We Don’t Need Another Basketball Court in NYC

As a native New Yorker, a formerly middle-class African American, and professional in the finance industry, I often find that my opinions on various topics differs from that of my close friends and colleagues. The continued portrayal of African Americans in popular culture is one of those topics.

Growing up on basketball courts

I grew up in Hollis, Queens, a working-class neighborhood with working-class ambitions. The people around me used to say that when someone made it, they’d gone “from Hollis to Hollywood.” In many ways, despite the enormous strides African Americans have made since the 1960s, this remains the only option for most black youth—the path of entertainment.

Of course, this isn’t the only path for working-class black Americans. I would know, since that’s exactly where I started out, too. I used to play sports all day long. In fact, I was recruited to play football in college. But that wasn’t the path I stayed on, because I was shown other options.

What NYC looked like in the 60s and 70s

When I was a teenager, the city was a radically different place. New York City through the 80s wasn’t the kind of place people visited. Outside the skyscrapers and highrises, it was a city of abject poverty, drug addiction, poor education, and gang violence.

It was also my city, the only place I knew. It was where I grew up playing basketball and football. Although Hoop Dreams was shot in Chicago, the documentary is a close proxy for the experience of a young African American man growing up in an inner city community surrounded by overwhelming negativity.

Basketball court as sanctuary

One of the few places where I found solace was on the courts, playing pickup basketball with my friends. On TV, before rap and hip hop exploded onto the scene, all of our role models were ballplayers. All my friends wanted to be ballplayers. At one point, so did I. Getting recruited for football was one of my proudest achievements.

But, as I’m sure you already know, the odds of a teenager “going pro” from the inner city are next to nothing. The chance of a high school football player getting recruited for football at the college level and then getting picked for the NFL is .007% (about 1 in 14,000). High school basketball players have a slightly better chance of getting into the NBA at .01% (1 in 10,000).

When hoop dreams continue to be so dominant in the inner city, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that most middle-class black kids grow up to become poor black adults. Black Americans have a higher unemployment rate and a higher poverty rate. For comparison, white Americans have a poverty rate of 9.6 percent, while black Americans have a poverty rate of 27.2 percent. The gap between the wealth of white and black families is currently at its highest point since 1989.

Better, more realistic options for our children

The reality facing most black children today frustrates and disheartens me because I’ve seen the metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel with my own eyes. From what I see on a daily basis, most of the black kids in NYC continue to hold onto the same unrealistic hoop dreams I had decades ago as a child. This shouldn’t be the case.

Fortunately, there are plenty of programs in NYC and across the country for black youth who don’t realize they have options. That’s why I’m proud to support various youth empowerment programs across the country, including Boys Hope Girls Hope, the Bridge Golf Foundation, College of the Holy Cross, and the historic Apollo Theaterin Harlem.

At the end of the day, the future of children of color is whatever we make of it. It all comes down to what we reinvest into our communities ourselves. So if we don’t want our kids growing up with unrealistic dreams and want to guide them instead to useful, practical after school initiatives, we have to be the ones willing to take the leap and make those investments.

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This article was originally published by at HuffPost

Using Storytelling as a Means to Mentor

“Show, don’t tell.” It’s one of the tropes used by high school English teachers across the country to explain to students that sharing a story full of specifics is more effective than simply stating facts. By the time we get out into the workforce, though, we’ve heard it so much that it doesn’t really mean anything to us anymore. As we work our way up to the top, we forget about the nuances of “showing” and start communicating in facts, numbers, and graphs–things we can grab onto.

Mentors could gain a lot by going back to basics and channeling their inner English teacher. While stating facts is often an effective way to sway someone who is undecided about an issue, it does little to inspire enthusiasm or ignite passion. For a better way to influence others, stay away from facts and stick to storytelling.

Learning from Modern Day Influencers

Some of the most successful influencers in our modern day society are storytellers at heart. Take President Obama, who rose to fame after his keynote at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. How did a relatively unknown Senator rise to stardom overnight? He stood at the podium and told his story–one that resonated with the entire world.

So did Martin Luther King, Jr. So did Nelson Mandela. So did most of our modern day “mentors of the masses.” Recently, TED talks have become known throughout the world for their “ideas worth spreading.” If you pay close attention, you’ll see that most of the talks start out with the speaker’s own story.

From the ancient Greeks to modern day politicians and business, storytelling is the element that makes the difference between connecting with an audience and falling flat. Bringing real life experiences to the table makes interactions believable, memorable, and worthwhile. Facts and statistics can peak our interest, but stories are what move us to action. The technique holds true for personal interactions in any form, from televised speeches to one-on-one conversations.

Stories Help Mentors Become Relatable

The most effective mentors aren’t the ones who are perfect. They’re the ones who are flawed, but who overcame those flaws in order to succeed. They’re the ones who weren’t natural superstars, but who worked hard and showed grit in the face of their troubles. Perfect people aren’t relatable. Vulnerable people are relatable. People who failed are relatable. People who aren’t afraid to stand up and own their weaknesses are relatable.

