Ellington

The generation of African Americans that came of age during the '60s and '70s was taught that having the American dream—a job, a house, a car—was the pinnacle of success. They used every tool at their disposal, and demanded those that weren't, in the struggle to achieve that goal. And now that they've achieved it, those now-parents, most of them nicely settled into middle-class life, are teaching that same definition of success to their children.

But that definition of success isn't serving today's African-American children well. Test scores that lag behind those of their white counterparts, higher college attrition rates, increasing problems with body image for African-American teenage girls, and increasing incarceration rates—particularly for black men—are glaring signs that "movin' on up" just isn't working anymore.

Expert opinions on the cause of these problems abound. Anthropologist and University of California at Berkeley professor John U. Ogbu, who passed away this past summer, contended that although racism is one of the culprits, culture is also part of the problem. In his book "Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb," published earlier this year, Ogbu asserts that African American parents and culture have failed black youth by substituting the pursuit of material gain for that of knowledge and academic achievement.

Hugh Price might not necessarily agree with that contention, but in his book "Achievement Matters," the National Urban League president acknowledges that not all is well and offers ideas on how we can turn this tide of underachievement before it's too late. Academic achievement, he insists, starts at home with parents who are actively involved in their children's education. Not by shuttling them to and from extracurricular activities or by simply enrolling them in prestigious schools, but by engendering in their children a fascination for reading and the acquisition of knowledge.

So now what? How do we engender a thirst for knowledge? For starters, we have to think big. We have to take the torch we've been handed and dream it into a bonfire. It's a fact that humans do not have wings and therefore cannot fly. Yet thousands of people fly all over the world every day. We've flown to the moon, and it is inevitable that some day we'll fly to other planets. Human flight is possible today because someone dared to think big, in spite of the odds and in defiance of the burden of facts. This is the mentality and life philosophy we must teach our children. It's part of who they are; it's what inspired our grandparents and great-grandparents to dream that they would not just escape slavery but go on to become productive members of American society, that, although they were illiterate, their children would become doctors, lawyers, and educators. Teaching our children anything less engenders mediocrity and ordinariness.

But it's not enough to tell our children to succeed. We must be able to teach them how to succeed. And how we define success will determine whether we teach them effectively. If success is having shelves of CDs, all the right clothes and a house in the right neighborhood, then we've already succeeded, marvelously. If it's teaching them that the acquisition of knowledge is a worthy and admirable goal, an end in itself; that being civically engaged is repayment of a debt owed to our ancestors who fought and died for the right to vote and be recognized as human beings; that having a job and being fiscally responsible is the least of their societal responsibilities, then we have a long way to go.

So go ahead. Think big.

Sheri Whitley, a Chickasaw County native, is an editor with Black Enterprise magazine in New York. She is a frequent contributor to the JFP.