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Black males and academics

"Look, Keyshaun is not academically inclined. He's better at doing things with his hands."A black Bermudian mother addressing her son's academic prospectsNot too long ago it was reported in the daily newspaper that Michael Stowe, formerly of the National Training Board, who is now in the private training business, asserted that many black males in Bermuda have neither the interest nor the aptitude to achieve academic success in Bermuda.

"Look, Keyshaun is not academically inclined. He's better at doing things with his hands."

A black Bermudian mother addressing her son's academic prospects

Not too long ago it was reported in the daily newspaper that Michael Stowe, formerly of the National Training Board, who is now in the private training business, asserted that many black males in Bermuda have neither the interest nor the aptitude to achieve academic success in Bermuda.

He made his comments at a time when the focus of the country is increasingly on the issue of public education, particularly as it relates to its long anticipated reform.

Moreover, his comments also came at a time when the conversation on the state and status of black males in our society is challenging the conventional wisdom in so many ways.

Mr. Stowe did himself no favours with his interview. My initial reaction was one of bewilderment, frankly, that a black Bermudian man and educator, could baldly advance the view that black Bermudian male students for the most part have no aptitude, for the rigours of academic study.

Now, I am not here to beat up on Michael Stowe, but my view upon reading his remarks was that while it may be fair or even accurate to assert that too many young black males show insufficient interest in academic studies, one cannot assert with a straight face in 2009 that they lack the aptitude to achieve anything meaningful academically.

Mr. Stowe of course is not the only Bermudian to reflect the conventional wisdom on this issue and he is far from being alone in propagating this stereotype, as indicated by the comments of the family friend, quoted above.

You see, to use the word aptitude in this context implies that black males are somehow genetically incapable of mastering the rigours, of an immersion into academic study.

However, while this view is prevalent, no one, including the mother above, would assert that their black daughters lack the aptitude and should be directed similarly, toward working with their hands in a trade environment. Yet, in many cases — as is the case – with Keyshaun's (not his real name) sister they both share the same genetic inheritance.

A lack of interest on the other hand, as advanced by Stowe can be made and on this front he was on more solid ground. The reasons for this lack of interest though has a lot to do with nurture or environment and absolutely nothing – as indicated – to do with nature.

Environment in the sense that historical factors, insidiously fashioned by Bermuda's racist legacy, created a number of perverse incentives which have directly led to the disparity of educational and occupational outcomes as it relates to black Bermudians in general and black males in particular.

One key factor which I believe is contributing to the above and which is resonating throughout our society today has a lot to do with "Cultural Lag".

"Cultural Lag" exists when an adaptation to an environment on the part of cultural groups, which may have served them well in the context of survival in the past, no longer does so when those objective conditions change for better or for worse. In the cultural context it is a multi-generational phenomenon, where, despite the change in the environment, the old habits, behaviours and roles, are transmitted and passed on from generation to generation.

For example, hardly anyone can deny with a straight face that Bermuda, up until the last third of the 20th Century provided few options for black men in particular in the professions or the white- dominated business sector.

In the Jim Crow style system of racial segregation that existed, a black man who did have the resources to go overseas to university, would have been pretty much restricted to law, medicine, the clergy or teaching.

Largely, because they could practise those professions and make a decent living providing those services to the black community and to the black community only. In such a society, the white male-dominated business and government sectors were largely off limits to black Bermudians, no matter how many degrees they possessed.

At best, they were encouraged to go into informal and formal apprenticeship programmes as were generations of black men before them, to learn a trade and earn money for their hard pressed families. Their fate was either to go into the hotel industry, or perform manual types of labour, in other words, work with their hands. There were few other options.

And if a black household with limited resources-– and remember you had to pay fees to attend school at the primary and secondary level then – was going to educate anyone for the most part beyond the primary school level, it was likely to be their daughters.

The rationale being in part that it would keep them out of trouble and forestall the time when they had to go out and work as domestics in many of the affluent white homes.

As a consequence, I believe that these conditions provided a perverse incentive for most black families to continue to steer their sons into the trades. In fact there were few models before them either in the home in the case of their own fathers or within the broader society to challenge the perception or the reality of that Bermuda experience.

Despite their lack of a robust education, many black Bermudians did fairly well during this period because of the booming nature of that economy. This growth was chiefly characterised by a lot of new construction and the phenomenal rise in the hotel industry.

How many times did we hear older black men, who worked in the trades or the hotel industry, brag about the fact that despite having to drop out of school at 13 to support their families, that they had, while still fairly young men, married their childhood sweetheart, purchased a piece of land and built a house upon it, all by the tender age of 25?

And they never failed to emphasise, just in case you missed it the first time, that they never finished school. This was their chief source of pride, that despite being denied that valued education, they still made it. That they were still were successful.

This was a very dominant narrative when I was growing up. It also fostered a community with a pervasive world view which conveyed to most black boys, that while having a formal academic- based education was nice, it really wasn't a critical ingredient for success in Bermuda.

As a result, the later expansion of Bermuda's black middle class was one not predicated upon the professions or business but rather one which was firmly blue collar and wedded to the black domination of the trades, the hotel industry and the trade unions.

During the late 1980s, however, Bermuda's economy began to experience major structural adjustments. These adjustments irrevocably resulted in the decline of tourism, the restructuring of the construction industry and the rise of economy, centred around international business.

It also would result latterly, in an influx of foreign workers competing with black Bermudian workers at the lower levels of the occupational categories, in some cases for lower wages and benefits.

Thus, unlike their fathers and grandfathers, black males over the last two decades no longer work in an economy which can reward them for their lack of formal academic achievement and credentials as it did their forefathers. In fact, the Bermuda of today actually exacts a heavy penalty, by way of lower wages and opportunity over a lifetime of work as a consequence of the above and imposes, for too many, a lifetime of economic insecurity and marginalisation.

As the census information and workforce surveys have shown repeatedly black males – on average – earn less than any other group in our society (black women/white males) and are disproportionately represented in industries that afford the lowest rates of pay.

These major socio-economic changes, more than any other over the last 25 years, have placed black Bermudian males at a distinct disadvantage when one considers that the persistence of this cultural lag which has its roots in historical patterns of systemic racism, contributes to marginal academic outcomes for too many of our males and reinforces the low expectations which they have for themselves and of which the society holds of them.

Just the prevalence of options and opportunities in education and beyond, in and of themselves I'm convinced, will not change this reality for them, not when there are deep-seated cultural adaptations, which, while not serving their immediate and long term interests, as it did their fathers and grandfathers, are still nonetheless exerting a powerful hold on their perceptions and thus their reality.

One thing of which I am certain is that no society can sustain prosperity, no matter how that prosperity is measured, without the full participation of all of its members. In a country such as Bermuda with its limited human resource capital, we literally cannot afford to have such a valuable and vital human asset as represented by our black males not contributing to their fullest potential.

And in a knowledge based society such as ours, not having the majority of our black males succeeding academically can only be a recipe for failure. As a good friend once said when commenting on this issue, "…even doctors work with their hands".