I am troubled by a consistent situation that I witness in many schools: Black males who have tuned out. Obviously, this is a sweeping generalization, but it certainly pertains to the majority of black males within our public school institutions with whom I've observed during my performances. It has been socially "cool" to tune out, to care about little, and to kill or die for even less than little. And what's even more distressing is the isolation felt by black boys who do care, who want to succeed, who [pardon the expression] "give a damn". They are a true minority, made to feel like ciphers, alone, ostracized from the larger black male community, and often criticized for being less black. They will come to speak to me after my performance while some of their peers just mock them for being weak, a punk.

Black is cool. Black is feared. Black is tough. Black is.

I go into many schools where the black males, specifically, and the black children, in general, will treat my show with more outward disrespect than the rest of the school population. This is not always the case, but it certainly happens more often than I feel happy to admit. And does it matter if it is an inner-city school compared to a more suburban school? Sometimes, yes, but in truth, I have found that black males in suburban schools feel as if they have more to "prove" in regards to their blackness, therefore, they will challenge me more overtly during my performance than inner-city blacks. Inner-city black males will tend to fake sleeping or really fall asleep even before I begin my performance. I was once in a suburban school where upon completing one of my characters, a black student shouted out "FAGGOT!" Now, granted, I had never before nor since experienced that same interchange, but I found it to be somewhat unsettling that it came from a black student in a predominantly white environment; I felt that it could only further some negative, cultural stereotypes placed on blacks. I worry that when this type of disruption and disrespect takes place, I am then viewed as the exception, the-"not like THEM"-insult put forth to positive blacks like myself; while the obnoxious black students are internally accepted as the general rule. But how did this all begin, and what are the factors that have perpetuated these insipid displays of shallowness?

Allow me to start with the school as a system; allow me to start with some positive observations. I have noticed that I have had much more favorable responses from black students when they are in a school system that 1.) will treat these students with mutual respect, 2.) are able to separate cultural displays of interaction from errant behavior, and 3.) embraces true diversity and inclusion.

I have been in school systems where before I've started my show, the principal or vice-principal will get up in front of the audience and cajole the student body with a kind firmness, interacting with them with respectful leadership. These principals do not punish cultural expressions of interactions, yet they foster an environment for positive behavior.

I was recently at Trenton Central High School in New Jersey, a school decimated by gang activities and poverty -- a mostly black student body where the males are as tough as they are crude; a school where teachers, in the past, have given up even before the fighting began. Fortunately, they have a new leader who believes in the lives of these children, not just their test scores, but their lives. She embraces the true spirit of "No Child Left Behind" and it has nothing to do with passing some state test. Rarely have I met such a dynamic principal. She cares for her students like the majority of mothers care for their children. I watched her interaction with the student population, and she was firm, yet fair; loving, yet disciplined. Her students did not cower away from her, but were peaceful towards her, willing to do tasks (e.g., walking me to the auditorium, taking off gang related shirts) that she asked or enforced them to do. I mention this principal because she tends to be the exception of what I see in most tough schools. She told me it was simple, if you kept one thing in your mind: these children do not need a principal, they need a parent. She said to me, "Michael, if I treat them like a principal, I will lose them, but if I treat them like a mother, they will respect me." Unfortunately, like I said, she is the exception.

In many of our most difficult schools principals or assistant principals either embarrass a group of students or yell at the student body, threatening to cancel the assembly. Or on the other end of the spectrum of ill-fated interactions, I watch teachers who look for black children to fail, and then pouncing upon any opportunity to "correct" them, while other disruptive individuals (non-black) are overlooked; or these teachers are so terrified of breaking some unspoken PC barrier that they will allow certain black children to act the part of a fool without ever addressing it. I suppose that they are fearful, in this case, of being viewed as racist. Ironically, it is this overt, but oblivious silence which greatly magnifies these teachers' shoddy view of race and class. Some of my worse performances have taken place in schools where teachers seeing the disruptions have simply ignored it or aggressively attempted to squash it.

Now, do not misinterpret me, I am not solely placing blame on the teachers or principals, for the whole system is screwed up with the treatment of black males, and many black males are in turn screwed up with the treatment of themselves and the system. I certainly place responsibility on the disruptive black males as well. I do not just blame the system, because I have seen a number of tough, gang-involved black males who have been healthily broken by my show, allowing themselves to feel and process what they experienced. These individuals come up to me after my show vigorously shaking my hand and giving me a street hug. They have grown up in poverty on the streets or alone in a mostly white environment, but are willing to see themselves differently than just the stereotype. They often belong to the Hip-Hop culture, but they choose to focus on an essence of positiveness rather than the negativity, disrespect, or misogyny that coexists within the norms of Hip-Hop culture. Many of these males take to heart Jesse Jackson's mantra: "I was born in the slums, but the slums were not born in me."

I know as a black male, it is a thin tight rope to criticize negative aspects of my culture; I risk being scorned by the majority for not being black enough, for selling out. Michael Eric Dyson, a scholar for whom I have utmost respect, wrote a book specifically targeting Bill Cosby's criticism of the "tuned out" parts of the black community. Without getting too far away from the topic, I felt that Dyson's criticism of Cosby's criticism was somewhat misdirected, as I felt that some of Cosby's rhetoric was coming from an elitist, not a loving place. Here's a link to the book. It's a scholarly discourse worth reading, worth discussing.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465017193/sr=8-1/qid=1144703869/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-7518100-5753614?%5Fencoding=UTF8

I am big on freedom and responsibility. I respect black males, even the disrespectful ones. I just desire change. I believe tuning out leads to more poverty, more violence, more isolation in the black community; more males who leave children fatherless; more failure; more desperation; more jail time; more followers instead of desirable leaders. I want to help black males to tune in instead of out. In short, I want to help them find a reason to give a damn.

"My ambition is to be more than just a rap musician. The elevation of today's generation, if I can make them listen." -- Tupac