Mentoring Bridging the Gap for African American Male Student Success

Background

Educating African American males has become a nationwide epidemic that involves many social and economic issues that play significant roles in the overall success and failure of the student. Many African American males are born into low socioeconomic environments and lack the structure needed for educational, personal, and social growth. Education is impacted by many social factors beyond the control of administrators/leaders of schools. However, due to a lack of knowledge, administrators are not prepared to grasp a hold of how to educate African American males. America's perception of today's African American males is that of misguided pupils waning in the smolder of America's ghettos (Anderson, 2008). When thinking of what it takes to become a factor in today's 21st-century workforce/society as an African American man, it drives me to wonder when will today's youth be prepared to make a change/difference. Educating African American males to take on a culture of its own due to the male processing information and maturing at slower rates than females, but educating the African American male is an entirely different monster that has caught the wisest of educators/administrators by surprise (West & Smiley, 2012). Then again, does it catch the majority by surprise because most of the perils facing our black males are planned acts of genocide on a population of people?