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The “Real World” Myth: How Sending African American Children to PWIs Undermines African American Institutional Power

Posted on September 19, 2025 by | Leave a comment

“When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. He will find his ‘proper place’ and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told; in fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit.”
— Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro

For generations, African American families have been told a myth that has become so pervasive it often passes without challenge: the idea that sending their children to predominantly white institutions (PWIs) of higher education better prepares them for the “real world.” On its surface, the reasoning sounds practical. Parents believe that if their child learns how to navigate white spaces, acquires the habits and codes of those spaces, and builds networks with white peers, they will be more successful in corporate America and society at large. It is a calculation born of centuries of survival in a society structured against African Americans.

But this calculation, when examined deeply, does not hold up to scrutiny. Instead of preparing African American students for the “real world,” the widespread preference for PWIs undermines the institutional power of African Americans and deprives HBCUs of the very human and financial capital they need to thrive.

The “real world” itself is not a fixed entity. It is not a monolith that African Americans must prepare to join on white terms. The real world is what a group of people make it. White Americans have defined their world and fortified it through their institutions such as universities, banks, hospitals, corporations, and foundations. Asian Americans, Jewish Americans, and other groups have done similarly, leveraging their educational and economic institutions to shape their reality. Yet, African America, too often, has internalized the belief that its institutions are insufficient, opting instead to send its brightest students and most valuable tuition dollars into the coffers of PWIs.

This is not simply a matter of personal choice. It is a collective decision with collective consequences. The more African American families buy into the “real world” myth, the weaker HBCUs become, and the less capable African America is of shaping its own real world.

The PWI Path and Its Assumptions

African American parents who choose PWIs for their children often do so with good intentions. They want their children to access elite resources, prestigious networks, and the perceived stamp of approval that comes with a degree from a PWI. They assume that because the U.S. labor market is majority white, exposure to that environment early on is critical to future success.

But these assumptions reveal several contradictions. White students do not consider attending an HBCU to balance their cultural experiences. They do not think, “I’ve had too much whiteness; I need a more balanced education.” Instead, they progress from a PWI undergraduate degree to a PWI graduate school, then into PWI-dominated corporate and institutional spaces. Their cultural immersion is never questioned, because their institutions define normalcy.

Meanwhile, African Americans alone have been conditioned to believe that too much African American immersion is dangerous, insular, or unrepresentative of the “real world.” The irony is sharp: a student may attend an HBCU, which is itself a diverse universe of African American culture, class, geography, and ideology, and still be told they have not had enough “exposure.” Yet a white student who grows up in an all-white town, attends an all-white PWI, and joins all-white firms is never told they lack “diversity of experience.”

This asymmetry is not accidental. It is a reflection of who controls institutional narratives in America. African Americans who absorb the “real world” myth are effectively outsourcing their children’s futures to white institutions, all while their own institutions wither from neglect.

The Diversity Within HBCUs

Another overlooked dimension of this myth is the assumption that HBCUs are homogeneous, insular spaces. This could not be further from the truth. The African American experience itself is vast. It includes children of Caribbean immigrants, descendants of enslaved Africans, first-generation college students from rural Mississippi, affluent families from Washington, D.C., African students from Nigeria and Ghana, Afro-Latinx students from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and more.

To attend an HBCU is not to encounter “less” diversity; it is to engage with the broad spectrum of the African Diaspora in concentrated form. These institutions are living laboratories of cultural exchange, intellectual competition, and class interaction.

By contrast, a PWI often provides African American students with only a sliver of diversity: they are frequently tokenized, expected to represent their entire race, and shuffled into diversity programming that centers their marginalization. Their peers may never learn about African American life beyond stereotypes, because the institution itself was never designed to illuminate African American experiences.

Thus, the African American student at an HBCU receives not just an education, but an immersion in African American pluralism is a preparation for engaging the world on African American terms. The PWI student, meanwhile, often internalizes the idea that their presence is conditional, exceptional, or peripheral.

Institutional Power and the Capital Flight from HBCUs

Every African American student who chooses a PWI over an HBCU represents more than an individual choice. It is the redirection of tuition dollars, alumni loyalty, and future endowment contributions away from African American institutions.

Imagine if even half of the African American students currently enrolled at PWIs redirected themselves to HBCUs. The financial impact would be transformative. Endowments would grow, faculty recruitment would expand, research capacity would increase, and the prestige of HBCUs would rise proportionally. These gains would compound over decades, creating a feedback loop of institutional strength.

