Modern Rites of Passage for boys

[WaveWhisperer]

Presence of Fathers to raise, groom, and provide example to their sons. Rites of passage would supplement that, because it would be your Dad acknowledging your status that would stamp your transition.

 

[Neuromancer]

I like this

What are the benefits of planting veg and fruit do you reckon?

Teaches you to be patient, attentive and stead fast. You don't want to neglect the plant it will die but you don't want to over water either.

I just made some Kombucha. While not as intensive as planting fruits of veggies it was a similar process due to the SCOBY being a living organism you have to feed and tend to.

 

[Neuromancer]

Think about your own city, the one you came up in.

What did you need to know as a man?
Design something around it.

I split my time between The East Coast and the South, and so the environment plays a part into expectations.

In Houston, a milestone was getting your driver's permit, then license, then car. I distinctly remember the first time I got on the freeway by myself.
NYC, it was taking the train by yourself. There was no handholding when I had to go grab something from fam in Manhattan.

If it came to violence, both spots had pistols. But in TX you ran into shotguns and rifles, and often not being held by someone your age and color, but by someone old, white, and sometimes a Fed. It's like you can reason with a 15 year old knucklehead, but not a 45 year old man, crushed bud light cans in teh background.

You might not have knocked doors in BK trying to mow some lawns.
You would in Houston. And that invites a danger that I didn't encounter in Flatbush.

The Masaai had one set of rituals, and the Somba people had something else.

The rites were shaped by their environments, their histories, and their beliefs.

That said, I don't get the sense TLR even really cares about this topic at all. I'm just rapping into the ether.

No I appreciate this a lot. I think it's important that the locales be taken into account. I've lived in the east coast most of my life. I spent a little time in FL but I could see where the differences would need to be noted. Knocking on doors to shovel snow was something we did do and I think that speaks to what you're saying .

 

[MyApps]

1st: playing a physical team sport for 3-5 years, preferably starting at ages 10

2nd: getting a job WHILE in high school years

3rd: graduating college

4th: receiving a job promotion

5th: international travel

6th: marriage

7th: child / children

8th: permanent home (condo, house, or equivalent)

This is just what I could piece together off top of my head.

 

[Matt504]

A lot of BLACK BOYS do not have actual developmental differences, they have perceived development differences.
If the teachers WEREN'T RACIST, they would not be sending Rakim n'nem to get an IEP.

New studies challenge the claim that black students are sent to special ed too much

Two new quantitative studies find disproportionality in special education due to black, and Hispanic, students under-identified for disabilities at school

hechingerreport.org

Black Children at White Schools Are More Likely to Be Told They Have a Learning Disability

Disability classifications in the U.S. are subjective and inconsistent, and prone to bias based on context.

www.vice.com

Confronting special education’s race problem

umdearborn.edu

This not new, nor is it news.

As Granny would say, "There's nothing wrong with the boy".

I can only take that pushing a topic about Black Boys and Rites of Passage into Black Manhood as an at attempt to derail the conversation, and push that white dude's agenda.

The paper you cite does not squarely address the mountain of evidence that's out there.
The fact that some "diverse" kids did well a year later, doesn't even attempt to address racism INHERENT in teaching Black Children, in particular Black Boys.

It in effect says that parents should keep their black boys at home a year long to combat effects of known racism.

That's not an argument you should be making, imo.

You claim "a lot of Black boys do not have actual developmental differences" and then you go on to link three articles, one of which challenges the validity of the other two.

I'm talking about developmental differences, differences in brain maturation between boys and girls. We see a gap between white girls and white boys as well (because the developmental difference is related to sex). I'm not talking about learning disabilities or kids being placed in special education. I agree these are problems just as I agree that Black children face racism that their white counterparts do not in learning institutions but that is a separate issue.

I'm not attempting to derail the conversation, I only brought this up to challenge the notion that boys are doing fine in this society, it's simply untrue. I am not arguing that parents should keep their boys home to combat racism, I'm arguing that they should keep their boys at home so they are better equipped when they do enter kindergarten.

Why do you think this is?

Why are black boys so dis interested in these programs?

I don't think they're disinterested, there are many unique challenges Black boys are facing beyond the developmental differences that boys of all races face and it's difficult to pin down one specific thing that could be a magic bullet. One thing that I believe would make a dramatic difference is more male teachers, especially Black male teachers if we're talking specifically about Black boys.

So there would be a class with nothing but boys learning exactly what? While the girls are getting even further ahead than them anyway. Seems counterintuitive.

Children being prepared for school should be a parent's duty anyhow.

There'd still be girls in the class, they'd just be one year younger than the boys, here's a related study:

First in the Class? Age and the Education Production Function

Abstract. We estimate the effects of relative age in kindergarten using data from an experiment where children of the same age were randomly assigned to different kindergarten classmates. We exploit the resulting experimental variation in relative age in conjunction with variation in expected...

direct.mit.edu

 

[Givethanks]

Dancing with girls at your first dance

 

[Dave24]

Subbed

 

[Ol’Otis]

yall talking about building campfires and shyt but that's not what we're missing.

True

 

[skylove4]

Well a lot of y’all who think y’all are leaders but are ignonat of our history and think all of our ills are caused by silly shyt like hip hop have to realize y’all aren’t really fully formed men. Y’all hold a myopic view point of the world and are incapable of teaching until y’all humble yourself and learn basic shyt about the workings of the world and how we as black men have to navigate it

 

[skyrunner1]

In other cultures, a boy is trained by his father, male kin and other men in his group to survive on the land. So when it comes time for his rite of passage, he is sent/left far away from the village, and has to survive.

