When Mr. Antoine Raynor, a young Bermudian-born American who recently returned to the Island to work on a book, first noticed the large number of "kids who were just sitting in the streets'' here, he had a nettlesome sense of deja vu .

"They looked very familiar to me but I didn't know from where,'' the 23-year-old writer and broadcaster said. "And then it hit me. They looked just like the guys I would see in (Washington) DC.'' In Washington and other US cities, Mr. Raynor explained, there is a veritable army of bored, uninterested youths who loll about parks and street corners because they have no sense of purpose and no concrete vision of their futures.

Such youths, he continued, are mostly black, though not all of them come from the huge American underclass.

Most, however, do get involved with some of type of illegal activity or another, often with tragic results.

"A lot of the friends that I had grown up with started drug-dealing, and a lot of them started dying too soon,'' Mr. Raynor said. "It sometimes got to the point where I felt that I was going to die as well.'' Mr. Raynor, however, didn't give in to his nihilism, deciding instead to try to address the spiritual and intellectual needs of his less focused peers and pull them back in from the streets.

"It (the problem of uninterested teenagers who turn to crime) is everywhere (in the world),'' he said. "It's not just an inner-city problem and it's not just limited to the US. In Bermuda, I suspect kids start drug-dealing because they have no money and therefore no hope for the future. In the US, where I've seen kids with trust funds deal, it's often just for kicks.'' A few years ago, Mr. Raynor helped with the founding of "Brother to Brother,'' a peer mediation group in his Washington suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland, in an effort to stem the violence among the young people at his old high school, which, he was quick to point out, was not in a particularly rough neighbourhood.

"I came from a middle-class background,'' he said, "but the kids in the neighbourhood would still be all hyped up, even ready to shoot each other over their disagreements. Once we got them talking, though, they saw how much they had in common, and how silly their disagreements were.'' Eventually, Mr. Raynor, a graduate in broadcast journalism from Howard University and occasional commentator for National Public Radio, saw an expanded role for the group he had a hand in developing.

Rather than mediate youthful conflicts after they arise, he thought, why not head them off before they begin by ridding the teenagers of their boredom and giving them something productive, even inspirational to focus on? Such a philosophy naturally led to the group's concentration on black pride and on black history, two elements that were conspicuously absent from the lives of his target group, which was primarily African-American.

"A lot of black kids just don't know about themselves,'' Mr. Raynor said. "A perfect example was me. When I went into the eleventh grade, I read some books on Malcolm X to win an argument and there was an explosion in my mind. The more I read, the more betrayed I felt. Where had this information been in the school curriculum?'' Although more and more schools are including minority viewpoints and subjects in their curricula, especially in the United States, Mr. Raynor regards the activities of "Brother to Brother'' as an extracurricular supplement to the courses that are traditionally taught in high schools.

In its guise as an intellectual eye-opener, the Washington organisation hosts informal lectures and discussion groups for teens on subjects that range from African history and politics to black American poetry, writing and art.

The group, which believes that an informed, inspired youth is less likely to turn to drugs or violence or crime, also provides reading lists for its charges and generally instils a sense of the tremendous contribution that blacks have made to American life over the years.

After noticing an almost identical problem of youthful languor in Bermuda, moreover, Mr. Raynor came to the belief that teenagers here would benefit from a similar type of informal instruction.

He has since taken steps to adapt the "Brother to Brother'' programme locally.

"I don't think people know a lot about the poets who have left the Island, who are doing things overseas,'' he said. "It also wouldn't hurt if Bermudian youths had a wider perspective of black achievement abroad. I feel that they currently think of themselves as a race unto themselves.'' One of the biggest differences between Bermudian and American youths, the young poet and essayist said, is the way they respond to a similar problem.

American teenagers, Mr. Raynor felt, are prevented from achieving their ultimate potential by their own (often unwarranted) feelings of insecurity and futility, while Bermudian youths, he added, face some genuine systemic obstacles.

"I feel,'' the writer told The Gazette , "that every American kid should come down here and spend some time on the Island. I can almost guarantee that he or she would go back home and become a millionaire, just because they would then be aware of how much more is open to them in the States.'' "If I had grown up in Bermuda,'' he continued, "I would never have become a writer.'' Mr. Raynor, who has won awards for his student essays and poems, was also named a best young playwright by the Centre Stage troupe of Baltimore for "Hard Way To Go,'' his theatrical meditation on youth and death.

"Here,'' he said, "there is a pervasive attitude that blacks don't belong in certain areas, and they consequently feel that they're being held back by the system.'' As an example of the "systemic'' hindrances that he said all blacks face on the Island, Mr. Raynor pointed to an alleged incident of racism in a large local hotel, where he said that "everything stopped'' when he walked in and he felt that he had been "thrown into a time warp.'' Whether or not the incident was indicative of larger societal pattern, it is 20 black men a sense of pride From Page 19 succumbing to drugs and despair, and Mr. Raynor said he hopes to contribute to a reversal of the trend.

"I would like the local `Brother to Brother' to be an organisation where young black men could get together and expand their minds, where they get a sense of their options and their place in the world. Basically, they are bored with the world, and I have seen the havoc that boredom can wreak.'' At the same time, Mr. Raynor also said that he does not believe in the widespread culture of victimhood that has developed around minority issues in the US.

Having been largely self-educated in the area of black history, he believes that the onus for success and self-improvement lies with the individual.

"The hardest thing I had to learn,'' he said, "was that some people don't want to be helped. "But,'' he added, "you can and should help the ones that do want to learn.'' To that end, Mr. Raynor told The Gazette , he has been meeting with prominent black Bermudians in an effort to get the local "Brother to Brother'' off the ground.

When he's not at work on his book, a set of DC-based memoirs called "Redemption Song,'' he is also in the process of developing a locally tailored curriculum.

"A lot of the young people that I've talked to,'' Mr. Raynor said, "don't feel that Government is working in their interest, and I tend to agree.

"But,'' he also said, invoking his doctrine of self-preservation, "I also believe that if you want something done you have to do it yourself. My philosophy is: `There's no odds that can't be overcome.'' BOY FROM THE HOOD -- Young Bermudian-born poet and essayist Antoine Raynor hopes to adapt "Brother to Brother,'' a Washington DC organisation that teaches black youths about their history and thereby keeps them off the streets, to a Bermudian setting.

Writer aims to give young