Instead, what we have is a leakage of capital and talent into institutions that do not prioritize African American empowerment. PWIs benefit from African American enrollment statistics, which they parade as evidence of diversity, while offering little in terms of institutional reciprocity. They gain the reputational boost, while HBCUs lose the enrollment and financial stability they desperately need.

The result is predictable: HBCUs remain underfunded, under-endowed, and under-appreciated, not because they lack quality, but because too many African American families believe the myth that their children will be better off elsewhere.

The Real World Is What We Make It

The central flaw in the “real world” argument is the assumption that African Americans must adapt to a world built by others rather than shape their own. The real world is not an objective standard but it is the result of group will, institutional building, and cultural reinforcement.

White Americans shaped their “real world” through the sustained investment in Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and thousands of other institutions that center their history, culture, and power. Jewish Americans created their “real world” through a network of universities, foundations, and cultural centers that prioritize their collective survival. Asian Americans are building their own “real world” through business networks, educational pipelines, and capital flows that stretch across the Pacific.

If African Americans accept the premise that their children must be trained in white institutions to succeed, they have already conceded that they cannot or will not shape their own real world. They have abandoned the project of institutional power in favor of individual adaptation. This is not preparation; it is surrender.

Psychological Implications: Internalizing Inferiority

Beyond the economic impact, the myth has deep psychological consequences. African American students raised on the belief that HBCUs are not “the real world” internalize a subtle but corrosive idea: that their own culture is insufficient. They may carry degrees from elite PWIs, but the cost is often an alienation from African American institutional life.

The psychological message is clear—white spaces are the pinnacle of preparation, while African American spaces are something to escape. This creates a generational feedback loop where each successive cohort of African American parents pushes harder for PWIs, believing they are giving their children an advantage, while in reality they are weakening the very institutions that could make African America self-sufficient.

It also distorts identity. An African American child who grows up believing they must leave their community to succeed will often view their success as individual rather than collective. They may become comfortable being the “only one in the room,” rather than building the rooms where African Americans are not tokens but owners.

The Comparative Case: No Other Group Thinks This Way

No other racial or ethnic group in America sends its children away from its own institutions to gain “real world” experience. White families do not think Harvard students lack preparation because they have spent too much time around other white students. Jewish families do not believe their children need to avoid Jewish institutions to be competitive. Chinese Americans do not view Chinese language schools or cultural institutions as a liability to their children’s preparation.

It is only African Americans who accept this self-defeating logic. This uniqueness underscores the lingering effects of centuries of racial conditioning. From slavery to Jim Crow to modern structural racism, African Americans have been taught that their own institutions are inferior. The “real world” myth is simply the modernized version of this lesson.

By contrast, when other groups send their children to institutions, they do so with the understanding that these institutions will strengthen their cultural identity while equipping them to engage broader society on their own terms. For African Americans, the task must be the same: build HBCUs into the kind of institutions that define, rather than defer to, the real world.

Rethinking the “Preparation” Narrative

If the goal of higher education is preparation, then the question is: preparation for what? For African Americans, preparation should not simply mean being employable in someone else’s institution. It should mean being capable of building, leading, and sustaining African American institutions.

An HBCU graduate is not less prepared for corporate America than a PWI graduate; in many cases, they are more resilient, more culturally grounded, and more aware of systemic barriers. The difference is that the HBCU graduate, if supported by their community, is positioned to reinvest in African American institutional life.

The narrative that PWIs uniquely prepare African Americans for the “real world” ignores the fact that many HBCU alumni have gone on to excel in every imaginable field from politics, science, business, culture while also strengthening the institutions of African America. The preparation HBCUs offer is not narrow; it is holistic, rooted in both academic rigor and cultural affirmation.

A Call to Reclaim Institutional Power

For African Americans to continue believing in the “real world” myth is to ensure that the next century looks much like the last: individual success stories amid collective institutional weakness. To break this cycle, African American families must reorient their thinking.

Sending a child to an HBCU is not a limitation; it is an investment in collective power. It is a statement that African Americans will not only participate in the real world but will define it. It is a recognition that every tuition dollar, every alumni donation, and every student enrollment strengthens the institutional backbone of African America.

The time has come to retire the myth once and for all. The real world is not something African Americans must be prepared for by others. It is something African Americans must build for themselves, through the strengthening of HBCUs and the rejection of narratives that undermine them.

Until that shift happens, African America will remain trapped in a paradox: sending its children to PWIs in search of preparation, only to find that the institutions that could truly empower them are being starved of the very resources they need.

The “real world” is not out there waiting. It is in our hands to create.

 Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ChatGPT.