• Build a shelter
• Find water
• Gather food
• Hunt and Trap
• Protect himself from animals and the elements

If/When he comes home, he's ready to do what needs to be done. He's proven it to himself, and to others. He has the skills. And he has the determination to see things through.

How does that translate to an urban society, to the Black Man in America?

That's where I would start.

So in the example above there is training then you would have the initiation. Where in middle of night you are ripped from your bed to represent being ripped from your mother and then you have to survive. The training needed in modern times would be much different but how would you perform the initiation also?

Training needed in modern times would include, self defense and personal training/dieting (I just see too many out of shape brother of all ages who dont seem to value health), after that need to push marketable skills (in past the shelter, water, food, hunting was all to be able to survive and provide, in these times that happens with skills you get to trade for currency), Critical thinking, debate skills, public speaking (the amount of youth I have spoken to in

recent times who seem like mumble rappers is astonishing, they cant express themselves and I am starting to see it with the girls also, I dont know if its the increase use of video games but these anti social behaviors seem to come from that group, lol.. ) I might have to throw code switching in there too, lol.. (you have to be able to communicate and move in different rooms, too many brehs this seems to lose them also) Invest (first invest in yourself then have your dollars work for you)

I dont know how initiation would look like above but that is a big part from what I have seen and read in past when it talks about the transition from boy to manhood.

I wonder if Tom Curry or T. Hasan Johnson has weighed in on this?

The intellectual wing of the Black Manosphere, to my tastes, spends WAY TOO MUCH TIME talking about Feminism, Black Feminists, and the victimization of Black Men.

I would have to dig in crates but most dont touch these topics too much because the medium of yt basically punishes you for bringing it up. You wont get views, so most wont touch it. I have seen BGS do things on anima/animus in past. Only time I have seen it is if going thru the blog era stuff and they bring up manhood in the making. Black Brain Trust had a great series touching on stuff like this, got less than 300 views. They breakdown the book Archetypal Dimensions Of the Psyche by Marie-Louise von Franz (analyst and disciple of Carl Jung)

 

[International Playa]

In the 90s, it was summer camp.

 

[BruhManFromTheFifthFlo]

Something involving hoes

 

[Wild self]

Why do you think this is?

Why are black boys so dis interested in these programs?

When teachers make learning into a chore and make reading into a disciplinary punishment instead of a joy to read, anti-intellectualism takes place. Treating the foundation of learning as a jail bid, is basically making black boys hate the process of learning.

America needs to adopt the Scandinavian education system and adopt TED Talks seminars and drop the BS standardized testing, or else more school shootings will occur and more black boys will drop out.

 

[The Burger King]

Some type of Boy Scouts program for black teenage boys would do wonders, in my opinion.

Community centers with actual curriculum designed to empower black boys (as opposed to the generic “after school program” meme thrown around here on The Coli) in every major city would do wonders, I think.

Kind of like how the NOI used to do back in the day.

Even if you go watch Crips & Bloods: Made in America, they talk about how they wanted to be Boy Scouts and were rejected.

A lot of the allure of gang culture for young black men comes from an unfulfilled need to feel like they’re apart of something bigger.

Personally, I’m working towards opening up a Skating Rink here in Dallas.

I know it may seem unrelated to the topic, but I’ve noticed skating rinks are making a serious comeback in the black community and it seems to be the one place where the youth can go that isn’t a negative or toxic environment for them.

I’m going to start there and then start hosting events and workshops, then expand and try and create some type of YMCA type of deal aimed at young black teens.

 

[High Art]

You claim "a lot of Black boys do not have actual developmental differences" and then you go on to link three articles, one of which challenges the validity of the other two.

I'm talking about developmental differences, differences in brain maturation between boys and girls. We see a gap between white girls and white boys as well (because the developmental difference is related to sex). I'm not talking about learning disabilities or kids being placed in special education. I agree these are problems just as I agree that Black children face racism that their white counterparts do not in learning institutions but that is a separate issue.

I'm not attempting to derail the conversation, I only brought this up to challenge the notion that boys are doing fine in this society, it's simply untrue. I am not arguing that parents should keep their boys home to combat racism, I'm arguing that they should keep their boys at home so they are better equipped when they do enter kindergarten.

His point is that many "deficiencies" that black boys have is due in part to them coming up in a racist system that targets them more than any other group. Period. Even more so, many of the very same studies that are used to show how poorly black boys are doing and are used as justifications for what amounts to calls for remedial education for black boys social consequences be damned are based off of black boy's performance in a racist system that targets them in the first place. It's like trusting the judgment of a racist on anything involving a black person. It makes little sense. Everything I see mentioned is done to ignore the ones being racist and put the blame on the black boys. One might as well say it is because they are inferior, not because the system actively works to sabotage them. It's almost like saying an immigrant child does better than a lot of ADOS children because ADOS kids aren't ready. And while I understand that fixing the system in itself is much harder and that solutions should be had to counter the effects until then, creating a system that effectively punishes these boys is not a good one. Home-schooling in itself could probably be better or a long-term planning approach to education that I underwent would be a lot better.

In any case, people should sit down and talk to these boys. they'll find that many of them are normal people and many of them are quite bright and the main issue being that no one takes their issues seriously nor no one helps them understand that the world, for the most part, is actually against them. Much of the stuff we see in gang violence and so on is them attempting to create their own micro-societies where their concerns are heard and understood. The initiations there exist to weed out posers that would threaten their groups. The rites of passage that many people are talking about here won't take hold or mean anything if the concerns of these boys is not considered.