This is the view of Ty-Ron Douglas, who grew up in Paget and now works as an assistant professor at the University of Missouri’s Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis Department.
Dr. Douglas will be a keynote speaker at the Fifth Annual International Colloquium on Black Males in Education, which runs from tomorrow to Friday, with events taking place daily at The Fairmont Southampton. Colloquium chairman Jerlando Jackson agreed with his peer’s assessment.
“That’s actually spot on, and it’s the kind of discussion that the colloquium allows us to have,” said Dr. Jackson, professor of higher education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
One of the education system’s predominant problems is the lack of access to opportunity it offers black males, he suggested. Barriers include a scarcity of mentors and distractions such as potential safety concerns and financial difficulties.
“It cuts across the spectrum,” he said. “And until an organisation decides to look at the disparities, you’re resting purely on self-advocacy.”
This means that, to become successful, black males must overcome the system as statistical outliers, rather than being aided by it, Dr. Jackson added.
Dr. Douglas argued that this long history of suppression can have a demotivating impact on black males, given the sometimes “toxic” state of the education system. “We can never forget that people make choices in context, based on what they believe they have access to, and what they see as possible,” he said.
Dr. Douglas experienced the escalation of racial tensions at the University of Missouri last November, as students protested after a series of racist incidents. “The intensity of those events, which made national and international headlines, has calmed,” he said. “But the conversations are ongoing and the university seeks to build on them.”
Forum aims to bridge pathways to success
Click Here to Read full Story