Promises, Promises… Right from the start I was all in and fully committed to the PBS documentary American Promise and its companion text, Promises Kept, Raising Black Boys to Succeed in School and in Life. Recently widowed, I’ve had one black husband, one black father, two black grandfathers, four black uncles, 12 black male cousins, one black brother, six black nephews- and three black sons, so I’m deeply vested, all in and fully committed.
I anxiously awaited and heavily publicized the screening of American Promise on Facebook, Twitter and in my adult women’s Sunday School class. I sent emails, text messages and called a bunch of folks to remind them of the viewing time and to encourage them to watch and record. With great excitement and anticipation I sat down to view American Promise with Charles, our eldest son by one minute (he’s a twin). I encouraged Damon (the other twin) and Tanika, his wife and our daughter-in-love to watch it and asked Evan, our youngest, to put a pin in his grad school studies to stop and watch. In addition, a few days after the viewing I participated in a live and exciting Twitter chat (my first ever!) with the authors, hosted by an amazing group of fully-grown sister/women, Black Boomer Bloggers. When it arrived I carefully reviewed my copy of the companion book, Promises Kept and gave a copy to Damon with the request that when finished, he pass it on first to his brothers and then more broadly. As I said, I was vested, all in and fully committed. I wanted to like the documentary and I wanted to like the book. I wanted to be able to recommend both vigorously and broadly. But sadly I can’t, because I was and remain sorely disappointed.
I agreed to write a review of Promises Kept: Raising Black Boys to Succeed in School and in Life, by Joe Brewster, M.D., and Michele Stephenson with Hilary Beard. I was not asked to write a review of the PBS documentary, American Promise yet the two are inextricably joined and the book in many ways is derivative. For me the boundaries are too porous to act as constraints. And both the documentary and the book seem to suffer from the same failure of rigorous, critical thinking.
I admit I’m culpable for much of my disappointment. I may have been expecting too much and my expectations may have been too personal. After all, I attended an all girls prep school, my two younger sisters attended the same school and all three of us went to Wellesley. One of my sisters-in-law attended boarding school and then Harvard. Her brother, my late husband, CMadison, was a Dartmouth alum. CMadison and I enrolled Charles, Damon and Evan in prep school for a few years before deciding to homeschool them-a process we continued until the twins went off to Princeton and “the baby” went to Amherst. But that’s all in my past, we were done by 2000. So when I watched American Promise I was immediately struck by how little other than enrollment numbers had changed from 1968 when I first entered prep school, to 1991 when we removed our sons from prep school, to 1998 when Idris’ parents enrolled him in prep school. And while Dalton is an incredible institution with a formidable academic reputation, it really is not unique in the rarified air of prep schools so despite the fact that it is a protagonist in this drama, Dalton is not really the primary character.
Viewing American Promise was at times excruciating. I found myself muttering, pacing and sucking my teeth as the dance of “The Exceptional Negro Survives” played out yet again, with four year-old Idris in the lead. His impeccably educated parents with terminal degrees from some of the nation’s most elite and prestigious institutions seemed utterly bedazzled by the academic and social reputation of Dalton. So bedazzled they appeared blind to the real cost, the actual “price of the ticket.” And no, I’m not just talking about tuition. There’s always financial aid to assist with tuition. It may never seem like enough aid and private school tuition is no joke, but it’s just money, a fungible commodity which can be exchanged, replaced and reproduced, unlike holistic health. The full price of admission can’t be pegged in today’s adult dollars because it’s a price paid by the child and sometimes it’s a balloon payment.
In American Promise we watched black parents, not just Idris’ parents, make the decision to enroll their sons at Dalton without ever appearing to seek out any black Dalton alums, or black prep school alums from anywhere. Trust and believe, there are tons of black prep school alums in the Tri-State area. Prep school may have been a new and novel experience for this crop of black parents, but it has not been a new experience in 50 years. But the love of varied mythologies: The Myth of I’m the Only One; The Myth of That Was Then, This Is Now; The Myth of Post-Racial America; and The Myth of This is All Brand New necessitates a rendering of black alums invisible, their experiences irrelevant. Yet virtually every painful encounter recorded in American Promise was recognizable and predictable to most black prep school alums and their parents and could have been mitigated had anyone bothered to ask. But because the siren song of mythologies was so compelling we, the viewers, had to sit and watch these adorable little boys grow into bigger yet still adorable big boys struggling to hold onto their humanity while getting “shocked” over and over and over because yes, the perimeter fence of boundaries and expectations often is electrified.
In American Promise we watched black parents, not just Idris’ parents, compare battle scars and commiserate about the bias, the lack of understanding, the presumptions and assumptions, the omniscient systems of white supremacy and the weight of institutionalized racism at Dalton even as they struggled mightily to keep their sons there. What message did they think they were sending to their sons? “We are nothing outside the presence of ‘the (wealthy) other’.” Or “Eventually our being here really will be worth the price of your pain.” Why did none of those black parents consider a healthier, more self-sustaining alternative like a homeschooling cooperative? Black families are the fastest growing segment of homeschoolers and for a fraction (literally) of a year’s tuition at Dalton (even with financial aid) they could have arrayed a spectacular cadre of brilliant, black, conscious and culturally competent graduate students from Columbia, NYU, Hunter, The New School or any number of other excellent, post-secondary institutions-they’re in New York City for God’s sake! (Yeah, I’m still agitated!) Yet even in the midst of Idris’ visible anguish and apparent lack of superlative academic achievement, his parents would not let the Dalton dream die, they would not relent, they would not quit. Ultimately they won, Idris graduated from Dalton. I hope it will not prove to be a Pyrrhic victory.
