NEW YORK
A panel of high-profile academics, activists and political leaders gathered in New York on Friday to tackle what they called the most pressing issue facing African Americans in the post-civil rights era: the plight of the Black male.
Charles J. Ogletree, who teaches and directs the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard University’s Law School, convened the forum “Winning Strategies for Young Black Men” to propose strategies on how to close the achievement gap among Black boys and their White counterparts.
“I’m on a move to save African American boys,” said Ogletree, who is one of the country’s most prominent legal scholars. “If we don’t save them, the ideas of families, personal responsibility, jobs, education, just won’t happen.”
More than a 1,000 people—mostly educators, government officials and community leaders—gathered in a large auditorium overlooking the Chelsea Piers in Manhattan to strategize on what the nation’s response should be to such a vexing problem. The forum was co-sponsored by Sulliavan & Cromwell, a law firm, and Goldman Sachs, an international financial firm.
The statistics of Black male incarceration and high school drop out rates are alarming. In Chicago, for example, 45 percent of African American men between the ages of 20 and 24 are unemployed. Only 18 percent of Black men in Chicago have earned a college degree. The numbers are similar in other major urban areas throughout the country.
“A lot of young Black boys look around, and they assume at an early age that they are not going to make it,” said Dr. Henry J. Holzer, an economics professor at Georgetown University and a participant in Ogletree’s forum.
