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Episode #1523
African American Male Summit
Holloway: Jay Holloway,
host
Coleman: Dr. Arnett Coleman
Johnson: Dr. Henry Johnson
Jordan: Milton Jordan
Holloway: What are
some of the issues affecting African American men in North
Carolina. To answer that question, African American men from
across the state united in Greensboro this past summer to
hold North Carolina's first African American Male Summit.
Stay tuned next for Black Issues Forum as we explore
how African American men can implement practical solutions
to problems facing the black community.
Voiceover: This program
is made possible in part by contributions from UNC-TV viewers
like you.
[THEME MUSIC - APPLAUSE]
Holloway: Hello and
welcome to the new season of Black Issues Forum. I'm
Jay Holloway, your host. We taped our program on location
at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Greensboro where the first
North Carolina African American Male Summit was held. African
American males from across the state gathered here to discuss
urgent issues concerning them and to establish a plan of action
to address these concerns. The Summit attracted African American
males from all walks of life, as well as religious, community
leaders, politicians, teachers and the general public. The
Summit featured keynote speakers, panel discussions and facilitated
workshops. Men attending the Summit here were able to address
the issues of black family enhancement, business community
advocacy, criminal justice, education, emerging leaders, health,
media, politics and spirituality. After this discussion the
facilitators and the participants formulated practical strategies
to improve the conditions of African American males.
Joining me on the program today
to talk about the issues and strategies stemming from the
summit is, first, Dr. Arnett Coleman. He is president of the
Old North State Medical Society. Thank you Dr. Coleman for
being with us. Also, Dr. Henry Johnson, the Associate Superintendent
at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. And
last but not least, Milton Jordan, an executive trainer with
KLG Ministries and the News Group. Gentlemen, thank you all
for being with us, and thanks to the summit participants for
being here today.
We've already heard some of the
highlights of some key recommendations from ten different
categories that we mentioned to our audience. We cannot cover
all of those in this session, but I would like to talk to
each of you and ask you for your major reactions, what you
would consider some of the top from what you've heard from
some of our facilitators. Dr. Coleman, let's start with you.
Coleman: Well, first
of all I would like to say that I'm extremely happy that we
are able to have this platform for discussing health-related
problems. It is extremely important that we understand that
in order to actually be able to do some of the other things
that we are interested in doing, your health has got to be
at a good level.
Holloway: Because you
can't do anything else if you're not healthy.
Coleman: Can't do very
much else if you're in bad health. And that includes the youth
as well as the older members of our population. We covered
a number of items that are extremely important, but if there's
one thing that I see that seems to permeate all of the different
areas it's getting involved. All of us need to get involved
with what we are trying to accomplish, whether it's from the
standpoint of education, whether it's health or whether it's
enhancement of any of the other business practices that we're
talking about, getting involved and getting other people involved,
even getting the youth involved and starting at an early age
so that we can start looking at things from the standpoint
of what's going to happen in future generations; not just
what's happening now, but what's going to happen in the future.
That means that we all have to play a role in making a difference
at an early stage.
Holloway: So health,
good health and getting involved in all these areas. Dr. Johnson,
what about you? What are your general comments from what you've
heard.
Johnson: Well Jay,
it's a pleasure to be here, first of all. I'd like to say
that. When we look at all the factors that impact on African
American males and the resultant outcomes for African American
males we have to turn to education. When you look at what's
going on with African American males in the education arena,
one has to be a little bit dismayed. While progress is clearly
being made, the progress is not nearly what it ought to be.
I think this conference is a good first step in addressing
that aspect of the issues dealing with African American males.
Let me take just a moment to
identify a parallel. The Department of Public Instruction
five years ago created a summit to talk about the issues of
poor academic performance, particularly for African Americans
and other minorities, but particularly African Americans.
And African American males represent the category with the
poorest performance on our state and national test. Out of
that summit grew the idea to have an annual conference. The
conference has expanded, under the leadership of Marvin Pittman
who is sitting out in the audience, from the first year of
200 people to, this past April, 2000 people of all hues to
talk about best practices. One of the things that we did when
we conceived this notion of bringing this to the forefront
was that we stole the mantra from the environmentalists, "Think
globally but act locally," and that was part of the process
that we used at our conference. We said, "We want you
to go away from here with a plan to act locally."
Holloway: And you all
developed a blueprint. We want to talk more in detail about
that as we move on.
Johnson: Yes, that's
the point I'm trying to make. There is a very strong parallel
here, and that would be the one thing that I've heard in one
way or another come out of the discussions.
