Michelle Obama at Bowie State: Too many fantasize about being ‘a baller or a rapper’

[Igel]

41. It's an okay place.

Michelle Obama's echoing recent peer-reviewed research.

Take the low-achieving barely middle-class kids in my neighborhood.

Each week, for 36 weeks of school, the black males and some Latino males spend 4 hours avoiding work in math or science or history class. Each week, for the 10 months when it's warm enough and dry enough, they spend 15-20 hours a week playing b-ball.

Most of the white and Asian, some Latino males are seldom seen during school nights.

Their school is failing, Title I, given extra money, and ranked unacceptable. It was built in 2007 and is a wonderful building. It's mostly black.

Imagine if they spent 15-20 hours a week doing math and science homework. This is a choice. Pure and simple.

But if they're like black males, aged 16-18, in the researcher's sample, their first career choice is NBA. Obviously, given the hundreds of thousands of black males, for it to be a realistic career choice you'd expect there to be at least 50k NBA openings a year, right? But it's not. Their second choice for career is a distant second.

Even most of the black males heading to college from the seniors in my classes are ridiculous and busily making bad choices. Many have basketball or football scholarships. And nearly every one has said they don't need to worry about academics. If they flunk out their freshman year it doesn't matter ... because they'll be picked up by the NBA or NFL. In fact, I've been told that taking time to do homework or study would reduce their chances of success.

They have learned bad information from somebody--not schools, not teachers. They've rejected accurate information when presented. Sometimes they've been trained to be hopeless and helpless. Or bitter and angry for things that happened before they were born or which were done to others. And they've made bad choices based on that bad information. Nobody's saying you have to go from deep poverty to CIT or MIT, then off to retire as a hedge-fund manager at age 35. For many kids, just making the choices necessary to keep from dropping out of high school and doing significantly better than their parents is enough.

I screwed up my career path. Several times. Each time I suffered as a victim of my own choices.

Sometimes the hardest victimizer to shake is yourself.