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PUBLISHER’S PAGE – BLACK ENTERPRISE MAGAZINE - Saving Our Young Black Men
The price we pay as African Americans is enormous-measured in everything from unemployment and poverty to rates of incarceration-and amounts to a significant and unacceptable diminution in our capacity to build sustainable wealth.
As we bring in the new year, let us each personally resolve to change this. Let’s champion the creation and support of programs designed to enable, encourage, and celebrate the academic achievement of black boys. When our boys are attacked or intimidated for demonstrating a commitment to academic achievement, let’s defend them as forcefully as we would if they were threatened with racial violence or police brutality. And let’s resolve to communicate to our boys that we expect as much of them academically as we do of our girls, and reward them accordingly. The answer is not to lower expectations of black girls, but to raise them for our boys.
Finally, I challenge each and every reader of Black Enterprise to personally intervene in the life of at least one young black male, and make it your mission to help him to commit to higher education as a goal and prepare for college. Let’s make 2006 the year we free our boys from the slavery of mediocrity and low expectations.
From all of us here at BE, we wish you a healthy, happy, and prosperous new year.
Earl G. Graves, Jr.