Holloway: Thank you.
Milton Jordan, you've heard the highlight of the facilitators
as well the participators. What are your thoughts overall.
Jordan: Well Jay, actually
I heard three things that I thought were very encouraging.
One was in the discussion of health someone mentioned the
concept of wellness, but wellness is a mindset. It's a way
that you think about health. And the whole principle to wellness
begins with the idea that I am responsible for my health,
not the healthcare community. I think if we can promote the
notion that I individually am responsible," and it boils
down to, "What is it that I personally must do to maintain
a spirit of wellness, spiritually, mentally, emotionally and
physically?"
The other thing I heard came
from the people who talked about the emerging leadership breakout
session, and they talked about what is the first step of change,
that is, shifting the paradigm. The problem is not what we
see, it is how we see it that's the problem. And all of us
are going to have to have major paradigm shifts in order to
create change and sustain it.
The third thing I thought was
really quite interesting is to replicate and duplicate the
weed and seed program from the criminal justice breakout session.
And I would just add one other thing about that, and that
is that we're going to have to link it with after-care, because
changing from crime to contribution is not a short-term process.
And it's going to take more than sitting some youngsters or
some young people or criminals down in a room and telling
them that they have a choice. It's going to take some long-term
commitment consistently over a number of years with people
who care about them and who are willing to walk the last mile
with them.
Holloway: Thank you,
Milton. I have observed, as we all have from the breakout
of facilitators and from listening to you, that we probably
have four major categories here that I'd like to direct the
rest of our discussion on, and I'll tell you why. Health,
because of what we mentioned earlier-if you're not practicing
good health or wellness you can't be here to resolve a lot
of these issues; the spiritual-the foundation, some moral
consciousness and some spiritual basis; education-to continue
to be a contributing member of society and to further that
education and close that achievement gap; and the criminal
justice-you've got to stay away from crime before you can
do any of these. So when we look at all four of these, this
is perhaps what we can look at in getting involved and taking
action in these.
Let's talk about the health category
first. Prostate cancer was one thing that was mentioned from
the breakout session, but there was a general theme of just
changing, how do you call it, doc? Changing your lifestyle?
Coleman: Lifestyle
changes, lifestyle issues and also the point that Mr. Jordan
makes, that we have to take control of our life and our lifestyle
and take control of our health and health-related problems.
As I said, when we go to our physicians we talk with them,
we bond with them, we ask questions and expect answers. Know
enough about what is going on with your health and with your
history so that you know what questions to actually ask. A
general sense of wellness is what we need to be aiming for.
If we are looking at the problems related to the disparities
in health, especially from the standpoint of vascular disease
and problems that will result in problems associated with
heart disease or strokes, kidney disease, these are problems
that are significant in our society, and particularly prominent
among African Americans. If we were to go to a dialysis unit
in this state mostly what we would see would be African Americans;
when we look at the number of people who will have problems
associated with diabetes and hypertension. And some of the
fallacies and some of the problems and myths that we have
been faced with throughout the years we need to begin to deal
with and get rid of. And again, that takes some education,
because if we can make some changes in our health at an early
stage, then we can reduce the development of those subsequent
problems that will lead to heart attacks and strokes and kidney
disease. So the wellness issue that I was referring to refers
to the general health and taking control of those things that
will make a difference in your life. There is no reason why
you have to smoke. There is no reason why you have to drink.
No reason why you have to use drugs. There are things that
we can do that can make an enormous difference in our life,
and we have to take charge of that ourselves.
Holloway: And remove
the fear factor. One of the three things they mentioned was
being proactive. Also looking at your family history. But
the overall thing is that if you can control this or at least
influence it by the choices you make in your lifestyle, which
has a lot to do with moral and spiritual values. Milton, do
you want to comment on that as one of these foundational things?
Jordan: Yeah, exactly,
and to add something that came out of the religion breakout
group, and that is outreach. You see, one of the interesting
things is that the people who do the destructive lifestyle
things congregate one place, and the people who don't do it
congregate someplace else. If the people who congregate in
here-and I suspect you can see 3,000 or 4,000 in this edifice-I
would like to challenge people who have these kind of edifices
to spend some Saturday nights out in the street with the people
who are involved in destructive lifestyle choices, and demonstrate
that it is okay. That having a cigarette hung out of your
mouth does not make you a man. That you can be a man without
smoking. That you don't have to drink until your drunk. The
term on the street is toe it from the floor. You don't have
to do that. But you see, if they don't ever see a model. If
they don't ever see a model, if the only place you come here
is on Sunday morning and you never go to them, they are not
coming to you to figure out how not to drink. We have to go
to them. We don't have to preach to them, we don't have to
involve ourselves, we don't have to necessarily encroach on
their rights, but we have to model the lifestyle and we have
to engage them. So I would love to see pastors declare a Sunday
morning moratorium for a Saturday night outreach.
