Prevention

As we came to the end of the tour and walked toward the main office, the assistant principal shook his head and pointed out a boy, no more than eight or nine years old, who was standing outside the door to his office. Gesturing to the child, the assistant principal said to me, "Do you see that boy? There's a prison cell in San Quentin waiting for him." Surprised by his observation, I asked him how he was able to predict the future of such a young child. He replied, "Well, his father is in prison; he's got a brother and an uncle there too. In fact, the whole family is nothing but trouble. I can see from how he behaves already that it's only a matter of time before he ends up there too." Responding to the certainty with which he made these pronouncements, I asked, "Given what you know about him, what is the school doing to prevent him from going to prison?"

I was irritated and stopped reading for a few seconds to really take in what the assitant principal in Noguera's quick vignette in The Trouble with Black Boys. It's not so much that it surprised me that the assitant principle actually said this, but that it continues to happen to this day. The Pre-Prison Tracking of Black and Latino Students is a crucial issue that continues to be prevalent in urban school environments. School adminastrations tend to look the other way instead of lending a hand, figuratively and literally speaking. A student's future should not be anticipated behind bars. Who would we be as educators and mentors if all we see in a student's future with a rough past and rocky road is nothing more but repeating history over and over again. As Noguera asks, what are schools doing to prevent this from repeating?

Rather than have cops in schools strip search you and have you walk in metal detectors, why not allow and give the space for trust to be built? Why not provide students with alternative ways of spending time after school like offering after school programs and youth mentoring and support groups, or even as simple as school clubs being funded and available for students. Rather than have students keep going a certain route, provide an alternative ways of reaching somewhere, especially somewhere that doesn't lead them behind bars. Black and Latino students are continously being criminalized, profiled, tagged, and tracked for minor offenses, such as discipline problems. Why not rather than having to show you're in control, prove that you are and find alternative ways for minority students to find a gateway through their emotions and issues and allow them to find something or someone to believe in and trust and not have to consistently prove something of themselves by notorious criminalizing activities. The trouble with minorites, doesn't just begin with them or their past, it continues to perpetuate through schools and academic adminstrators who refuse to aknowledge that they too are also a part of the problem.