Day 3 - Young, Gifted, and Black - Promoting High Achievement Among African American Students

I was told that you become an expert by reading at least one book per month in your field of study. A part of my journey towards educational equality for all is a continuous development of my expertise as Dr. K. Bracely.

I am reading Young, Gifted, and Black - Promoting High Achievement Among African American Students by Dr. Theresa Perry, Dr. Claude Steele, and the late Dr. Asa Hillard III. I want to give parents, educators, and those that are concerned about the educational welfare of our youth an excerpt from the book, and something to ponder upon. What will be your response, or call to action to these dilemmas? 

These are some of the dilemmas African-American youth - and yes, even adults - face as they attempt to commit themselves to high academic achievement. Our African-American youth need you to answer  these questions sooner than later:

• How do I commit myself to achieve, to work hard over time in school, if I cannot predict (in school or out of school) when or under what circumstances the hard work will be acknowledged and recognized?
• How do I commit myself to do work that is predicated on a belief in the power of the mind, when African-American intellectual inferiority is so much a part of the taken-for-granted notions of the larger society that individuals in and out of school, even good and well-intentioned people, individuals who purport to be acting on my behalf, routinely register doubts about my intellectual competence?
• How can I aspire to and work toward excellence when it is unclear whether or when evaluations of my work can or should be taken seriously?
• Can I invest in and engage my full personhood, with all of my cultural formations, in my class, my work, my school if my teachers and the adults in the building are both attracted to and repulsed by these cultural formations - the way I walk, the way I use language, my relationship to my body, my physicality, and so on?
• Will I be willing to work hard over time, given the unpredictability of my teachers' responses to my work? 
• Can I commit myself to work hard over time if I know that, no matter what I or other members of my reference group accomplish, these accomplishments are not likely to change how I and other members of my group are viewed by the larger society, or to alter our castelike position in the society? I still will not be able to get a cab, I still will be followed in department stores. I still will be stopped when I drive through certain neighborhoods. I still will be viewed as a criminal, a deviant, and an illiterate. 
• Can I commit myself to work hard, to achieve in a school, if cultural adaptation effectively functions as a prerequisite for skill acquisition, where "the price of the ticket" is separation from the culture of my reference group?