Holloway: So as we
look at drawing attention to the spiritual and moral values,
then people can come to have a better appreciation for education
and hopefully be more prepared and more knowledgeable to deal
with some of these issues, which now let's hear about some
of the specific things that the DPI, Department of Public
Instruction. And you use that as an analogy of what we can
do with some of these issues in an African American male summit.
Tell us more details about that, Dr. Johnson.
Johnson: Well, we saw
the need, as we see the need in this particular arena, and
we wanted to raise it to a higher level of importance. So
we had the conference, and we were very careful to encourage
people from the various communities to send teams and we had
time set aside for the teams to actually begin to write a
plan. We provided a model, and several teams went back to
their communities and actually began to implement a model
for dealing with the issue of closing the gap in achievement.
Each year we have sessions on how to produce better learning
outcomes for students at our conference. And I would hope
and expect from this initial meeting, this summit, we might
decide that something like this needs to occur annually, but
in the context of "what did you do locally?" In
some places there will be a lot done, and in some places there
will still need to be things done. But to come back together
with discussions of what we did and what we tried and what
worked and what didn't work would be very, very useful.
Now, I want to go to one more
thing. The agency is very serious about this issue, so the
state superintendent about a month or so ago announced the
creation of a section devoted exclusively to closing the gap
in achievement between African American and other minority
kids and white kids. The first time in the history of this
state that that's been done. Resources to support the work
of that section have been identified. And we're just as excited
as we can be that for the first time in the history of this
state you've got a statewide elected official, who happens
not to be African American, who has gone on record as saying
this is an intolerable situation. We cannot, we must not and
we will not let it go on. So that's real important.
Holloway: I have noticed,
gentlemen, in each of your comments that there are two kind
of themes. There are some things that African American men
can take away that we've heard from some of the breakout sessions
that you've talked about that we can do on our own. Decisions,
lifestyle, morals, going out to the corner, that churches
can do. The other things external to our control that state
agencies and government officials can do. And I'd like to
get your reaction on what viewers and men across the state,
and the women that are involved with the men can actually
encourage or begin to do or think about.
Jordan: Let me just
talk about one thing with this health thing, because it's
very practical and it's really very easy to do. First thing,
do I have insurance? If I don't have insurance I am not likely
to access the healthcare community. So my question is: Is
every man at this conference willing to go back and ask your
closest compadres that question? Do you have insurance? Do
you have medical insurance that you can access if you need
it?
Secondly, are you willing to
take someone who is unwilling to go get an annual physical?
Are you willing to put them in your car and take them to get
a physical. It takes that kind of personal continuing commitment.
Now here is the other part. Let's
talk about prostate cancer. We don't like to discuss stuff
that seems to be embarrassing. Now, I know why a lot of brothers
do not like the prostate examination. There is a psychological
problem with that. Do what we have to do to get over it, but
get over it! Because until they come up with a better way.
Like, I don't like needles. I cannot figure out for the life
of me why they can put a clothespin on my thumb and check
my blood and they're still sticking a little charge of metal
in me. I don't understand that. But they just haven't made
that progress yet. So I suffer through the needles. I think
we've got to suffer through some of these exams. And what
I say is, we have got to be willing to those people that we
are close with, to those people that we know, we've got to
be willing to say to our constituency, "Let's go do this."
Not, "You ought to go do it," "Let's go do
it."
Holloway: Those are
some real practical things. Dr. Coleman, you were going to
respond.
Coleman: Well I was
going to say that it's also important from the standpoint
of the organizations and the various agencies that are available
in the state that we do some partnering. We need to partner
with the churches, with the state organizations, with organizations
such as the Old North State Medical Society which I belong
to.
Holloway: These are
black doctors across the state.
Coleman: That's right,
it represents the African American physicians over the state.
