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Black Male Conference Called Success

By Rosaland Tyler
Assistant Editor
New Journal and Guide

   While many young African American youth only get the opportunity to meet the assistant superintendent of schools, the chief of police or an FBI official during a crisis, about 250 young black males met such leaders face-to-face at the third annual Black Male Development Conference which was held May 3 in Chesapeake.
    The annual event is sponsored by the New Chesapeake Men for Progress. Speakers included influential African American men in the Chesapeake area such as Chesapeake’s assistant superintendent of schools, who moderated the event. Other speakers included Dr. William Ward, the city’s former mayor, as well as Chesapeake City Manager Dr. William E. Harrell, and Dr. Bisis Oladipupo, a Norfolk State University professor.
   “It was a great success,” said Dr. Tyrone Davis, a Hampton Roads psychologist who chairs the committee which plans the annual Black Male Development Conference. “The speakers were dynamite. The young men took a brief pledge of citizenship. It was a great event.
   “Elected officials were there,” Davis continued. “The police chief was there. That impressed me. People were able to ask questions, and the parents were able to feel that they are not in this by themselves.”
    Davis said he was particularly touched when he saw accomplished men, stoop to touch a young man’s shoulder. I heard them saying repeatedly, “Don’t stop, keep trying. You can do it.”
    Aimed at both parents and sons, the day-long event featured specialized workshops. Parents were encouraged to attend a two-hour morning conference that was aimed at adults.

Posted May 7, 2008

    "The thing with most young men is that they don’t know how to ask the question: ‘Show me how to do it,’ ” said Richard Griffin, co-chairman of the planning committee told the New Journal and Guide in an earlier interview.
   “The main difference I’ve seen from the first year to this year, is that the young men and their parents recognize that somebody is actually listening and trying to help them get things done.
   “What I’m starting to see, slowly, is that people see our concern and are starting to open up more. In our community we have so much reserve toward the system. But when we see the system is concerned, we see people and things change.”
    Griffin said a lot of young men want details, specific-exact particulars on how you safely pass from boyhood to manhood, “However, there is a mindset that thinks ‘if no one shows me how to do it—what to do, or who I can be—then I’ll go look for it in the streets.’ And if there is not a role model to refute the role models that some young men find in the streets,” then some boys will turn to anti-social behavior such as baggy trousers, sub-standard diction, swearing, drugs, or the MTV-and- BET-version of reality, in other words.
   “I think they do it to survive,” Griffin said. “Society tells them that’s what is expected of them. But at the conference we’re trying to tell them what to say yes to.”
   Feedback from some of the parents indicated that more mothers would like to see a similar conference for African American females, Davis said. Meanwhile, plans are underway to attract more men between the ages of 30-50 to the conference next year.
  
   

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