The Hip-Hop Generation, Raising Up Its Sons

Settling In

I was nearly nine months pregnant six years ago when we moved into a Victorian rowhouse in the transitional neighborhood of Bloomingdale in Washington.

Unlike our parents, who chose mostly white, suburban districts with top-notch school systems, Rudy and I wanted to live in a black community in the Chocolate City, in part to shield Maverick from the psychological trauma and alienation that Rudy and I both knew from growing up in white suburbia.

We admittedly had a lot of romantic notions about being role models and helping a city rebound. When I aired these notions in a 2001 article in The Post's Outlook section, my cynical views about the racial implications of gentrification drew a great deal of controversy. (That cynicism turned out to be well founded; according to the latest housing data, blacks are no longer the majority of homeowners in D.C.) But back then, the direction the city was going in wasn't as clear. Soon after we moved, we met some of the young black boys in the neighborhood. "You're a lawyer?" our sweet neighbor Brandon, about 8 at the time, asked Rudy. "Why would you want to live here?"

We have never regretted our decision, but some days, the choice feels a lot like class suicide. Both Rudy's and my parents hadn't fled poverty in the Caribbean, made it through college and the corporate world only to have their grandchildren dodging crumpled Red Bull cans and crack baggies on the sidewalk.

Then, of course, there are the local public schools. I was pushing baby Maverick around the neighborhood in a stroller one day when I decided to check out the local elementary school, Gage-Eckington. I walked in and asked for a tour from the vice principal.

She wearily led me around and answered my questions. No, she told me, there is no PTA, but if you're interested, we probably could use your help to get one started. She pointed out that I didn't have to enroll my son in this school: In Washington, you can apply to go to any school in the city through a lottery. "Do your homework," she advised me. Look at test scores, and demographics of the schools. She had just left a teaching job at a highly functioning school "across the park" -- that's Washington's euphemism for the white part of town, west of Rock Creek Park. The difference between the educational experiences was stunning. "These kids here have real problems," she told me.

When I shared the exchange with Rudy, he was apoplectic: Well, if they keep chasing off motivated parents, no wonder the school is in trouble! Right, I told him. We can get some of our neighbors together, write some grants and push through a specialized Spanish bilingual program. We don't have to chase the white folks to provide a good education for our son.

School Decisions

Three years later, our lofty goals became a casualty of busy work schedules. We didn't have the time to overhaul a school! I acted like a good buppie and followed, to the letter, the advice of that vice principal. I got on the Internet. Scoured test scores. I searched for addresses that were west of Rock Creek Park. I looked for an enrollment with a relatively low free-lunch (read: poverty) rate, and at minimum, a sprinkling of white students, so Maverick would know what they look like.

The school we were admitted to via the D.C. public school lottery, draws kids from all over the city to form a student body that is almost 70 percent black, with the rest Latinos, whites and Asians. Test scores are top-notch, and it is quasi-privatized by a PTA that raises tens of thousands of dollars to hire art, music, dance and science teachers and do school repairs -- perks that are scarce in the rest of the traditional public school system. The day I went to visit, I saw two of Rudy's former law school classmates doing the same. We immediately agreed to try to get our sons into the pre-K class of Mr. Jenkins, a dynamic young brother who'd been highly recommended to me in one of my annoying-but-informational mommy listservs.

Being middle-class parents in a highly competitive place like D.C. often means that we treat our children like NFL free agents, constantly on the hunt for a better deal. Despite all this hand-wringing, angst and endless research, not a day goes by that I don't question the decisions we've made about Maverick and threaten to bolt in an entirely new direction. Educational experts disagree about what is the best school setting for black boys. From untested charter schools to traditional public schools to private schools, the plethora of choices can drive you crazy.

Beyond the Neighborhood

Each day, ours looks more and more like a neighborhood our parents would want for their grandchildren. Our block has always been quiet, and we are extremely close with our neighbors, with a running club, garden club and barbecues. Each day, the streets get cleaner, crime decreases.

The dilemma in raising our black son remains: What if our culture is the problem? It's like the artist Mos Def says, We are hip-hop. It's our attitude. It's where we choose to live. It's the music we listen to, the values we raised ourselves on. Every day, we lament the current state of hip-hop, but even more, we lament the sad state of black reality that it caricatures and reflects, especially when it comes to black boys. I see hip-hop as a cry for help, for direction.

'The American Way'

A year ago, during a visit to Indianapolis, where I lived as a teenager, I decided to stop by to see my old high school principal, Dr. Eugene White, a black man who is an educational rock star in Indiana. He had become an award-winning superintendent of the wealthy suburban Washington Township school district where my high school was located. A few weeks before my visit, he had decided to take a job as superintendent of the Indianapolis Public Schools. He had overseen unparalleled gains in black achievement in Washington Township. Now, he said, he wanted to go to the larger, less affluent urban district "to help them out." He had just sent out letters to the parents of low-achieving black boys who'd been plucked to be part of a specialized academy.

When we talked in his downtown office about my own experiences with Maverick, Dr. White could sense my wistfulness about not going through with the plan to stick with our neighborhood school. He quickly set me straight. "You never get a chance to do this but one time. This is your chance," he said. "You have the means to give him the best, whether that's in a school that is public or private. You've got to send him to a place that's ready for him. You've gotta find places that believe that he can be a Master of the Universe. If you are lucky enough to live in a community where you don't have to pay for that, good for you. If not, make that investment, it will pay you right back. You cannot feel guilty. You are not selling out. That's the American way."

Exactly. And that's also the American problem. Much of the hip-hop generation has been about remixing, restoring, renovating. We have an opportunity to do something that goes beyond our own children and our bragging rights. For the sake of all black boys floundering in public schools, I hope we can shed our own cynicism long enough to figure out a plan to rebuild.

Adapted from "Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip Hop Generation" by Natalie Hopkinson and Natalie Y. Moore (Cleis Press).