Everyone who has “made it” started somewhere. We’ve all had low points or setbacks or struggles. Instead of feeling like we should shy away from our personal hardships as mentors, we should instead share those aspects of our stories as widely as possible. A mentor is only credible if he or she can demonstrate that their success can feasibly be achieved by their mentees as well. The more we expose the specific realities of our struggles, the more mentees believe that maybe they, too, can succeed in spite of their challenges.

If This, Then That: The Formula of Effective Storytelling

The stories mentors share shouldn’t just be stories about hardship. They should be stories about triumph, and about what specific actions or qualities brought the protagonist success. The idea is to give mentees a repertoire of effective techniques to meet challenges.

Additionally, not all effective stories have to be about the mentor’s own experiences. Stories about famous historical figures or people personally known to the mentor can be just as useful at imparting lessons and driving home the point that the trouble the mentee is going through is something that others have been able to overcome as well, and to help generate ideas about possible ways to do so. Generic, canned advice will mean more if it is given in context of a time where it worked.

Know Your Audience

A good mentor works with each mentee as an individual, and adjusts their communication method accordingly to reflect how the mentee likes to receive information. Get to know your mentee, get to know how they think, and talk to them in a way that jives with their personality. Know when to tell a story, know when to give hard facts, and perhaps more importantly, know when to just listen. If you play your cards right, perhaps your mentee will provide you with yet another success story to share in the future.

Originally posted on TroyDixon.org

How to Use STEM to Empower Today’s Minority Youth

 

Though historically a leader in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the United States has fallen behind other industrialized countries in producing students who want to pursue a career in STEM-related fields. In 2014, the U.S. Department of Education reported that only 16 percent of high school students expressed an interest in a STEM career and had a demonstrated mathematical proficiency. Even though 28 percent of students expressed interest in working in a STEM-related field when they started high school, 57 percent of those students lost interest by the time they graduated.

Among minorities, the statistics are even starker. The 2015 STEM Index, sponsored partially by Raytheon, indicates a small growth in STEM-related education and employment between 2014 and 2015. However, gaps between whites and minorities remained the same or even widened. The data show that black, Hispanic, and Native American students earned fewer STEM-related college degrees, displayed lower test scores, and expressed less interest in STEM-related careers than their white counterparts.

The problem is not that the number of STEM degrees awarded among minorities is not rising. In fact, the number of STEM-related degrees earned by black students between 2000 and 2014 rose by 60 percent. However, the number of STEM degrees compared to the number of non-STEM degrees shrunk. The same proportionality issues are true for Hispanic students as well.

According to projections by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 2010 and 2020 job growth in STEM fields is expected to grow by 18.7 percent compared to 14.3 percent for all other occupations except healthcare. Moreover, an increasing number of non-STEM careers, including the manufacturing sector, require workers with STEM-related skills. Therefore, increasing today’s minority youth’s interest in STEM will help empower them to pursue a wide range of careers in a number of growing fields.

The STEM curriculum was developed to do just that. Its approach is to teach the four STEM subjects in an applied, interdisciplinary manner. Rather than learning the four subjects as separate and discrete entities, students learn from a cohesive program that teaches them how to combine the individual disciplines and use them in real-world applications. Since 2009, the Obama administration has increasingly emphasized and funded STEM curricula throughout the country. By 2015, over $1 billion had been raised for STEM programs. Nevertheless, the National Science Foundation reports that fewer financial resources are available to schools that serve lower-income and minority students. They also employ fewer teachers who are specially trained in math and science.

One way to combat these deficiencies is to increase funding for afterschool-based STEM-related clubs and activities. Research shows that quality programs increase students’ likelihood of graduating and pursuing a STEM-related career. While legislators have petitioned for federal funding to assist with this goal, the private sector has also been working to make it happen.

The Games 4 Learning Institute (G4LI), based at New York University, works with Microsoft to teach STEM skills to minority youths through something many youths love: video games. Underneath the fun of video games are engines that simulate complex real-world systems. Teaching young learners how to program and develop games helps bolster their inquiry, analogical reasoning, and problem-solving skills.

Other private sector companies and institutions are following suit. Baxter, an Illinois-based global healthcare company, partnered with Northwestern University’s Office of STEM Education Partnerships to create the Biotechnology Center of Excellence at Lindblom Math & Science Academy, a Chicago public school with a predominantly minority and low-income student body. Between 2012 and 2014, the center trained 168 teachers from 115 schools on how to administer STEM education. These teachers went on to reach 20,000 students.

The State of Illinois also engaged in nine statewide public-private partnerships called STEM Learning Exchanges to partner students with private sector mentors who guide them through independent research. The connections are made through a website called the Mentor Matching Engine, described as a “STEM match.com,” that allows students from rural areas to have the same access to mentorship as their urban counterparts.

Finally, Motorola Mobility, Siemens, and IBM are among a larger group of private companies that partnered with the MacArthur Foundation and the National Science Foundation to create FUSE, an out-of-school initiative designed to engage minority students in robotics, electronics, mobile app development, and 3D design. The program encourages interest and learning by presenting learners with increasingly difficult challenges for them to solve.

This blog was originally posted on Troy Dixon’s philanthropy blog.