5/17/2024
JRB,
What are your plans for the leaders of the Divine 9 this evening? Are to be impressed? Black college kids are a rare commodity these days. Rarer still are those who have the time & energy to be in a Greek organization. On our campus, we have 6 chapters with 41 members in total. Only 618 of our 30,000ish undergrads are black.
This low representation may be due in part to our lousy public school system in CA where black students are 5 times more likely to attend highly segregated schools & twice as likely to attend high-poverty schools as their white counterparts. As CNN notes, “It’s been 70 years since Brown v. Board of Education. The US is still trying to achieve the promise of integration.”
SPOW, thanks for hosting families of the plaintiffs of the integration court cases of the 1960’s. I look forward to hearing what you have to say at the National Museum of African American History & Culture today.
Did you see the news that foreigners are participating in the fight against the junta in Burma? AJ ran a piece about it which got me wondering why men are attracted to war. According to filmmaker, Sebastian Junger, it’s because “war is a shortcut to adulthood, a clear rite of passage in a society that’s increasingly confusing, complicated & contradictory.”
Courtney E. Martin writes on this topic in the CSM, noting that boys are quite lonely nowadays, because “many cultural forces push boys & men away from intimacy and community.” She describes several efforts to address this including Oakland Unified School District’s African American Male Achievement program (AAMA).
Please ask the Divine 9 leaders for their ideas about providing transitions to adulthood where young folks can bond with one another as they demonstrate their strength & courage by taking risks WITHOUT VIOLENCE!
Outward Bound comes to mind as a possibility, as does performing on stage, protesting on the streets &/or playing on a sports team.
WINTA!
BYBS,
