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Showing posts from June, 2008

Part II: Black Males and The Prison-to-Schools Pipeline

I was born a black male, raised in a single parent household in an impoverished, crime-plagued, neighborhood on the lower-eastside of Detroit . The odds were stacked against me. I’ve been asked more times than I can remember: “How did you make it out?” I’ve asked myself that question more times than I have been asked it. My ticket out of poverty and the door to a better future was getting an education. Amazingly, I was just shy of my 29 birthday when I received my Ph.D. in political science from Ohio State University . Unfortunately, for black men born under similar conditions in America , I am the exception, rather than the rule. In June 2006, the Washington Post produced an intriguing series on being a black man in America . In the first article, “ At the Corner of Progress and Peril ,” the Post laid out some mind-numbing data (a book that is worth buying was produced from the series as well as an interactive website that is worth visiting). According to the author of the articl