Lifestyles of the Young and Hopeful

Making it to the NBA is a long shot, but there's always philosophy or the study of sharks. What does it take for a confident kid to become rich and famous?

Quentin Simms introduces himself while playing a video football game. He is battling a friend while several other kids hover, fidget, wait their turns. Quentin doesn't bother looking up. His thumbs are furiously massaging the controller, he's talking junk to his opponent.

"I'm about to beat them corners," he says, meaning he's about to toast the defensive secondary for a touchdown.

Watching a group of teenage boys take turns playing Madden NFL '06 is like being at one of those lively sessions of the British Parliament. Mouths are roaring. Seems like a good time to ask a break-the-ice question: Who's the best among you?

"That'd be me, right here," Quentin says, quick on the draw, like he's a contestant on "Jeopardy!" "I'm the best at everything."

The sentence comes with a beautiful smile that turns swagger into charm. What at first sounds like arrogance is revealed as innocence. All Quentin Simms really wants you to know is that he believes in himself. At 16, he already expects to be rich and famous.

The Post-Kaiser-Harvard poll found that 68 percent of area teens overall said it was likely they'd be rich someday; 31 percent said it was likely they'd be famous.

When the expectations of black and white teens were examined separately, however, striking differences emerged. African Americans were more likely than whites to expect they'd be rich (81 percent to 60 percent) and much more likely than whites to believe they'd be famous (54 percent to 19 percent).

Quentin, a junior at McKinley Technical High School in the District, is one of these black teens. He is 6-foot-1, 146 pounds, with braids tied in a knot, the tips adorned with cowrie shells. He buries his style under a black nylon skullcap. He lives in the Naylor Gardens apartment complex in Southeast with his mom, Terri, and an aunt. His favorite television show: reruns of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." His favorite movies: "stuff like 'Titanic,' flicks that have meaning." His dreams sometimes wander: maybe journalism, maybe Web design, maybe oceanography. But the wandering dreams always settle on a shiny hardwood floor in a noisy arena with the crowd shouting his name. That's when Quentin really flashes his Aquafresh smile.

"I just got a feeling that I can be that lucky one, like LeBron, and make it to the NBA."

Take a number, Q. Dreamland is overpopulated with hoop dreamers. Hundreds of thousands of youngsters go to sleep at night with visions of themselves dunking on "SportsCenter." And when they wake up, there are still only 360 full-time jobs for players in the National Basketball Association.

Granted, the league is three-quarters black. Good news for black teens. But the odds of making it are better in practically any other field. There are about 41,000 black physicians employed in this country, 43,000 black lawyers, 91,000 black engineers. And yet, as Mark Anthony Neal, a Duke University expert on black popular culture, puts it: "Because of the huge popularity and visibility of both hip-hop and the NBA, every kid with a crossover dribble thinks he can be Allen Iverson, and every kid with a flow thinks he can be Jay-Z. These things are seen as attainable."

The question Neal raises for parents, teachers and others who are pushing alternative models of success is: "How do we make getting an MD, becoming a lawyer, becoming a journalist sexy to our kids in the same way that being an Allen Iverson or Jay-Z is sexy?"