to a time when we respect those who have come before us, those who have paid their dues in our community, those who have made it possible for us to sit where we sit today. Those are the people in our community that we have to have more respect and love for. Those are the people that we have to put out in front of us and say these are the black role models, these are the people who have come before us, these are the people that we have to learn to respect. I want to go back to a time when there were more of us who were taking advantage of the opportunities in colleges and universities.

There is scholarship money going to waste in the colleges and universities around this country today. Going to waste because colleges and universities say we can't find enough black students who want to go to college. Now we got a problem, brothers and sisters. We got a problem. We got a problem when a young black male would rather stand on a corner than go to college. The problem doesn't start when that child reaches junior and senior years and high school, the problem starts in K and B4. You understand? We've got to have our two and three year olds talking about what they want to be. We got to have them talking about what they want to do with their lives. We've got to, when they get to the third and fourth grade and begin to wander off, we got to snatch them back. We can't let them wander off. We've got to travel the streets to Dallas. And when we go by the playgrounds, we've got to go by and talk to those young brothers. We've got to say, brother, you've got all your life to learn how to shoot that ball.

But you don't have all your life to get an education. Let's go to the library. Let me introduce you to some books. Let me introduce you to Booker T. Washington. Let me introduce you to George Washington Carver. Let me introduce you to W. B. Du Bois, Benjamin Mays and others who have come before you. We have got to create an environment in our community that says to our young people, we are not going to allow you to fail. At the only thing that you must pass in that is success in life. We must build success models in our communities. And it's going to take us. Those of us who work in professional settings, we've got to develop support systems. One of the things that some black folks said to me in Gainesville before I left is Rod. You know, if you don't say anything else, will you please tell the successful black folks to reach back and help somebody? Because we've got too many of us, and I'm going to talk about us. All right, I'm going to talk. We've got too many of us who get all the degrees under the sun, get these high-paying jobs, live out in suburbia, and never, never go back to the community and try to help anybody. We've got to get up off our butts and help somebody.

We've got to do that. We've got to do that. We've got to do that. I'm telling the truth. You know I'm telling the truth? We have got to understand that the destiny of our community, the destiny of our people is in our hands. If we don't turn around and help those young brothers and sisters coming up behind us, who will? It's no wonder that so many of our young black males are going to prison. Who's stopping them from going to prison? Are we? Are you? Am I? Is it our responsibility? Yes. For our people's sake. For the future of black males. We must heed the call. Thank you. After lunch, the participants return to the workshops. Black men are frequently the victims of violent crime.

Even to the point that homicide is come to be considered a major health problem for young black men. Homicide is the leading cause of death for black men between 15 and 34 years of age. A report by the Criminal Justice Center at Sam Houston State University estimates that in Texas, a 20-year-old black man stands a one-in-30 chance of being murdered before his 55th birthday. Overall, black men are nearly six times as likely to be murdered as white men. When a black man is killed, most of the time the killer is also black. Suicide is another growing problem. Only homicide, accidents, and heart disease take a larger toll of young black men than suicide. The rate among black men is twice as high as the rate among black women and two-in-a-half times higher than that for white men. The average black man does not live to see the retirement age of 65. Black women and white men and women can expect to live into their 70s.

The conference workshop on health and drug abuse faced a wide range of difficult issues. You know, now it's the time we're going to have to say enough is enough. You know, I really think that the cocaine problem in our neighborhood is too big for the police. I really do not think that they can muster enough manpower and intelligence to find these people and read them out of our community. I think we as citizens of the community, we're going to have to take a very active role and read these folks of our community. And we're seeing it happen every day with the Muslims and Chicago and various parts of the country saying, hell no, this is enough and they're doing something about it. One of the things that our community needs is more intervention counseling. Our kids get the less in-depth counseling than any other young people in Dallas County. When you look at the four stages of chemical dependency, first being experimentation, second being daily use, third being daily preoccupation, fourth being dependency, we're only catching our kids at the dependency stage.

