A Code of Honor : Program Instills Black Youth With Discipline to Succeed

Nine boys--shoulders stiff, like mini-military recruits in jeans and sneakers--stood at attention on the wind-swept asphalt playground of Ralph J. Bunche Elementary School in Carson.

“FO-WARD MARCH!” their teacher barked. The boys did their best to follow directions, but right and left feet marched at once and the younger boys unintentionally body-checked their buddies.

“A-TEN-HUT!”

Hands moved to foreheads in a salute. “I AM SOMEBODY!” they shouted. “I AM INTELLIGENT. I AM LOVING AND KIND. I’LL CONDUCT MYSELF LIKE A GENTLEMAN AT ALL TIMES. EVEN WHEN NOBODY’S LOOKING.”

These are the B-MAP boys of East Compton.

The Black Male Achievement Project, sponsored by the Compton Unified School District and funded with private donations, is aimed at persuading boys from one of the poorest neighborhoods in Los Angeles County to follow a path toward college, careers and a middle-class life rather than into gangs, drugs and jail.

The voluntary program is taught by Bunche teachers. About 60 of the school’s students, roughly 10% of the enrollment, attend regularly. About 85% of the student participants come from low-income homes and the majority live without fathers, said Mary Carhee, one of B-MAP’s founders.

Compton’s program for black boys, which was started in 1989, was one of the first of its kind, Carhee said. In the past several years, similar projects have sprung up in schools from Inglewood to San Diego. Compton recently expanded B-MAP to include two middle schools and Compton High School.

Boys and instructors--four men and four women--meet daily before school and two days a week after school for marching drills, counseling, tutoring and field trips. Every week, black professional men--from doctors, lawyers and business executives to librarians, basketball players and ministers--talk to the boys about success, emphasizing the need to stay in school.

The boys also play chess and table tennis, learn about computers and discuss African-American culture. On Thursday mornings, they walk down the street with their teachers to a nearby Baptist church for religious instruction.

The teachers in the morning program are released from regular duties to help the B-MAP boys, said Principal Madine Outlaw. Private donations help pay teachers in the after-school program.

Targeting black boys for special programs--including religious instruction--means excluding girls and other ethnic minorities, raising constitutional issues of fairness and separation of church and state. But because the program is voluntary, outside of school hours and not officially closed to anyone, “this is not troubling to us,” said Allan Parachini, public affairs director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“We’re sensitive to the special societal and institutional problems regarding black males,” he said.

Statistics from the state Commission on the Status of African-American males show that nearly a third of college-age black men are in the criminal justice system. And half of all African-American children grow up in homes where fathers spend little or no time, said Winston Doby, vice chancellor for student affairs at UCLA and an original architect of the Compton project.

“Anything that tries to address those issues that doesn’t do violence to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the ACLU is not opposed to,” Parachini said.

Doby said he hopes B-MAP eventually will include a program for other groups in need of extra help, including Latinos, Latinas and African-American girls.

But for now, “the incredible stresses and strains that African-American men face override concerns of unfairness,” Doby said.

Compton resident Barbara Crosby said her son Steven, 10, was an impressionable, extremely shy first-grader when he started B-MAP four years ago. She says she fears he might have fallen in with a bad crowd without the program.

B-MAP “helped him say what’s on his mind. Now you can’t shut him up,” she joked.

Because of the professional men who speak to the group, Steven’s career plans change every week, she said. This week, he wants to become a lawyer.

“There’s a good future in it,” he said. “You can always go on to become a judge.”

Besides, he added, “you get a lot of money.”

Considering the social and economic problems plaguing the neighborhoods that many of the boys come from, the odds seemed stacked against them.

The consequence are a lot of boys “who are angry with themselves and others,” said Inez Harvey, a Bunche third-grade teacher who also works with B-MAP.

Many neighborhood boys have short attention spans, little discipline and no self-confidence, which often results in overly aggressive behavior, she said.

Harvey and other proponents of the project say they see B-MAP’s success in small increments.

Some results are quantifiable, like a UC Riverside study that tracked B-MAP boys from 1989 to 1991. Preliminary results show that the boys had significantly higher grade-point averages and self-esteem at the end of the study, said Carolyn Bennett Murray, professor of psychology. B-MAP provides field trips away from the neighborhood. Three years ago, for instance, a dozen boys visited the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Last year, private donors funded a trip to the executive suites of a Beverly Hills business. This year, parent boosters are trying to raise funds for a trip to Washington.

Kalem Aquil, 44, who grew up in Compton, volunteers with B-MAP weekly. One of the reasons his 9-year-old son Kalim attends Bunche, Aquil said, is the program.

“At his other school, they labeled (Kalim) a gang member in the first grade,” Aquil said. After moving to Bunche and enrolling in B-MAP, “he’s been doing great.”

Girls, too, need special help in school to become successful. Increasingly, studies have shown that most girls’ self-confidence is high until the age of 9, but declines by high school. Bunche educators, however, think it is most essential to help the boys.

Reginald Obiamalu, a third-grade teacher and B-MAP instructor, said the program is simply trying to rescue the boys from what society is doing to them.

“Our problem within the black culture is not the female, it’s the male,” he said. “There are no role models. We’re trying to raise the self-esteem of the male. Men have to do that. A woman can only do so much.”

Even so, “The girls have been saying, ‘Can we have a B-MAP for the girls?’ And the Hispanic kids too,” Obiamalu said. “In my group, I have one or two Hispanic kids. I welcome them.’

Despite the program’s success, B-MAP might lose its private funding next year, according to program administrator Carhee, which would mean eliminating the afternoon program. But UCLA’s Doby plans to continue seeking alternate sources of funding. One plan is to expand the program to include girls and other ethnic groups and use state money to continue the project, he said. One thing is certain, he added: “We’re not going to abandon it.”