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The Gridiron Mirage: Debunking the NFL as the Engine of African American Wealth

Posted on August 26, 2025 by | Leave a comment

“A lot of enslaved people actually made money, but they had no power.” – William Rhoden

In the annals of American mythology, few institutions occupy as outsized a symbolic role in African American economic advancement as the National Football League. It is a league awash in spectacle and saturated with the rhetoric of opportunity. “The NFL has made more African American millionaires than any other institution,” say its defenders. This refrain—recited with patriotic pride or cynical resignation—has come to function as a social truism, a talisman held up to justify the nation’s meager investments in structural equity. But like most myths, its repetition does not make it true.

This article contends that this notion is not only false but insidious. It misrepresents the scale and structure of wealth in the African American community, diverts attention from more potent engines of generational prosperity, and masks the extractive and precarious nature of professional sports as a vehicle for wealth creation. The NFL is not a wealth escalator; it is, at best, a short-lived income spurt machine for a statistical elite, and at worst, a cultural and physical treadmill leading back to zero.

Gridiron Arithmetic: The Numbers Game

The first fallacy is numerical. As of the 2023 season, there were approximately 1,696 active NFL players spread across 32 teams. Around 58% of these players identified as African American, or roughly 984 athletes. Even when one accounts for the extended rosters, practice squads, and recent retirees still living off their earnings, the figure remains marginal—perhaps a few thousand men across multiple generations.

Contrast this with sectors such as healthcare, education, government, and business. The National Black MBA Association alone counts tens of thousands of members, many of whom have built sustainable wealth through entrepreneurship, investment, or corporate ascendancy. African American doctors number over 50,000. Black-owned businesses, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, exceed 140,000 with paid employees, and millions more operate as sole proprietorships.

The American Bar Association reports over 50,000 African American attorneys. Even the public sector, often decried as slow or bureaucratic, employs hundreds of thousands of Black professionals across local, state, and federal levels. These occupations, while lacking the glamour of a touchdown, generate far more stable, scalable, and generationally transferrable wealth.

Income vs. Wealth: The Shaky Foundations of NFL Riches

To understand the illusion, one must disentangle income from wealth. Wealth is not what one earns; it is what one owns. It is the portfolio, the property, the equity stake, the passive income stream, and, perhaps most critically, the ability to transfer resources across generations. NFL players earn substantial salaries during their brief careers—an average of $2.7 million per year, though the median is closer to $860,000. But careers are short, averaging just 3.3 years.

This creates what economists call a “high burn rate, low accumulation” profile. Studies have found that 15% of NFL players file for bankruptcy within 12 years of retirement, despite millions in earnings. Others do not go bankrupt but live in quiet precarity, reduced to local celebrity gigs and motivational speaking to sustain a post-football identity. The 2022 National Bureau of Economic Research paper “Bankruptcy Rates among NFL Players with Short-Lived Income” confirms this vulnerability, showing how the lack of financial literacy, support systems, and institutional guidance leads to dissipation rather than accumulation.

Meanwhile, wealth in America is driven by ownership: of businesses, real estate, stocks, and institutions. The NFL offers none of these to the vast majority of its Black athletes. Ownership, it must be said, remains the exclusive domain of white billionaires. As of 2025, there are zero majority African American owners of NFL franchises. While the NBA has made token strides—see Michael Jordan’s brief tenure as majority owner of the Charlotte Hornets—the NFL remains rigid in its old-world capital structure.

The Plantation Paradigm: Extraction, Not Empowerment

It is hard to avoid the uncomfortable metaphor that the NFL structurally resembles a modern-day plantation. African American bodies fuel the labor force, endure the risks, suffer the injuries, and entertain the masses. White ownership, white commissioners, and white-centered media conglomerates reap the institutional profits. The league generates $18 billion in annual revenue. The average team is valued at $5 billion. And yet, the athletes, even at the apex of their earning power, remain labor, not capital.

This is not a critique of sports per se. Athletics can inspire and galvanize. But the mythologizing of football as a viable strategy for racial uplift is akin to mistaking a single rainstorm for an irrigation system. The commodification of Black excellence in a space so structurally white in ownership and control cannot plausibly be the foundation for true economic emancipation.

This is made all the more clear by examining the fates of even the most successful. Players like Vince Young, who signed a $26 million contract and ended up broke, or Warren Sapp, who earned $82 million only to file for bankruptcy, are cautionary tales. Exceptions like LeBron James, who has parlayed his brand into equity ownerships and venture capital, are held up as archetypes. But these are aberrations, not templates. And they are not NFL stories.

