ON GETTING WHAT YOU ASK FOR

Breaking Away: A perverse peer pressure to do less than your best in school is holding back large numbers of black Americans. (BOB HERBERT, 7/10/03, NY Times)

I have no idea what the stats are, but I know this perverse peer pressure to do less than your best in scholarly and intellectual pursuits is holding back large numbers of black Americans, especially black boys and men. The other day I had a long conversation with a 15-year-old named David Blocker, who also happens to be from Washington. Until January, when he was expelled, David was a student at the Hyde Leadership Public Charter School.

"We were so lackadaisical," he said. "One-third of our school was failing three or more classes. The pressure from my friends was mostly to chill and, like, do what you want to do. People were not doing their work, just coming to school for fun, coming to school high, just playing sports, not really knowing what school was for."

David said he went right along with the crowd. "It's hard to come in and really do work when everybody is just chillin' and playin' around. If
everybody's doing that, then you're going to want to chill and play around, too."

What was interesting was that David took a summer math course at a highly regarded private prep school and got an A-minus. But when he came back to Hyde, which was not as rigorous academically, he promptly failed math.

"I guess I'm responsive to how my environment is," he said. [...]

David's older sister, Nomoya Tinch, who lives in Brooklyn and is an intern at Essence magazine, said there was a time when she so craved the approval of her peers that she had turned into "this all-out wild child, this ponytail honey who was out there cursing and being bad and just didn't care."

Then comes the flip side: the all-out wild child has to walk onto a college campus or into a professional environment, and suddenly the feelings of inadequacy swell up like a wave that is about to overwhelm you.

These are not small issues. They are the day-to-day reality for millions of people, in most cases good and talented people who have had an already tough road made tougher by self-imposed roadblocks, and bad advice from their peers.

Gosh, where would black kids get the impression that their poor performance is expected and acceptable and will be compensated for by others? Posted by Orrin Judd at July 10, 2003 9:34 AM