I actually think you’d find that the source of the problem with black male students is a cultural thing (since black females often seem to do as well as any other group).
They simply don’t value learning or take it seriously and will not make the effort because somehow they believe that everything must be made easy for them. Also they, much more than the girls, seem to believe that being black will suffice to open doors for them even if they are in no way qualified to get into those places.
I worked at a law firm where we interviewed candidates from the top law schools, and the black males were terrible: low grades coupled with a phenomenal sense of entitlement and a lack of any will to work. We had to hire a certain number of them, and they could virtually never pass the Bar exam even after several tries and special coaching. And on the job, they spent their time making passes at the female staffers, talking on the phone, and refusing to do work that they considered too menial for them (all associate’s work is menial!).
The black women, however, were an entirely different matter. They were prepared, hard-working, pleasant, and didn’t have a massive chip on their shoulders. So I don’t think the problem is blackness in itself.
I don’t know how one could analyze it, but I really think the development of the entitlement mentality among blacks (thanks to affirmative action and other programs) has had a disastrous effect on the mental attitude that anyone needs in order to study, work and achieve.
Men, in lower income black society, are never expected to be very responsible but at the same time are regarded as very special; some of these poor deluded baby-mommas consider themselves really fortunate to have a male around whose willing to bless them with his company in exchange for their welfare checks. And now we have a whole society that tells black males of any class that they really don’t have to work or do anything to get what they want, but that simply by breathing they’re “special” and deserve nothing but the best.
BTW, in many African tribal cultures, men also frequently do nothing except impregnate the women and occasionally hunt or fight with members of another tribe. It is the women who farm, run the markets, make the clothing, handle the money, etc. I one time heard women described as “the mule of Africa,” meaning that women were the ones who did all the hard work. So maybe this is an embedded cultural thing that has taken a new form.
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
Here’s a piece on Africa....some parts of it at least....where the men are drinking millet beer all day so the women have to be the beasts of burden, do the manual labor, work and farming/gardening
http://drunkard.com/issues/10_04/10-04-soused-africa.htm