The Opportunity Cost of Myth-Making

Perhaps the greatest harm of the “NFL creates millionaires” myth is opportunity cost. It distorts the allocation of attention, aspiration, and investment within the African American community. While youth in other demographics are taught to pursue STEM, financial literacy, or entrepreneurship, too many African American boys are sold a lottery ticket disguised as a profession. A 2021 study by the Journal of Black Studies found that African American adolescent males are 40 times more likely to aspire to a professional sports career than to become an engineer or entrepreneur.

This has ramifications far beyond the individual. It weakens pipelines to industries that are scalable, recession-resistant, and foundational to intergenerational wealth. No serious community-wide wealth can be built on the shoulders of 53-man rosters. Nor can economic independence arise from dependency on one of the most exploitative and physically damaging professions in modern labor.

There are also societal consequences. The overrepresentation of African Americans in professional sports distorts public perception. It fosters the narrative that “Black people are doing fine” because a few are seen in Super Bowl commercials or luxury car ads. It becomes a justification for denying systemic reform, funding cutbacks to HBCUs, or underinvestment in majority-Black schools. “Why do they need help?” ask the indifferent. “They have the NFL.”

Institutional Power vs Individual Stardom

In the game of wealth, institutions win. The NFL is an institution—one whose structure benefits its owners and media affiliates. The real wealth in sports lies not in being a player but in being an owner, a broadcaster, a media rights holder, or a licensed merchandiser. It lies in being Robert Kraft, not the running back who suffers a concussion under his ownership.

African American wealth building must shift its focus toward institutions that compound, aggregate, and replicate power. HBCUs, Black-owned banks, cooperative land trusts, investment syndicates, media companies, and technology accelerators are more viable pathways to collective advancement than any draft pick. Consider that a single Black-owned private equity fund managing $500 million will produce more Black millionaires than five decades of NFL careers.

In fact, historical analogues suggest that professional exclusion led to the construction of powerful Black institutions. During segregation, African Americans built hospitals, universities, bus lines, and newspapers. These were incubators of both economic and cultural power. In today’s integrationist fantasy, too many of these have been sacrificed in favor of proximity to elite white institutions—like the NFL—that will never relinquish true control.

The Global Lens: Transnational Wealth Thinking

Moreover, the fixation on domestic sports ignores the global economic realignment. The world’s fastest-growing wealth markets are in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Forward-thinking African Americans should be exporting services, partnering with Pan-African institutions, and investing in sovereign wealth opportunities. Yet, the “NFL as savior” narrative keeps too many tethered to a narrow, provincial idea of success.

The NFL does not build factories. It does not fund innovation. It does not seed capital. It does not provide passive income. It does not own land, develop cities, or engage in infrastructure. It sells tickets. It sells ads. It breaks bodies. It builds billion-dollar stadiums on taxpayer subsidies and pays its workers less than hedge fund interns.

Real wealth is built through scale and succession. The Black farmer who owns 1,000 acres and passes it down is more transformative than the Pro Bowler whose children inherit post-career medical bills and reality show royalties.

Toward a New Narrative: Wealth Without Injury

African American communities need new wealth myths—ones grounded in fact, finance, and future orientation. The idea that the NFL is a pinnacle of Black achievement should be retired. In its place must come narratives about investment clubs, fintech startups, regenerative agriculture, urban development, and cooperative real estate ventures.

Educational institutions and cultural gatekeepers have a responsibility here. Public school counselors, pastors, and media platforms should deglamorize the sports-to-riches narrative and illuminate more durable paths. Foundations and philanthropies should invest not in football camps, but in coding bootcamps, maker spaces, and entrepreneurship labs.

Policy must evolve, too. Tax incentives should reward community ownership and capital retention. States should support Black-owned banks the way they support stadium construction. Reparations conversations should be about equity stakes, not honorary jerseys.

The NFL is not evil. It is, however, a business. And like all businesses, it is designed to maximize returns for its investors—not to solve racial inequality. The sooner we disabuse ourselves of the myth that it is a wealth escalator, the sooner we can begin the real work of building wealth—wealth that endures beyond the roar of the crowd, the flicker of the lights, or the brevity of a three-season career.

Trading Helmets for Holdings

In conclusion, the NFL is a distraction, not a development strategy. It is a parade, not a pipeline. It is a pageant of athletic excellence exploited for institutional enrichment. And it is a cultural sedative—one that soothes legitimate anger over systemic inequality with the spectacle of a few lucky gladiators.

