How To Raise Black Boys

Glenn Jeffers

THE struggle to raise African-American males in American society hit Dr. Pearlman Hicks 10 years ago when his then-11-year-old son, Timothy, brought home a report card full of D’s. Timothy, once an A-student, had become angry and unresponsive, his father says, and was “hanging around kids who were just hanging out and smoking pot.”

Timothy’s behavior hid a deeper pain. For when Dr. Hicks’ wife, Cheryl, lost her bout with breast cancer in 1991, Timothy became enraged, and his younger brother, Stephen, went into denial, carrying a picture of his mother in his wallet. All this left Dr. Hicks, an often-busy father with a successful plastic surgery practice in Beverly Hills, Calif., struggling to raise his sons through an emotional period. “Before my wife got sick, I didn’t spend enough time with my kids,” says the 53-year-old Palos Verdes resident. “But when my wife died, I realized that I needed to be there. And I think it’s paid off.”

Dr. Hicks became an attentive father, cooking breakfast in the morning, helping Timothy with his homework, and taking the boys to their after-school athletic practices. Through their local church, Hicks found a network of people to help him. And it did pay off. Both Timothy and Stephen now attend college. “That was a strange reversal,” Dr. Hicks says. “Surgeons and men, we can’t show emotion. And we were crying with one another at night. The boys saw me in a different light.”

The Hicks family is a good example of how parents can raise African-American sons to be healthy and safe. With the number of obstacles they confront–from the dangers of drugs, gangs and other criminal elements to still-prevalent forms of institutionalized racism such as racial profiling–young African-American boys face harrowing times. According to Dr. Raymond A. Winbush, author of The Warrior Method: A Program for Rearing Healthy Black Boys, “Thirty-two percent of African-American males between the ages of 20 and 29 are in contact with the criminal justice system?’

But according to Winbush and many others, young African-American males can be raised into intelligent, confident men with a strong sense of racial pride. “Outside the doors of our homes, it’s like an obstacle course,” says Minister Leonard Farrakhan Muhammad, chief of staff for the Nation of Islam and father of an 18-year-old son, Leonard Jr. “But you have to be wise in the way you choose your friends. You have to be wise in the way you decide where you’ re going to go. All of these areas can lead to problems for you if you don’t make good choices.”

In order to raise healthy sons, parents must establish a secure and, comfortable home for their boys, and then educate them On how to conduct themselves as men, says Dr. Nancy Boyd-Franklin, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. and co-author of Boys Into Men: Raising our African-American Teenage Sons, with her husband, Dr. A.J. Franklin. “Our children get labeled at a very early age,” Dr. Boyd-Franklin says. “And we … support parents to be very proactive in the raising and the advocating of their sons.”

Most agree that raising a son in a two-parent home is preferable to the single-parent dynamic, although strong Black parents, and mothers in particular, have raised some of our greatest men and women. African-American boys should have an example to follow, says Roland Warren, executive vice president of the National Fatherhood Initiative. Warren, the father of teenage boys, says that his sons learned how to interact with others by watching his example.

But this is not happening in many African-American households, Warren says. Roughly 63 percent of all Black kids grow up in single-parent households, according to Warren. “A number of Black boys growing up don’t have as much interaction with their fathers as they should. If someone wants to have a better outcome for his kids, the best .thing a man can do is stay connected with his kids or be married to a kid’s mother.”

But because this dynamic is not always possible, single parents must have a network of supportive friends and family, Dr. Boyd-Franklin says. “Single parents can very effectively raise African-American male children,” she says. “Single parents have been raising our sons for generations, but the secret is for the parent to have [his or her] support.”

Dr. Hicks found help at the local church, where members of the congregation would make dinner or baby-sit. Dr. Hicks was surprised one day to find Stephen leading prayer groups. “We needed something that could help, he says. “When things get so bad and you don’t know who to turn to, there was God.”

African-American boys also need to understand how to handle racist encounters, Dr. Boyd-Franklin says. Because of upward mobility, many African-American parents have forgotten that their children are still targets for racial abuse. “A lot of African-American parents have a fantasy that their zip code is going to save their child,” Dr. Boyd Franklin says. “We need to prepare our kids for various kinds of racial profiling, Concepts like, `If you are stopped by police, do not run. Do not overreact.’”

Anger is another problem parents must help their sons control, says Dr. Howard Stevenson, a clinical child psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and father of a 10,year-old biracial son, Bryan. As director of the Prevention of in Youth program in Philadelphia, Dr. Stevenson works with so-called “problem” children.

Dr. Stevenson says that activities like basketball and martial arts help children release their anger. With this program, Dr. Stevenson uses basketball to push his students to the point of fighting, to show them how to properly deal with conflicts. He also uses those principles with his son, who he co-raises with his ex-wife; Elenita.

Parents must also discipline their sons in a strong-but-compassionate manner. The discipline instills order and structure while consideration of their feelings will help children see parents as more than just disciplinarians.

The idea is to create a close bond with your son that also incorporates authority and respect, Minister Muhammad says. “They either find it at home or find it outside of the home, and most parents would prefer that children find friendship at home,” the minister when there’s a problem, you want to talk to your friend, not your father. It’s a good idea to develop … a sense of brotherhood as men.”

It’s good to establish this bond early with African-American boys in order to help them deal with feelings of peer pressure, stress and rebelliousness, Dr. Boyd-Franklin says. “Teenagers rebel against everything,” she says. “But if they have a good basis in that [bond] before they hit puberty, they are much more likely to survive those years intact.”

But most importantly, parents must instill a sense of racial pride and identity in their sons. Because of the negative impressions American society has of young African-American males, parents must be proactive by accentuating the positive, telling their sons what is right about them, and telling them how proud of them you are. By preparing their sons beforehand, instilling pride and arming them with knowledge, African-American parents can turn these boys into successful men.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group