But setting up a plan where we could actually reach people
from a state-wide standpoint. It actually is one of the things
that we are doing presently and we plan to actually enhance
that, but partnering. Your question was how can we merge some
of these things, and partnering with the various organizations,
especially the church. The church has always been the backbone
of much of what has happened in our community. It's one of
the best ways to reach the people. As was stated before, you're
not going to reach all the people right there in the church,
but you've got to start somewhere. That's certainly one of
the ways that we can partner. But there are other ways. And
I think it's just a matter of the various agencies recognizing
who they are, where they are and actually getting together
and formulating a plan for how we can do some of these problems,
especially from the standpoint of health, which is what I'm
particularly interested in, the health disparity issues.
Holloway: Now, one
of these last categories of a foundational piece that I talked
about earlier-if you're in good health, you've got your spiritual
and moral values clear on who you are and what you're about
and you value education, your education is together, now you
need to stay away from the criminal justice system so that
we can resolve or attempt to address all these other issues
we're talking about. But in many instances, everyone knows-as
one of the speakers said at the conference earlier-that there
are many negative issues about black men in the criminal justice
system. But let's talk about some of the practical things-Milton,
you were in that session-that people can take away from and
do positively right away.
Jordan: I think there
are a couple of things. Number one, you can become a person
who simply will not tolerate the sale and purchase of stolen
property. It is not enough for you to say, "I will not
buy hot stuff." It is necessary for you to say to your
friends, "I will not tolerate you buying hot stuff."
Now, everybody who knows me in Durham understands that if
I'm around you and somebody comes up to you and offers to
sell you something that does not have a sale ticket, I am
going to take out my cell phone and call the police and I
am going to tell them that I think that that person has just
bought something stolen. Now, you can be upset with me, you
can be mad with me, it does not matter to me, because if you're
buying hot goods, you are making crime make sense. I don't
care how cheap it is, I don't care how much of a bargain it
appears to be, you are making crime make sense. A very practical
thing, stop buying it.
Holloway: Dr. Johnson,
let me ask you, how has the criminal justice system affected
our black youth, particularly black males, in the public school
system?
Johnson: I'd like to
change the premise of your question. Really what happens is
you can predict fairly well what the prison population is
going to be by the success of students in school, boys particularly
and their reading levels. I don't know this to be a fact,
but I was in a meeting not too long ago in which the comment
was made that prison planners look at the percent of fourth
grade boys reading below grade level as their market for who
is going to be in the prison system.
Holloway: So that's
why closing the gap is so important.
Johnson: It's so essential.
I mean, that is still the single best predictor of success
beyond school and how well students do in reading at the early
years. Unfortunately school success is also related to economic
conditions, but not exclusively and schools do, in fact, make
a difference. There are such things as schooling effects,
strong principles, strong teachers and this program is not
long enough to go into all the details of examples of that,
but schools do make a difference. But schools alone don't
make enough of a difference. That's why one of the suggestions
that came up from this group, getting men more involved in
tutoring and mentoring, long-term associations with youngsters
at risk, getting institutions of higher education more actively
involved. Excellent examples, just a little personal aside,
I was at a meeting and speaking pretty much like I am now
and one young lady came up to me and she said, "How serious
are you about what you just said?" and I said, "Very
serious." And she said, "How many kids are you tutoring?"
And I said, "Well, right now none, but two years ago."
And she said, "No, I don't want to hear about two years.
I've got three boys right now, two brothers both special-ed
kids and then another kid who is bright but for some reason
is not performing. I want you to tutor all three." And
I said, "I'll do it." So we really need to challenge
ourselves that kind of way.
Holloway: Dr. Coleman
do you want to make. We have about 30 seconds, any concluding
comments you'd like to make before we.
Coleman: Just briefly
I want to reiterate the importance of taking charge of your
health, doing the things that you know can be positive to
a better outcome for yourselves and for generations behind
you.
Holloway: Well gentlemen,
time has moved very quickly. It was impossible to cover all
of these topics. It's also impossible to develop a specific
plan of action this short and even in one day, but we have
a great job to do and we hope that we've outlined those things.
We have premiered our new season
with this program because we are committing Black Issues
Forum and UNC-TV's statewide resource to facilitating
this continuing and critical discussion. So if you would like
more information about these issues and about the resources
that we are offering at UNC-TV and Black Issues Forum
to continue this discussion, please contact us at the address,
telephone and fax number and email addresses, as well as the
website that you see on your screen now. So thanks to our
program guests and to the summit participants. And thank you
for joining us. We invite you to join us each Friday night
at 11:00 on UNC-TV Black Issues Forum. You have a blessed
evening and a good night.
[APPLAUSE - THEME MUSIC]
Voiceover: This program
is made possible in part by contributions from UNC-TV viewers
like you.
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