In The Souls of Black Folks (1903), a classic text of the black experience in America from the Emancipation to the dawn of the 20th century, W. E. B. Du Bois writes--among other things--about the education of black men.  The sixth chapter of the book (“Of the Training of Black Men”) bears directly on contemporary questions about the challenges involved in educating African-American boys, as well as foregrounds some of the challenges faced by these boys. Consider the following quote:

“The function of the Negro college then is clear: it must maintain the standards of popular education, it must seek the social regeneration of the Negro, and it must help in the solution of problems of race contact and cooperation.  And finally, beyond all this, it must develop men.  Above our modern socialism, and out of the worship of the mass, must persist and evolve that higher individualism which the centres [sic] of culture protect; there must come a loftier respect for the sovereign human soul that seeks to know itself and the world about it; that seeks a freedom for expansion and self-development; that will love and hate and labor in its own way, untrammeled alike by old and new.  Such souls aforetime have inspired and guided worlds, and if we be not wholly bewitched by our Rhine-gold, they shall again.  Herein the longing of black men must have respect: the rich and bitter depth of their experience, the unknown treasures of their inner life, the strange rendings of nature they have seen, may give the world new points of view and make their loving, living, and doing precious to all human hearts.  And to themselves in these the days that try their souls the chance to soar in the dim blue air above the smoke is to their finer spirits boon and guerdon for what they lose on earth by being black.”

Though Du Bois was referring to college-age students, his point about the function of the historically black college or university remains acutely relevant since African-American boys must obviously be prepared for higher education, and statistics show that black boys are the most overall disadvantaged population in K-12 education today.

According to a 2008 state-by-state report by the Schott Foundation, more African-American males receive GEDs in prison than graduate from high school.  This fact alone begs the question: who (individually or collectively) or which institutions are going to set the highest of academic standards for these pre-collegiate boys, sustain or enrich them socially, and instill in them a sense of group unity, cooperation, and manhood?  In short, will either the public or private schools begin to develop these boys into men?  The answer to this last question seems to be a hollow no. 

If the answer is indeed no, then what measures have African-Americans as a whole undertaken to right this crooked course of educating black boys?  While peer pressure to be “cool,” as opposed to “smart,” and low expectations, generally speaking, may present obstacles to the educational success of African-American boys, who will teach these boys the value of knowing self and the surrounding world?  Which sources of American culture inculcate in black youth a desire for expansion and self-development that is not understood in strictly materialistic terms? Who respects “the rich and bitter depth” of black boys’ experience?  Who cherishes “their inner life”?  In the 21st century, when and where do African-American boys encounter learning for learning’s sake and knowledge as a comfort and reward for the unwarranted pains and penalties for being black?

The severe challenges that confront black boys exist both inside and outside of the educational system, whether public or private.  With regard to predominately white, private institutions, African-American students undergo cultural alienation as a result of the lack of African-American culture within the curriculum and their unfamiliarity with or aversion to the white social climate, according to “The Mental Health of African American Males in Independent Schools” by Howard C. Stevenson, Margaret B. Spencer, and Jerry Johnson.  

Within the public school system, black boys spend more time in special education, spend less time in advanced placement or college prep courses, and receive more disciplinary suspensions and expulsions than any other group in American schools today reports the American Council on Education, the Education Trust, and the Schott Foundation.

Given this bleak and unacceptable scenario, the educational success of black boys in public or private schools requires external support.  Ideally, this support needs to encompass all of the functions that Du Bois attributed to “the Negro college” during the late nineteenth century.  Yet, who must take the initiative in establishing, maintaining, and perennially endowing educational and other institutions whose purpose is not only to formally educate black boys, but also to help birth sovereign souls and to duly acknowledge and accept the strange evidence of things these boys have seen?

Of course, the answer is black men--and black women, too!