The crisis stage. They're right, exactly. What we are missing is the experimental stage and catching them at that period and addressing the problem. But we can't address it because we don't have counselors with sensitivity, cultural sensitivity being one, addressing the problem of our young people between the ages of six and 18. Because I hate to see a problem where five years ago when crack was very popular in Dallas and you had police officers coming and saying, no, we didn't have crack. But now every presentation that they're doing, they're talking about how daily it is and we're dealing with it after the fact. Another particular drug was WAC, that's a more cigarette dipped off an environment fluid. No one is really addressing that particular drug but yet it's still plaguing our community. Our community is still ignorant to that drug because of lack of information and education. One of the things that I'd like to see implemented is a more direct approach to our area churches and religious institutions. Primarily because these are the individuals who most likely are active in the community and trying to correct things and their perception about alcohol and drug abuse, I think needs to be reoriented.

The brother mentioned earlier that alcohol and drug abuse is often looked at as a personal problem rather than a disease. And the church is always viewed as a sin and the drinker saw sinners which gives the hands off approach to alcoholism and drug abuse. I think that this needs to be addressed in the churches and it needs to be a thing that is made a priority. One of the things that I see that we try but we don't seem to get beyond step B, we get ABC, we meet, we plan but we don't implement. Now I know that there are many people from many different churches that have gotten together and they've tried simple things like maybe forming a council group or maybe sending groups of professionals to go out and speak. But it doesn't seem to get off the ground. Now this was an excellent effort getting this whole workshop together, getting this conference together.

If through people at this conference, just the people in this room, if you could get a planning group from this room to go to specific churches, target specific churches to go to, target specific groups maybe go out to West Dallas or work with West Dallas or work with Hillville. How many people here would be willing to work on that planning committee? Why can we pass something around here? The workshop concluded that the Dallas African American community needs more community-based alcohol and drug treatment centers. The community-wide nutrition education programs should be developed and that schools need to provide better health education programs with an emphasis on self-control and self-determination. Today, more than six out of ten of the black children born in the city of Dallas are born to single mothers. In 1983, two-thirds of the children and families headed by single black women lived in poverty. In Dallas, economics and institutionalized discrimination in the public and private sectors have combined to concentrate low income black families in a limited number of geographic areas.

The largest low-rise public housing project in the nation stands in West Dallas. 95% of the families here are black. Because of the regulations governing who can live in public housing, there are virtually no two-parent families and there are few positive male role models. Can't really go to the library here. You know, it's not that far either. You know, but we just really can't because along the way to this library, we're going to pass drug addicts, people sleeping on the ground and everything. I don't want that. A recent Dallas housing study found that the more educational black man has, the farther from the inner city he tends to live. Many of the successful male role models simply leave the inner city neighborhoods. The question of family values aroused the most interest and the widest ranging discussion during the two-day conference. The discussion leader was the Reverend Cleveland Gay.

See, us here. We here know what our values are. We have no problems with it. It's our brother in the street. We must go back and reach and get. Because if we don't get that drunk on the street, we don't get that alcoholic on the street. We go down the tooth. We must get him. We cannot get him without God. We cannot get him without knowledge. We cannot get him without love. We cannot get him without understanding. But we first must be on one accord. We must know why he has that drug problem. Let's push him down that he can't make it. Why the system don't open up in his opinion. We got to reach out and love him, encourage him, strengthen him. Then he can make the change. Then we got to be able to offer him a job. We got to offer him some education. Then we got to sit down and help him. Some of them haven't been to schools since day one. We just can't give him this superficial stuff. We got to give him something that he can hold his tooth to and say, I can be somebody. When you look at our family structure, it was based even back during the slavery day. There was a spirit there. It was based on some religious spirit. I believe that is the basis. The basis for everything is that church.