The real revolution will not be televised on Monday Night Football. It will be written in balance sheets, ownership ledgers, and multi-generational trusts. African Americans must trade the helmet for holdings, the franchise tag for franchise ownership, and the myth of athletic salvation for the measured, compound reality of institutional power.

That is not as thrilling as a fourth-quarter comeback. But it is the only way to win the long game.

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For Paying College Athletes? Yes, Then Cut The High School Athletes A Check Too

Posted on August 22, 2025 by | Leave a comment

By William A. Foster, IV

“When hypocrisy is a character trait, it also affects one’s thinking, because it consists in the negation of all the aspects of reality that one finds disagreeable, irrational or repugnant.” – Octavio Paz

My freshman year of high school was nerve wracking and exciting. As far as academics were concerned I did fairly well that first year, but the football field was where I was most excited. I had a good year and heard rumblings that the varsity head coach had me in consideration for varsity my coming sophomore year. I fit his system of defense. I was small, but I had good football IQ and did not mind taking or giving a hit. All of that changed though when he got fired at the end of my freshman year for using an ineligible player during the year and having to forfeit almost all of the school’s games. In his place came a coach I was familiar with because the year before me and father went to see Jack Yates High School, the high school I grew up watching my father coach play in the state playoffs take on Temple High School and the offensive coordinator would then become our school’s head coach. I was excited, but nervous. They ran a different brand of football. We had been a predominantly running team and our talent fit that style. Instead, he ran an early version of the spread that was not very popular throughout. We were built for ground and pound and he wanted an air attack. I was switched positions from defense to offense and scored the first touchdown of the new regime, and from there it was all down hill.

By my junior year, I was deep into my academics and this was becoming a problem unbeknownst to me for my coaches. It would come to a head when I asked for more time before practice to get tutoring and one of my coaches said to me, “Son, you need to choose between them books and this team.” I would never forget that moment. I was shocked. I had parents who were college professors. Choose? Is he serious? Not only was he, but it would escalate. After our game that week, which I did not have a particularly good one and little did I know it was really the end of my football career. As we sat and watched game film the next week a play that I missed came up. The coach stopped the film, flipped on the lights, and looked dead at me and said to the team, “We have some players who are not committed to this team.” Being the hot tempered teenager I was at the time, I calmly put my head down as if I was rubbing it with one finger. I will let you guess which one. From that point on, I was in the dog house and at the end of the season was told to turn my equipment in. My father would talk me back onto the team for my senior year, but quite honestly it was hell and part of me wish I had never gone through it. I loved football growing up, playing in the street, watching my father coach, going to the state championship, and thought one day that would be me. Little did I understand, the “business” I was walking into.

Texas high school football is different. There is no doubt about that and Friday NIght Lights probably left more than a few things out that would traumatize people. I for one recall getting pulled over one night after drinking and in no condition to be behind a wheel, but once the police found out I played for the local high school team they were more interested in telling me about them playing for the police football team. Ultimately, they let me go with a minor in possession and let me drive myself home. On my high school football team we had some of everything going on from the drug dealers, drug users, massive illiteracy, and more than a few things I have blocked from my memory for good reason.

You see most of them were not just playing football for the love of the game. They were playing because they saw it as their only way out. Many of my teammates came from impoverished backgrounds, with few educational opportunities and even fewer economic ones. For them, football was not just a pastime it was a potential career. And yet, despite the immense pressure placed on high school athletes to perform, there is virtually no financial compensation for their efforts. If we are going to argue that college athletes deserve to be paid for their labor, then high school athletes who also generate millions of dollars in revenue deserve the same consideration.

The financial power of high school football, especially in states like Texas, is undeniable. According to a 2019 report by the Texas Education Agency, the state spent over $500 million on high school football stadiums between 2008 and 2018. Some stadiums rival those of small colleges in both size and amenities, with the most expensive high school stadium in the country, Legacy Stadium in Katy, Texas costing $72 million to build. These stadiums are packed on Friday nights, bringing in millions of dollars in ticket sales, sponsorships, and media rights.

Despite this, the players on the field, the ones drawing the crowds see none of this revenue. While their coaches earn six-figure salaries (the highest-paid high school coach in Texas makes $158,000 per year), the athletes themselves play for free, risking injury and sacrificing their time and education in the hopes of making it to the next level.

The physical toll on high school athletes is just as severe as it is for college players. According to a study by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), there are approximately 1.1 million high school football players in the U.S., and every year, an estimated 300,000 sports-related concussions occur among high school athletes. The risk of serious, long-term injury is real, yet these players receive no compensation for putting their bodies on the line.

