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“Father Figures” Fill The Gap

by Allan Appel | Apr 30, 2007 8:36 am

(2) Comments | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

IMG_1458.JPG“Unless we take steps we are simply losing a generation of our young African-American and Latino men.”

From that insight came Positive Young Brothers, a promising program aimed at addressing youth violence in New Haven and founded by Malik Ramiz and Eldorado Anderson (far right and far left, back row in the photo above), a computer technology teacher and former music teacher, respectively, at Amistad Academy.

Amistad Director Matt Taylor was recalling that insight at an event Thursday night at the school for the year-old program, which is gaining momentum as the city seeks alternatives to the now-dead proposed teen curfew.

IMG_1459.JPG“Look,” Taylor said. He gestured around the capacious orchestra room at Amistad filled up with some 50 kids, mostly in the school-required neat khaki pants and smart blue polo shirt uniform, and 50 well-dressed African-American men. “I’d say more than 90 percent of these kids have no father figure in their lives. Malik and Eldorado had a dream, to bring in father figures for them, to talk about what being a man means. To foster strategies to combat negative peer pressure. Amistad has supported this completely. This is really a dream come true.”

Like a Big Brothers program but with an urgent behavior-modification component, Positive Young Brothers Mentoring program takes kids on trips to hear inspirational and sometimes controversial speakers, such as the poet Amiri Baraka; organizes car washes (self reliance is a key idea) to support events; and sometimes just has participants hang out to have fun, which is what fathers do, or should do with their sons.

IMG_1457.JPGHere was Amistad eighth-grader—and future veterinarian—Jensen Davila greeting another participant Ernest Grant, grandfather of John Tyler Markette, a sixth-grader. Most of all there was communication, respect, and connection, and Thursday’s event was organized to convey all that, a conversation billed as “Conscious Conversation, Boys to Men.”

Ramiz and Anderson brought together an impressive panel of role models, all minority men. They included a Yale psychiatrist, a Christian minister, two imams, an official from the state juvenile department of justice, and the first African-American and only the fourth American to sail solo around the world.

That man, Captain William Pinkney (pictured in the middle of the photo at the top, along with Cheron Mack, on the right, an Amistad 8th grader, and Joshua Horne, a 7th grader from New Beginnings), is the “master-emeritus” of Amistad America. In his tale of what it was like to sail the Atlantic, he hit on themes of self-reliance and getting in touch with an inner guiding spirituality that will anchor a young individual in moments of crisis or tough choice on the street, These were among the major themes the adults were trying to get across to the young men.

Here’s a close paraphrase that riveted boy and and man alike:

“I spent 65 days on the sea, out of sight of land or mankind . . . I learned that we are all part of a great plan. When you look up at all those stars, you know you’re a part of it too. The force of the sea and earth that keeps those stars from colliding. You know you are a part of this, that you are no lesser but no greater than the sea and stars both. And when you feel that, you take pride in yourself as a human being, as part of this. That to me is what education has to entail, not just academics and degrees, but a kind of wisdom. So, surround yourself with positive people, and they can be young or old, but you must feel in them that they have some acknowledgement of this Force, and that is with a capital F, the thing I was trying to describe, not force, with a very small f, not the force of the gun, or of drugs. These people, of the kind who are here tonight for you will teach you and guide you and bring you to wisdom, and it goes on all your life. I’m 71, and I am still learning.”

IMG_1461.JPGIn the candor and humor, which were also very much part of the tough-love communications of the evening, Pinkney also made an important distinction between being a “daddy” and a “father.”

Any male, he said, can be the former, but to be a father, you have to be a friend, an example, a protector, and a communicator to your child. “I am tired of hearing girls on the street say, ‘He’s my baby’s daddy.’ That’s not the same as saying he’s the father.’”