In the middle of American Promise we hear Idris’ mother bemoan his lack of “drive” compared to her own at his age and near the end of the film we watch both parents display collective disappointment at his college admissions’ results. At no point in the film did Idris’ parents discuss the challenging intersection of race and class their son was navigating at home and abroad. Both “boot-strap” products of lower income families, Idris’ parents struggled mightily to succeed and they succeeded magnificently, both academically and professionally. But neither seemed inclined to examine how visions of past poverty standing unflinchingly in life’s rear view mirror can be a major incentive difficult to duplicate in the imagination of a solidly middle-class child. Like many formerly poor, currently upwardly mobile parents, Idris’ parents seemed convinced that since they’d provided him with the best of everything (or at least the best that money could buy), well then he should just “be the best” because, well they (his parents) wanted that for him, they paid for that for him and well, they deserved that for themselves as well. The truth of those axioms that sometimes less is more and everything that glitters ain’t gold flies in the face of a common myth born out of poverty, The Myth of If Anybody Had Given Me HALF of What I’m Giving You, I’d…(fill in the blank with something fantastical because only a childhood without money kept me from walking on water). So Idris does the dance of the exceptional Negro, this time balancing on the tightrope of class. He attends school where he has less access to wealth than the majority of the other students and lives at home where he has more access to wealth than his parents did as children. Yet despite seeming to be oblivious to this tightrope and it’s impact on Idris, his parents finish filming, release the documentary American Promise and then write the companion text, Promises Kept, Raising Black Boys to Succeed in School and in Life.
Promises Kept continues in the film’s presumptive vein, the kind of vein that evolves in an absence of critical thinking. In the film the absence of critical thinking centered on the cost-benefit analysis, or lack thereof. Idris gets dragged through a psychological keyhole for 12 years while his parents film it, and then has to deal with their visible disappointment when he’s not accepted into one of the Ivies. Yet many people, not just his parents deem the experience a worthwhile success because for the rest of his life he’ll be able to say “I went to Dalton.”
In Promises Kept the absence of critical thinking centers on the issue of the so-called “achievement gap.” The achievement gap issue is presented and accepted without vetting, without ever asking a fundamental question about definition, namely Should a determination of excellence be based on comparative analysis or on a singular assessment of potential, one’s personal best? People of good will may reason in good faith to different conclusions, but such questions must be asked. Should the goal be to ensure test scores of black boys reach parity with Caucasian-white and Asian boys? Are they, Caucasian-white and Asian, individually or jointly, the standard by which all others should be measured? Would it not be a more productive enterprise to focus on the holistic health and development of each child, thereby ensuring academic excellence as an inevitable by-product. I think redefining the achievement gap as the space between infinite potential and actual performance will yield far greater quantitative and qualitative results than a continuing focus on comparison with “the other.” Further an April 1, 2014 New York Times education article by Motoko Rich highlighted the fact that U.S. students trail Canada and several European and Asian nations in problem-solving skills, remain stuck in the middle in science and reading and are altogether lagging in mathematics according to the latest PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). These results from the 2012 test reflect an international achievement gap for all American students, ergo neither Caucasian-white nor Asian boys in the U.S. are faring well enough to be used as a standard for black boys. Would not our time and efforts be more productively spent focusing on the achievement gap that exists between the actual performance and the infinite potential of our children rather than the gap between their test scores? When we begin to focus on the individual achievement gap between performance and potential, higher and more competitive test scores will result. What impact would a shift in the energy and attention of black boys from acclimation and assimilation in the midst of uncomprehending others to academic achievement and attainment in holistically healthy environments? We have not discussed those critical questions because sadly, they are not presented in Promises Kept. Instead the authors begin and end the book working from the presumption that the primary goal of parents and schools should be to eliminate the conventionally defined achievement gap. This false equivalence of whiteness to greatness or at least goodness pervades Promises Kept because the conventionally defined achievement gap remains the constant talisman throughout the work.
Is there any good information in Promises Kept? Absolutely. Is the information new or original. No. Does the lack of novelty invalidate the information? No again. This is information that clearly needs to be shared repetitively and from generation to generation, since we appear to have difficulty retaining it. Bottom line: I am disappointed in American Promise and Promises Kept, but I am also very glad Idris’ parents created this body of work. I acknowledge and honor the commitment it represents. My prayer is that people who view American Promise– and I hope millions do, be they black or white, Asian or Hispanic, parents, educators, current students or alums; I hope they ask themselves and others probative and provocative questions after viewing it. My prayer also includes the hope that people who read Promises Kept-and again, I hope millions of different people from different backgrounds BUY it! and read it; and I hope they too will ask hard questions. And finally I pray that Idris’ parents give themselves some time to reflect on what they have learned about themselves while Idris gives himself some time to mature into full adulthood. Maybe then an assessment of whether promises have indeed been kept can be made more accurately.