Whatever religion, I'm not talking religion, but the church. That would bring us together. When I see, especially in church, I go to their like, I'll give you 70% female. There's two young black adults in my church, me and another guy, under 50. There's a description between 12 and 50. Where are the black men and the churches? That's where the young guys are. I have four teenagers there. They just attach themselves to me because to them, I'm like their father figure. They run to me with their problems. I do what I can to help them, but where are your fathers? Where are the men? That's what I would like to know. Why aren't they in church? What are the little boys? If you decide to have a kid, you take charge of their kids. You don't live a three year old running the store and tell you, I don't want to eat this. I don't want some captain crunch and you can't end. I'm a rolling the floor and crying hard until I get the captain crunch. You know, I see it every day. I don't have any kids myself, but my mother and father are still in me.

I have to abide by even a revelation just like this lady. This young lady said, I think that would eliminate a lot of problems as far as kids going up, using drugs, robbing auto theft and things like that, which is very prevalent in Dallas. One thing and the one factor that I haven't really heard stressed here today is the true importance of self-control. Self-control. If we implement self-control in our families, if we have self-control, our children will see that self-control. And when I say self-control, if you have self-control, self-control will tell you to say no when you see drugs. You don't have to worry about the pimps, the pushers that come in neighborhoods. If you have self-control, nobody can make you take anything. Nobody made me take anything. I had self-control. If you got self-control, nobody can make you sit there in front of that TV and get that garbage in your head instead of reading a book. Self-control. The family values workshop concluded that community associations should be formed to teach and reinforce common values, including family unity, health, honesty, discipline, and self-control.

Back in the general session, the conference's second keynote speaker tied a number of the seminars themes together. Dr. Naim Akbar. Dr. Naim Akbar is an author and president of the National Association of Black Psychologists. I believe that Dallas is probably unique and probably a very appropriate place for this kind of dialogue to go on. It's appropriate because Dallas is probably one of the most racially segregated cities in this country. Both historically and contemporarily, there are few places in the country that are as divided racially as his Dallas. Now, you know, an outsider shouldn't say things like that, but it's the truth. Secondly, Dallas is also probably one of the cities with the broadest class division. Not only is there a discrepancy between the races where the races are somehow have worlds independent of each other, but those of the halves among the African-Americans are so distant from the half-nots, this place, if it can solve these problems, would serve as a model for most of the rest of the country.

There are many places where there are much better relationships already in existence, and they have not solved the problems, so if you can solve them in Dallas, they can be solved anywhere. They tell me that Samson is dead. Samson died of bloody death. Samson was a mighty man. Samson ruled the world for many, many, many, many, many centuries. Samson was the first to stand up and be conscious as a human being in the so-called Garden of Eden. This is the same one who built the snakes. This is the same one who conceptualized medicine long before apocrates knew that there was such a thing as medicine. This was the one who understood the concept of life after death in the One God ruling the universe long before monotheism came out of Islam Christianity and Judaism. This is the one who laid down the concept of a geography of a world that was around long before Columbus began to explore this part of the world.

This is the one who laid out the mathematical formulations that were so precise and so great that even now thousands of years later, the Western world as they go into outer space have not been able to find a mathematical system more mature and more developed. This is the same one who today can't keep a joint out of his mouth, a needle out of his arm, a stand up and protect his own baby when he looks in his eyes. This is the same Samson. But Samson is responding as a consequence of a conditioning that was geared toward precisely that agenda. Samson was brought here to be a slave, to pick cotton in Texas, to pick peanuts in Alabama, to pick tobacco in Georgia, to be able to pick sugar cane in the Caribbean. Samson was not brought here to be a presidential candidate, a professor at Southern Methodist University, to be a star ruler in the congressional caucuses of this country, to be a legislator in the state legislature here of Texas.

He was not brought here to be a ruler, he was not brought here to be a master, he was not brought here to be a financial advisor, he was not brought here to be a banker, he was not brought here to be entrepreneur, he was brought here to be a worker, and for 400 years he was conditioned to that end. So it's a wonder that we can do any of those things even now, if the conditioning had really worked. You know, one of the things that the human being does is that the human being has this incredible adaptive capability whereby if you continue to shock them and shock them and shock them and shock them, they will soon go into kind of a trance of shock where they don't even feel anything anymore. So for 400 years of castrations, beatings, emotional abuse, all kinds of humiliations, all kinds of debt gradations, all kinds of depreciations, after 400 years you get to the fact that you almost know, you don't feel anymore, and your feelings when they occur are not feelings for yourself, they become feelings for things other than yourself, you begin to feel for the wrong thing. You begin to feel for your automobile, you begin to feel for those brand new shoes, and so you'll find today that the former slave will shoot you for stepping on his shoes but will pat you on the back if you get stuff on his wife.

