Be.Conscious

  All we want to be is loved.

Told we are pretty

Kissed gently

All we want to be is loved

All we want to be is loved

Made to feel like we’re worth some attention

Have someone to run to and confide in

All we want to be is loved

All we want to be is loved

  And I loved you.

For those moments I loved you because you

Told me I was pretty

Kissed me gently

And I loved you

And I loved you

You made me feel worth some attention

You were who I ran to and confided in

And that made me to love you

  I clasped your hand because I knew I could trust you

Then I felt it change and twist into some foreign and grotesque form

And I wanted to let go and run like hell because I was scared

I had to get my stuff back I had to get me again

I didn’t believe you when you said you’d kill me if I ever left

I thought it was just a threat, I thought you were just talking stuff again

So I was trying to get out of there, to go and find me again

And the pull and push got to be too much to bear

And I was trying to run but the pull and push was just too much to bear

But I had to get my stuff back I had to get me again

Plus I didn’t believe you when you said you’d kill me if I ever left

I thought it was just a threat, I thought you were just talking stuff again

So I was still trying to run like hell, cuz I had to get to me again

  Before I met you I was somebody

Before I met you I had dreams

Before I met you I loved me

  I gotta get out of here, I gotta find me again

The pull and the push might be too much to bear

But I gotta go, cuz there’s a me out there and I gotta find her again

  I didn’t believe him when he said he’d kill me

Charday Ward

I teach English in a small, inner-city high school where the student population is predominately Black boys from low-income homes. I love my students and I love teaching, but quite frankly I am worried. I am worried because for every 100,000 18-19 year old Black men, 1,547 of them are in prison. Even more startling is that for every 100,000 20-24 year old Black men, 4,594 of them are in prison. There are seven times as many Black men imprisoned than non-Hispanic whites, and Blacks only make up 12 percent of the nation’s population. Black men are imprisoned at disproportionate numbers, mostly due to harsh drug sentencing, and I am trying to keep my students from falling into that trap.

When homework is not complete and book chapters have not been read, I begin to rattle off statistics in my classroom. “Don’t you know how many Black men are in prison?” I ask them. “Do you not understand that most inmates are poorly educated,” I stand on this soapbox almost daily because I am determined to get them to choose education over imprisonment, but I often wonder if they hear me. I teach some extremely bright young people who can accomplish anything that they want, but some choose delinquency over academics. I ask myself how they could continue on a downward path when they know it leads to prison and possibly death. I wonder why they do not embrace academic achievement as a means to escaping their environment and living their dreams.

The high school and college graduation rates of Black males are considerably low in comparison to that of their white counterparts. Only fifty percent of Black males graduate high school nationally, and less than that graduate from college. If they make it to college, many Black men are not adequately prepared to survive the scholastic environment and face financial issues that prevent them from remaining enrolled. The odds are definitely against Black men when it comes to education, but these odds are nothing that a little will power cannot overcome. Great men such as Obie McKenzie and Ben Carson have used education as a vehicle out of poverty and into success, but how do we convince Black young men that education is worth their pursuit?  In order to find a solution, we must first identify the problem.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs suggests that humans seek to satisfy certain needs before others. For instance, if the needs for food, sleep and safety have not been fulfilled, then humans cannot seek to fulfill their needs for love, esteem, or self-actualization. Perhaps young people from low-income backgrounds are so busy trying to survive that they are not as concerned with education.

Perhaps low-income Black boys are unable to mentally connect school with personal success. Who is successful in their lives? Drug dealers, professional athletes, and hip-hop stars. If this is their measure of success, then they have little to no reason to achieve academic excellence. Who do they want to be like? In my experience it is not Barack Obama, Spike Lee or Dr. Steve Perry, but Lebron, D. Wade, and Weezy. These men are their heroes, but these men have achieved a type of success that most young Black boys can only dream of.

Maybe purpose is the word that I am looking for. For our boys to avoid incarceration they have to find purpose in some area of their life, and why not school? Author Michael Gurian of the Gurian Institute writes that African-American boys need to be a part of purposeful communities that provide opportunities for them to obtain success and respect. He indicates that schools have failed to create such environments and suggests in-school male-mentorship and rites of passage programs as ways to create purposeful communities for Black boys.

I teach English in a small, inner-city high school where the student population is predominately Black boys from low-income homes. I love my students and I love teaching, but quite frankly I am worried. I am worried because for every 100,000 18-19 year old Black men, 1,547 of them are in prison. Even more startling is that for every 100,000 20-24 year old Black men, 4,594 of them are in prison. There are seven times as many Black men imprisoned than non-Hispanic whites, and Blacks only make up 12 percent of the nation’s population. Black men are imprisoned at disproportionate numbers, mostly due to harsh drug sentencing, and I am trying to keep my students from falling into that trap.