Consider this: the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has been pressured to provide financial assistance for athletes suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease caused by repeated head trauma. If college athletes deserve compensation for these risks, shouldn’t high school athletes who are just as vulnerable also receive financial protection?

Some may argue that high school sports do not generate as much money as college athletics. While it is true that high schools do not have billion-dollar TV contracts like the NCAA, local revenue generation is still significant. The Texas University Interscholastic League (UIL) collects millions of dollars in revenue from the state football championships, including ticket sales, sponsorships, and broadcasting rights. ESPN, Fox Sports, and other major networks regularly feature high school games, and Nike and Adidas have begun sponsoring elite high school programs.

In 2021, Alabama’s Hoover High School reported earning over $2 million annually from its football program. Southlake Carroll High School in Texas made nearly $1.5 million in a single season from ticket sales, donations, and sponsorships. The bottom line? High school football is not just a game it is a business. And in any other business, the labor force gets paid.

The NCAA’s decision to allow Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals for college athletes has already set a precedent. High school athletes in several states including Texas, California, and Florida are now allowed to profit from their NIL rights. Players like Jaden Rashada, a high school quarterback in California, reportedly signed a $9.5 million NIL deal before ever playing a college snap. This demonstrates that high school athletes do, in fact, have market value.

But what about the majority of players who will never receive NIL deals? They are still sacrificing their time, bodies, and educational opportunities for the sport. If coaches, administrators, and organizations profit from their efforts, then why should the athletes themselves be excluded? A stipend, medical coverage, or even a trust fund for players who complete their high school careers would be a step in the right direction.

Critics argue that paying high school athletes could open the door to corruption, recruiting scandals, and financial mismanagement. However, these problems already exist in amateur sports. Boosters have been caught illegally paying recruits for decades, and schools have been sanctioned for bending the rules to secure top talent. If anything, formalizing a compensation structure would bring transparency to a system that already operates in the shadows.

Others worry about the financial burden on school districts. However, if schools can afford multi-million-dollar stadiums and six-figure coaching salaries, then they can find ways to fairly compensate athletes. The money is already there but the question is who gets to benefit from it.

The reality is that high school football is more than just a game. It is an industry, one that generates millions of dollars while placing tremendous physical and mental demands on young athletes. If we accept the argument that college athletes should be paid because of the revenue they generate, then we must apply that same logic to high school athletes.

High school athletes do more than just entertain. They fill stadiums, drive merchandise sales, and fuel an economy that benefits everyone except them. It is time to acknowledge their worth and compensate them accordingly. Whether through stipends, medical coverage, or NIL opportunities, high school athletes deserve to see a share of the wealth they help create. Otherwise, we continue to exploit their labor under the guise of “amateurism.” The system is broken, and until high school athletes get a piece of the pie, it will remain unfairly rigged against them.

 Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ChatGPT.

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(We Were Wrong) Beyond the $30 Billion: Why African American Boys Require a Longer, Costlier Educational Climb

Posted on August 12, 2025 by | Leave a comment

In a recent analysis published by HBCU Money, we argued that a $30 billion endowment would be sufficient to close the associate degree attainment gap between African American men and their women counterparts. The logic was elegant in its simplicity: take 50,000 African American men annually who are missing from associate degree completion, provide each with $30,000 per year—covering tuition, housing, and basic support—and the gender gap in Black post-secondary education begins to narrow. We were wrong – very wrong.

It is a compelling proposal, steeped in demographic logic and economic urgency. But elegant does not mean complete. If higher education is a pipeline, then this approach merely caps a leaky valve at the end of the conduit. The real structural deficiency lies upstream—far upstream. The associate degree gap is not born at age 18. It is the cumulative effect of educational disparities that take root as early as age 3 and metastasize through adolescence. The sobering truth is this: by the time African American boys reach college age, a significant portion have already been statistically written out of the academic script.

To reverse that fate, to genuinely provide parity in academic opportunity and outcomes for African American boys, would require not a $30 billion endowment, but a new institutional architecture rooted in Afrocentric values, collective capital, and global Black solidarity.

The Persistent Early Gap

The academic challenges of African American boys begin not in college, but in kindergarten. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), by the fourth grade, over 85% of African American boys are reading below grade level—an early indicator that portends long-term academic disadvantage. This early literacy gap is not anomalous. It is systemic and persistent.

Studies show that reading proficiency by the third grade is a leading predictor of high school graduation, incarceration, and lifetime earnings. Yet African American boys are often consigned to underfunded schools, taught by less experienced teachers, and disproportionately subjected to school disciplinary measures that remove them from instructional time. Suspension rates, for instance, are three times higher for Black boys than their White peers, often for subjective offenses like “willful defiance” or “disrespect.” The gap becomes a chasm.