How do you begin to somehow teach understand young black boys that they, too, can rule the world unless you tell them about Ignaton, unless you tell them about Ramesses, unless you tell them that there were rulers who looked like them long before there was rulership in Europe at all. How can you benefit an American middle boys? No, the look man, you can be a philosopher, you don't need to read Plato, you talk Plato. How in the world can you expect young black boys to understand that medical knowledge is not something that they must get from someone else and then take an alien oath call, hypocritees oath? They should take him whole-teps oath, which taught the apocrates what he knew. But if they don't know who they are, then their alienation is predictable. No wonder they get bored. What's phenomenal is that any of us got through school, for almost 25 years I went through school and I could put in one afternoon in a two-hour block what I heard about me.

I studied psychology for 10 years, every phenomenal, every perspective, every understanding. I knew more about white folks' minds than minds knew about minds when I came out of it. But I didn't know nothing about my mind. I knew about their castration anxiety, their penis interview, their inner plus complexes, their behavior modification, their love for reinforcement, their avoidance of negative conditioning circumstances. I understood their cognitive dissonance and what they did when they got cognitively dissonance. I understood their logo therapeutic, I understood their self-concepts and self-realized and self-esteem systems and how they interacted with the motivational routine, the achievement motivation, and how they interacted with affiliation, motivation, and their organization. I understood all of that. But listen, I knew nothing about how Estelle Spencer sit three children to college scrubbing floors. And she couldn't read or lick herself. I don't know anything about how it is that bud weems out there in Alabama, plowing fields, sent eight children off to school and everyone of them became all the authority in this field.

And he couldn't even read himself, didn't couldn't spell college the day he died. Somehow you've not explained to me yet how it is that we were able to go through Harvard and Princeton and Yale and Cambridge and sit next to third generation harmonites who were there for the third generation. And we're able to excel and do as well as they did. All you tell me about other failures, those who went there and couldn't make it, those who couldn't get in, those who went to prison, those who went to jail, you damn right we got failures. You would have them too. But what you need to tell me about is let's talk about those who succeeded, who made it, and study how they made it. And then we can begin to turn this thing around. But listen, listen, listen, listen. The more you deal with the death, the better you become concretely what can you do in Dallas. Number one, begin to replace street socialization by organized coalition of organized socialization of teaching black boys to be men. I call upon every fraternity in the country to develop a crisis oriented priority to engage in the reeducation of black youth.

If the authors, the couples, and the Jews, and the signers are men, then you prove your manhood by being able to teach it to boys. Secondly, we need to call upon every professional and vocational person in the country who has a vocational profession to engage young people in that profession. If they're doing things you can't do, bring them by and let them look at you and pay them for looking. Why not? That's an investment in the future. Bring them around and let them watch you do what you have to. Let them work around your office. Let them work with your plumbing. Let them work with your electrical plan. They aren't in the way. That's tomorrow. You can't do it always. So engage in bringing them and make them a part of that third. If every church would take a part of its budget, just a part of what you spend on mess, foolishness, God be all going to the international Baptist convention to wear your new outfits. If you give up one outfit and put that money into this fund, we can have a community job court. And all from along we can let black boys and black girls work and our communities paid by us.

If they don't have to go downtown to get the check, come to me to get your check. I'm Santa Claus now. I'm paying the sales. And once they begin to do that, then they understand that the pimp ain't the only one in town who's got a back road. That the drug dealer's not the only one in town who can pay you all. But I can pay you. And I look good and I don't have to look behind me to find out if the cops come in. I think I might, honestly, working hard and dignified way in the daylight up front with my sleeves rolled up. Anybody who don't know where I get my money from, I'll tell you where it comes from. Because I ain't got nothing to be ashamed of and can nobody put a thing on me. Not even Uncle Phelps IRS. And he's audited me every year for the last five years. And every time he audits me, he pays me more money because he doesn't know. I know him better than he knows himself. Now listen, we need to begin to get together and organize the elders in our community for an elders group for self-adjustice.

