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Gentlemen, I just came up with a radical thought.
How many men are there on Free Republic?
Suppose we were to get hundreds, yea, thousands of male Freepers -- yes, black, white, yellow, I don't give a flip what color or race -- to take up the task of mentoring ONE BLACK YOUNG MAN A YEAR for the next 5 years?
What might that do for such young men, and what might the eventual political reverberations be?

Or am I simply crazy?

No, you are not crazy.

I'm not male, but I have young black males in my proximity. I will make an attempt to reach out to them, as I do to all children in my neighborhood. We have Asian, Muslim, WASP, and African-American kids in our neighborhood. They all have the same needs.

My goal will be to reach out to ALL kids. Even if it's just taking them to our community pool. I will ask them about their dreams and desires and see if they have an idea of how to proceed. I have good ideas about how to prepare for college, take tests, financial aid, etc. Also some knowledge of alternatives, including trade apprenticeships and military service, etc.

I will ask my husband to do the same. But usually when he ends up in the pool with the kids it turns into a big free-for-all. Positive active male energy is good.

Thanks for posting this. Hopefully, many good men out there would heed the call and make the effort to get involved in mentoring the "fatherless". As much as I hate to admit it, you MEN are the key to turning our society around.

Studies I've read and from my own life observations, I've seen that children of both sexes do look more to the males for guidance and modelling after.

One study that blew me away says that:
If Mom only attends church, child in adulthood has a 15% probability of attending church.
If Dad only attends church, probability increases to 55% for the child to follow in his footsteps later on in life.
Of course it makes sense that, if both parents attended, the probability is higher (72%).

I know the study does not exactly pertain to academic mentorship but I've seen the above validated over and over in different areas of life. Unfortunately, I've also read somewhere that about half of the children in the U.S. do not have a father in the home. This just spells disaster. The single mothers are doing their best, of course, but nothing takes the place of a father in the home, even one who is not so great.

So please, men, I urge you to think about mentoring a child within your sphere of influence.

The students' decision to seize opportunities to improve their own lives

I think this is the key point the author makes in this fine article. Kind of like AA, it won't work until the individual is willing to take charge of their own lives rather than drift to the direction of the cultural winds.

On your "radical thought", I second that and will adopt it to my personal circumstances of working in an inner-city career-technical school with a significant minority enrollment. Great post...thank you.

I'm Black, female, and do tutor and mentor Black students, including boys. I have a whole program for doing it. I've been tutoring younger kids since 4th grade and feel that there is more and more of a need to do it in order to help more Black children counter the anti-intellecutalism that is much more common now than it was when I was growing up.

I don't mind tutoring males because I don't take nonsense from any kid and I make that known, but I do wish more males would come forward and tutor/mentor.