In math, the picture is no better. By eighth grade, only 14% of African American boys score at or above the proficient level in mathematics, compared to over 40% of White boys. These figures reflect a system that neither recognizes nor remediates inequity early enough. If education is the great equalizer, it has yet to live up to its billing for Black boys.

The Endowment Illusion

The $30 billion associate degree endowment, calculated on the basis of a 5% annual return, yields $1.5 billion in perpetuity—enough to support 50,000 students at $30,000 per annum. Yet, that only addresses the symptom of educational inequality, not the cause. True solutions must draw from a cultural legacy of African American educational institution-building that spans from the Freedmen’s Bureau to HBCUs to freedom schools. In order to even arrive at the starting line of post-secondary education, a comprehensive educational investment must begin in early childhood and follow through until high school graduation.

Let us imagine a program that supports 50,000 African American boys per year from age 5 to age 18—a full 13-year K-12 education track. This support would include high-quality preschool, experienced teachers with cultural competency, supplemental tutoring, mental health services, STEM and arts enrichment, parental engagement programs, and college readiness support. At a conservative cost of $10,000 per student per year (a figure aligned with successful charter networks like KIPP and Success Academies), the total cost would be $130,000 per student across their K-12 experience. Multiply this by 50,000 students per cohort and you arrive at an annual outlay of $6.5 billion.

To sustain such an initiative in perpetuity with a 5% endowment return, the required endowment would be $130 billion. And this is merely to bring these students up to average outcomes.

From Parity to Excellence

Parity, however, is not the goal. African American boys do not merely need to catch up; they must be positioned to compete at the highest levels of academic achievement. That means cultivating talent pipelines that reach into gifted education, elite science competitions, top-tier university admissions, and entrepreneurial ventures.

This level of academic excellence requires not just catching up, but leapfrogging. It means summer academies at HBCUs, AP and IB course preparation, access to dual-enrollment programs, mentorship by professionals, scholarships for out-of-school opportunities, and extended learning days. According to data from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, programs that support high-achieving students from disadvantaged backgrounds can cost between $5,000 and $10,000 annually per student, in addition to standard educational expenditures. But to leave no doubt, we must go above and beyond even the $10,000 annually.

If we allocate an additional $15,000 annually to the $10,000 base cost to foster excellence, we reach $25,000 per student per year, or $325,000 over 13 years. For 50,000 students, the annual cost rises to $16.25 billion. The endowment needed to sustain this model? $325 billion.

It is a daunting number. But it is one that puts the $30 billion associate-degree-only strategy into perspective. In reality, that $30 billion merely addresses the final 10% of the educational gap. The remaining 90% remains unfunded and unresolved.

The True Cost of a Kindergarten Cohort

To grasp the full scale of closing the education gap for African American boys, it is useful to broaden the lens beyond a cohort of 50,000 to include all Black boys entering kindergarten in a given year. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey, there are approximately 254,000 African American boys enrolled in kindergarten in the United States.

If the aim is to ensure each of these boys receives high-quality, enriched education support—costing $10,000 per year from kindergarten through 12th grade—this results in a total cost of $130,000 per child across their 13-year pre-college journey.

Multiply this by 254,000 boys and the total cohort investment requirement becomes $33.02 billion.

To maintain this annually and support each new kindergarten cohort indefinitely, the endowment would need to provide $33.02 billion every year. With a conservative 5% return, this would require a $660.4 billion endowment—just to bring African American boys to average educational outcomes.

However, as previously argued, parity is not enough. To make these boys genuinely competitive with the highest-performing demographic groups—often White or Asian boys from affluent, well-resourced districts—an additional $15,000 per year per child would be required. This would cover gifted education, STEM academies, mentoring, tutoring, and college preparation resources. The total annual investment per student rises to $25,000, or $325,000 over 13 years.

At this enhanced level of investment, the cost for the entire cohort would total $82.6 billion per year.

To generate this perpetually from a 5% return, the requisite endowment would balloon to $1.7 trillion.

This almost multi-trillion-dollar figure is not hyperbole. It is the sober arithmetic of justice. The $30 billion endowment proposed for closing the associate degree gap appears generous—until it is juxtaposed with the lifelong investment actually required to ensure those young men ever reach a college classroom. In truth, the educational equity gap for African American boys is not a $30 billion problem; it is a $660 billion to $1.7 trillion problem.

