Painting a varied picture: an interview with Courtland Lee - Interview

Mary Christine Phillips

Courtland Lee has written extensively

on the psychological and social

development of African-American

male youth, including two books,

Empowering Young Black

Mates (1992) and an

updated edition, Saving the

Native Son: Empowerment

Strategies for Young Black Males (1996). Lee, a

professor of counselor education in the Curry

School of Education at the University of Virginia,

was recently elected to be president of the American

Counseling Association. Until then be edited The

journal of African American Men, a peer-reviewed,

interdisciplinary quarterly that was started by the

National Council of African American Men to

conduct scholarly inquiry into the issues and

challenges that confront African-American male

youth.

How would you characterize the

situation of Black men in America

in the waning years of the 20th

century?

If we give a balanced picture, you will

find that on the one hand scores of

Black youth are doing very well. They

have been the recipients of the social

progress we have made in the last forty

years or so. But on the other hand, we

have a major problem. Black males are

not being afforded the full advantages of

society, vis-a-vis the full advantages of

education and social advancement

overall. It is a varied picture. I think

what is important for us to bear in mind

is if we don't continue to do the kinds of

things we are doing in many of our

communities in terms of the mentoring

programs and other outreach projects,

we will lose a substantial portion of the

next generation of our Black youth.

Increasingly, the subject of loss is

one that is associated with Black

males. Why is that?

I can run off a list of statistics for You,

statistics that show that the Black male

has a one-in-three chance of being killed

by another Black male by his 18th

birthday. In other words, the homicide

rate for Black males is higher than in

any other group of people in the United

Sates. In fact, between the ages of about

fifteen and twenty-four, homicide is the

greatest health threat to Black males.

There are more Black males in prisons

than there are in colleges and

universities; their unemployment rate

generally runs higher than any other

racial or ethnic group in this country;

and Black women, usually between the

ages of 20 and 40, outnumber Black

males seven- or eight-to-one in some

cities. That is because Black men are

either dead, on drugs, or in jail.

How can you, from a scholarly

perspective, change that?

I think one of the things we need to do

is to have a scholarly analysis of all of

the issues and challenges that confront

Black men. Hopefully, The Journal of

African American Men can provide a

forum for solutions to some of the issues

that confront Black men by doing

scholarly inquiry that could impact social

and educational policies.

What is the state of available

statistics on African-American

men?

The data bases are really terrible. I've

written two books on African-American

males and in order to get to the data,

you have to dig through all kinds of

materials. Some comes from the federal

government, some comes from private

agencies.

Again, if we are to talk about the

scholarly perspective, we have to

include Black men in the academy.

Do you address such concerns in

the journal?

The journal has been in existence for a

year, and data on Black men in the

academy have been very, very

sketchy. One of the things we know for

certain, there are more Black women in

the academy than there are Black men.

The reasons for this stem from what I

talked about earlier, and that is Black

men find themselves getting into

disciplinary actions in the legal system

that ends up sending them off to jail.

Many of them don't make it to an age

where they can enter the academy

because of the homicide rate,

Nevertheless, Black males are a presence

on most campuses both as faculty and

staff as well as students. Unfortunately,

sometimes the Black male presence at

many of our institutions is because of the

athlete component at the school. There

are certainly some colleges

where if you find a Black male on

campus, chances are he is either a

football player or basketball player. We

know today that many times college

athletics and academics do not

necessarily go together, so they are

there to play ball and very little else. But

at the same time, we have an awful lot of

Black males who are doing very, very well

in the academy as students and faculty

and staff members. I think it is a very

variable picture.

The Black male presence on

campus as athlete has been a

concern for many scholars. What,

in your opinion, can be done to

stress the importance of an

education over athletics?

It's more than just in the academy, it is

in society overall, I think the more

complex our society becomes, the more

we look for outlets -- entertainment

outlets -- and athletics is a very big

entertainment. It is also big business, and

historically Black men have -- always had

an outlet in sports, and sports have been

an entree into social and economic

advancement. Basically we are talking

about big business, and that has a lot of

allure for young Black men. They see

Black men bouncing basketballs, they don't

see a lot of Black men sending rockets

into space or running Fortune 500

companies or doing other kinds of

things. There is no glamour and allure

there. [But] there is glamour and allure

in sports figures. The academy is one

small part of this because of the fact that

we have glorified to such a level college

basketball and football, which in this

country seems to be dominated by Black

males. What we have to do in the academy

is to find ways to put more pressure on

society at large to change our priorities

when it comes to how we value sports

and sports figures.

I don't see a real de-emphasis

anytime soon on college athletics.

There is just too much money involved

in it now. If there is some

way we can put college athletics back

into perspective in the academy, that

will help. It would make sense for us to

make student-athletes students first and

athletes second so when Black males

come into the academy as athletes, they

would realize that they are students first

and they will be there for four years to

get a degree, while playing their sport

becomes secondary to their academic

pursuits. Unfortunately, because sports

have gotten so blown out of proportion

in society, that does not happen

anymore.

Given the breadth of studies and

statistics available today, is

enough being done by the Black

community and society in general

to redress the problems that

plague the Black male?

Ever since the Million Man March last

October, there has been a lot of

attention on the whole notion of

community involvement. But even prior

to the march, more and more

community programs -- grassroots

programs -- have been coming into

existence to address the problems of

young Black men. They fall under the

heading of "Rites of Passage" programs -- programs

where older men in the

community are taking it upon

themselves to reach back and develop

mentoring programs for Black male

youth in the communities.

Are the problems of young Black

men very different from those of

young Black women?

That's a good question. It is more of a

qualitative kind of difference in many

respects. There is a lot of historical and

sociological contexts that need to be

understood even though the problems

that face African Americans are similar

across gender. Qualitatively, things tend

to be different for Black men only be

cause of the fact that throughout history

Black men, in a wider social context,

have been seen as a threat to the

established social order. Black women

haven't. So the women have had the

opportunity to have greater entree into

the dominant society, so to speak. That

has not been the case for Black men.

Does higher education have a

special responsibility to young

Black men?

Yes, but we're not expecting higher

education to solve all the problems that

young Black males face. We're looking

to colleges and universities to turn out

people across disciplines who can go into

communities and deal with some of the

health, education and social issues facing

African-American men.

But it is not the responsibility of

higher education to take up the banner

of young Black males to the exclusion of

any other population in the U.S.

Can you point to solutions for the

problems facing young Black

men?

People keep talking about the solution

and what we are talking about are a

number of complex factors that need

intervention at a number of levels.

Government has a role to play, education

has a role to play, and the African-American

community has a role to play.

All of it has to do with rebuilding what I

call the triangle of support. We need to

find ways to strengthen families,

strengthen schools and strengthen social

institutions such as churches, and other

organizations like the Boy Scouts.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Cox, Matthews & Associates
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group