That this critical distinction was not sufficiently understood was underlined, with frankness, by Minister Naeem Muhammad (sitting to Ramiz’s left in the photo above). A minister with the Nation of Islam, local organizer of the Million Man March, and former corrections officer, Muhammad said, “Too many of our young men don’t know anything of what it means to be a man except you have an organ the female does not have . . .what we need to do is give our young man a class in being a man. Yes,” he challenged the audience, “the emergency is such so that there should me military training in the African-American and Latino communities. Manhood training, that involves the protection of women and the community.”

IMG_1464.JPGSaying the same thing but in different terms was Pastor James Lane (to the left in the photo with psychiatrist Derrick Gordon) of the non-denominational Northend Church of Christ in Hartford. He was a colleague of Malik Ramiz when they worked together patrolling routes to schools in troubled areas of Hartford. “Too many men lack a moral compass,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many I’ve come to know who commit a terrible crime, who kill someone, but they never have thought in their life: If you hurt me, my wife will have no husband; my kids no father; the baseball time I work with will have to coach. This has to change.”

Ramiz also challenged kids, once they begin to understand a better definition of manhood, to see its connection to protection of others and service to a greater good. “What about snitching?” he said, citing a television program about kids who see no breakdown of responsibility to the community if they refuse to report crime to the cops because they lose peer standing. “That kind of peer pressure is deeply wrong,” he said.

Lane cited one of his programs in Hartford to rescue young kids working as lookouts for the drug dealers. “Some of the young brothers who were lookouts,” he said, “saw what we were trying to do in the community, and said ‘Give us some work to do and we’ll stop.’ So we didn’t wait around for a grant. We pooled our own money and hired some of these kids at $10 an hour to do cleaning, landscaping; one kid is working as an apprentice to a man who is a janitor. This inter-generational working together, by the way,” he added, “is extremely positive. There’s self reliance, and learning. And I’ll also tell you this: There is nothing like a good job takes a gun out of a kid’s hand.”

Since the imams, along with many of their bow-tied followers, were in strong evidence in the evening, a reporter was interested in whether the Positive Young Brothers program specifically had a special relationship with the Nation of Islam and if its teachings reflected that.

“No,” said Ramiz, “it just so happens that these gentlemen are here tonight. It’s all the positive messages of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism that are important to convey, the moral uplift, the spiritual sense, but, yes, the idea of protecting our community and especially women. If these latter ideas come more out of Nation of Islam thinking, so be it, they are very important to us. I mean when you hear these young boys and keeping on using the ‘b’ word for women and the things you see on television, it’s absolutely imperative that it change.”


IMG_1462.JPGAnd the boys themselves? What did they think of all this?

Jensen Davila (pictured) said he would think most, as he moves on to Amistad’s high school next year, of treating women better. “If I see someone disrespecting a woman, I’m going to do something about it.” And seventh-grader Blake Hill, pictured here (full disclosure: both Jensen and Blake are former students of your reporter, in his early-morning job as an Amistad reading coach), who says he wants to be an actor, commented, “I heard a lot of things here, and I’m going to stop hanging out with people who are doing crazy things.” Such as what? “I see these kids stealing bikes, and I’m not there anymore.”

To read a fuller portrait of Malik Ramiz, click here for an article from Connecticut Magazine. To enroll a child or learn of upcoming programs of Positive Young Brothers Mentoring, contact Malik Ramiz here or 860-833-0814.

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Comments

posted by: Veronica Conley on May 1, 2007  12:27pm

Mr. Ramese, I am so happy to see the progress in action. Keep up the good work. I have to say I am very sorry I missed the occassion. I will keep my eyes and ears open and try to recruit as well more young toward your focus. I see nothing but progression in your path. When it is in the hands to help and support others nothing but good will come out of it. When you have flyers post them to my site and I will print and Distribute them. God bless and stay focus.

P.S. We have to get these girls moving as well. I am ready but not focus as I should be. Looking forward in the transformation of better things for our youth. Very good job with good intentions Bring great reward. KEEP IT MOVING.

posted by: Queen Patterson on May 1, 2007  11:34pm

This is wonderful.  It is always easier to fix a child than to try to repair an adult.  Keep up the good work.  Nothing but good can come from so many helping hands.

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