We need the combined wisdom of the elders to help us understand how to handle problems. Little young boys like me and McDavidson, we don't need to be trying to give people no marriage counseling. We ain't been married long enough. Let's bring in some of these brothers who've been married for 58 years, to one woman, and one woman who's been married to her brother for 58 years, raised eight children, got 29 grandchildren, 13 great grandchildren. And it'll one of them ever been the jail. That's the expert I want to talk to. That's who I want to talk. Let's begin to identify who these people are and bring them to centers. Not an old folks home. Don't put them out. Let's bring them in. Finally, every black man, everybody who thinks he's a black man needs to take... And we got to understand when masculinity is, they have big muscles off. How many women check you out, man. I got broads everywhere. That ain't manhood. That's gorillahood. That's rabbithood. You know rabbits get their reputation by how many rabbits they can spawn.

Man, I've got babies all over town. Okay, you're a jackrabbit. Good for you. But the idea is that these kinds of notions are childish notions. We need to understand that men are manifested by what they do in terms of building a society. So I want to suggest to you that every man has a responsibility to adopt a boy. Make a big brother program. Don't go to the big brother foundation in downtown Dallas. Let's have one here. I've got twin boys. I see them seldom because I always around places like this, ranting and raving like a mad man. And I seldom see them. But when I'm there, whenever we go anywhere, we go with us and two or three others who don't have a father. Yeah. That we are constantly, but when we go into the classroom, everybody says, there's that's talking with talking to Rick's daddy. Because they begin to identify with me as being their daddy too. They come and tell me what's going on. Things they talk to their father about. Lil' boys, third graders. And I see this my responsibility that wherever my boys go, I've got a responsibility for some other boys.

Because I got a daughter. And she's going to have to marry one of them sorry brothers out there. And I want to make sure she gets a good choice. And I'm going to do all I can to make sure she has some good possibilities. Finally, we need to develop an African awareness program where we begin to teach each other what we need to know. We can't have community schools, weekend schools unless we have self-study groups. We need to actively involve every church, every organization to engage in at least a part of its agenda, the whole process of a re-education of our communities. SAMHSA can come back to life if you discipline yourself. If you feed yourself with the rich knowledge of your past and of your culture. If you begin to redevelop the vision, the spiritual vision of the creator concept and the creator capability. And the consciousness of God is being a living concept within your very being. If you do that, Samson would get up out the grave and change and shake the world and bring down the pillars on a dying civilization. And like the Phoenix Bird will rise up to be a new day. Peace be on you. Out of this conference has grown a steering committee including successful African-American educators, businessmen, and professionals.

The workshops produced a set of priorities and recommendations. Sign-up sheets produced a cadre of concerned volunteers. The problem has now been recognized. A situation that the African-American community and society as a whole has tried to ignore has been brought into the open. Black men are endangered. Endanger of growing up in poverty without a strong male role model. Endanger of failing to get a good education. Endanger of not being able to find a job or establish a stable family. Endanger of dying prematurely. But these are dangers, not certainties. And in spite of these dangers, success stories abound. Hundreds were in evidence at the conference in Dallas. The challenge now facing them and all of us is to find ways to help more black men succeed. The cost of failure is too great to bear. The potential. Too great to lose. Endanger of failing.

Endanger of failing. Endanger of failing. Endanger of failing. Endanger of failing. Endanger of failing. This program was made possible in part by a grant from the Meadows Foundation. For a video copy of this program, please send a check for $45 to black men and endangered species, KERA TV, PO Box 13 Dallas, Texas, 75221.

For additional information and a copy of the conference report, write African American men and endangered species at this address. For more information and a copy of this program, please send a check for $45 to black men and endangered species at this address.