When homework is not complete and book chapters have not been read, I begin to rattle off statistics in my classroom. “Don’t you know how many Black men are in prison?” I ask them. “Do you not understand that most inmates are poorly educated,” I stand on this soapbox almost daily because I am determined to get them to choose education over imprisonment, but I often wonder if they hear me. I teach some extremely bright young people who can accomplish anything that they want, but some choose delinquency over academics. I ask myself how they could continue on a downward path when they know it leads to prison and possibly death. I wonder why they do not embrace academic achievement as a means to escaping their environment and living their dreams.

The high school and college graduation rates of Black males are considerably low in comparison to that of their white counterparts. Only fifty percent of Black males graduate high school nationally, and less than that graduate from college. If they make it to college, many Black men are not adequately prepared to survive the scholastic environment and face financial issues that prevent them from remaining enrolled. The odds are definitely against Black men when it comes to education, but these odds are nothing that a little will power cannot overcome. Great men such as Obie McKenzie and Ben Carson have used education as a vehicle out of poverty and into success, but how do we convince Black young men that education is worth their pursuit?  In order to find a solution, we must first identify the problem.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs suggests that humans seek to satisfy certain needs before others. For instance, if the needs for food, sleep and safety have not been fulfilled, then humans cannot seek to fulfill their needs for love, esteem, or self-actualization. Perhaps young people from low-income backgrounds are so busy trying to survive that they are not as concerned with education.

Perhaps low-income Black boys are unable to mentally connect school with personal success. Who is successful in their lives? Drug dealers, professional athletes, and hip-hop stars. If this is their measure of success, then they have little to no reason to achieve academic excellence. Who do they want to be like? In my experience it is not Barack Obama, Spike Lee or Dr. Steve Perry, but Lebron, D. Wade, and Weezy. These men are their heroes, but these men have achieved a type of success that most young Black boys can only dream of.

Maybe purpose is the word that I am looking for. For our boys to avoid incarceration they have to find purpose in some area of their life, and why not school? Author Michael Gurian of the Gurian Institute writes that African-American boys need to be a part of purposeful communities that provide opportunities for them to obtain success and respect. He indicates that schools have failed to create such environments and suggests in-school male-mentorship and rites of passage programs as ways to create purposeful communities for Black boys.

“Move a mountain, light the sky, make a wish come true, there is music in you”

On a Sunday afternoon in November of 1997, my sisters, best friends and I crowded into my mother’s small bedroom to watch Disney’s remake of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. It was a dream come true for us, and so many other little Black girls, because Brandy was Cinderella, and Whitney Houston was her fairy godmother. That Sunday afternoon, we were all Cinderella and we couldn’t have asked for a more perfect fairy godmother to send us to the ball. She told us that the impossible was indeed possible, because impossible things were happening every day.

“I’m every woman, it’s all in me, anything you want done baby, I do it naturally”

She did it naturally. She had a voice that was unbelievably pristine and pure. An unparalleled gift from God, it must have been what angels sound like. To a 90’s child like me, Whitney Houston was the epitome of beauty and talent. Because our parents loved her, we were born with admiration for her, and we knew, by intuition, that she was one if the greatest singers of all time.

If our natural senses did not confirm her star quality, then her music did. The serenity of her voice in the first chorus of "I Will Always Love You" caught our attention and we called it beauty; then we listened, in awe, as she effortlessly belted out the second and third. We tried to imitate her, on our karaoke microphones, in our play talent shows, and in the car as her songs played on the radio. One of my most vivid childhood memories is my best friends and I jumping up and down on their parents’ beds to the music of The Bodyguard soundtrack. In those moments, we were not little girls but Every Woman and Queens of the Night.

“I love the Lord, He heard my cry, and pitied every groan. Long as I live and troubles rise, I’ll hasten to His throne.”

I was too young, by my parents’ standards, to see Waiting to Exhale when it was released. But I had the soundtrack, and I played it until it wore out. I could, however, see The Preacher’s Wife, and at 10 years old I sat in the movie theater completely mesmerized with Whitney Houston. She sang gospel music with such conviction that I knew it was her first love. Whitney Houston was one of the world’s biggest stars, but she made us believe that she was Julia Biggs, the wife of a preacher. She played that role with an impeccable grace, and I was in awe of it.

“If tomorrow is judgment day, and I'm standing on the front line, and the Lord asks me what I did with my life, I will say I spent it with you”

Whitney Houston had a way of making us feel like we knew her. She sang with such strong emotion, that it seemed as if she were singing to us. The warmness of her spirit showed through her artistry, and we embraced her wholeheartedly. We loved Whitney so much that when she left us, we grieved like we had lost a family member. She has left us with her legacy and we will tell our children about this great singer, who was the best to ever do it, whose name was Whitney Houston.