A Demographic Catastrophe in Waiting

The implications of not investing early and deeply are severe. According to the U.S. Department of Education, African American boys represent just 8% of public school students but 33% of those suspended at least once. They are also overrepresented in special education and underrepresented in gifted and talented programs.

Incarceration rates mirror educational failure. Black men are six times more likely to be incarcerated than White men. Nearly 70% of all inmates are high school dropouts. The school-to-prison pipeline is not metaphor—it is infrastructure, one built on policy choices and funding gaps.

Moreover, the economic costs compound. A 2018 study by the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce found that closing racial education gaps would add trillions to U.S. GDP. Investing in African American boys’ education is not merely a moral imperative—it is an economic one.

Philanthropy Alone Will Not Suffice

One might reasonably ask: where will $325 billion—or $1.7 trillion—come from? That sum exceeds the current combined endowments of all HBCUs by a factor of over 50. Harvard University’s endowment—at roughly $50 billion—is still only a fraction of the required amount. Relying on philanthropy alone, especially given the racialized disparities in donor patterns, would be naïve.

Instead, what is needed is a hybrid model of public-private partnerships, federal-state philanthropic compacts, and structured endowment legislation. Just as the GI Bill transformed post-war White middle-class fortunes, so too must a generational investment in Black boys be treated as a national economic priority.

Such a policy could resemble the Social Security Trust Fund model, whereby a long-term capital pool is created and invested with fiduciary prudence, returning 5% annually. Contributions could be sourced through structured community bond offerings underwritten by Black-owned financial institutions, cooperative tithing networks across African American faith communities, and revenue-sharing agreements with diaspora enterprises committed to educational reparative justice, reparations frameworks, and HBCU-aligned investment vehicles.

An African American Male Youth Education Trust (AAMYET) could be codified through legislation and act as an autonomous entity with board representation from HBCUs, Black investment firms, educational experts, and community leaders. This would ensure the governance of the fund is as transformative as its purpose.

Institutional Infrastructure: The HBCU Opportunity

Any serious endowment strategy must inevitably route through the nation’s HBCUs, which have long served as both sanctuaries and springboards for African American excellence. With their mission-focused approach, deep community trust, and track record in producing African American professionals, HBCUs are ideally positioned to be the institutional stewards of such an initiative.

Their role could include operating early college academies, developing teacher pipelines specifically for Black boys, hosting summer STEM institutes, and coordinating alumni mentoring networks. A dedicated center—perhaps named The Center for the Advancement of African American Boys (CA3B)—could operate as a national think tank, research institute, and program incubator.

This center could live at an HBCU with strong education and public policy faculties such as Howard University or North Carolina A&T, reinforcing HBCUs as hubs of cultural knowledge, economic development, and intergenerational stewardship. It would be tasked with longitudinal data analysis, best-practices dissemination, and inter-HBCU coordination. Its mission: ensure the pipeline remains robust from age 5 through 25 and beyond.

Lessons from Elsewhere

There are precedents. The Harlem Children’s Zone, under Geoffrey Canada, demonstrated the compounding power of investing in children from birth to college. The program includes parenting classes, quality pre-K, rigorous charter schooling, after-school enrichment, and college counseling. It costs upward of $20,000 per child annually but has produced impressive graduation and college enrollment rates.

Similarly, the Kalamazoo Promise—a city-funded college scholarship program—has led to higher college completion rates, especially among students of color. Yet even these models often lack national scale and sustainable endowment backing.

The Politics of Boys

There is also an uncomfortable political dimension to funding African American boys. Much of the education philanthropy and policy discourse has centered—rightly—on Black girls and women, who experience their own unique forms of marginalization. But there is hesitancy, even fatigue, in specifically addressing the needs of boys, particularly in the wake of contentious debates around masculinity and privilege.

Yet the data speak clearly. Black boys are being academically outpaced not only by their White peers, but increasingly by their own sisters. The gender gap within the African American community is growing, with 66% of Black bachelor’s degrees awarded to women. To ignore this is to risk building a one-legged stool of advancement.

The conversation must therefore be reframed—not as a zero-sum battle of genders, but as a holistic pursuit of parity. A strong, educated Black male population strengthens Black families, communities, and institutions. And a $325 billion endowment for that cause is not extravagance—it is strategy.

A Different Return on Investment

Understanding the Endowment Logic

It is important to clarify that the $660 billion and $1.7 trillion endowment figures presented are not annual funding requirements. Rather, they represent the size of a one-time, permanent endowment needed to sustainably support African American boys across generations.

Much like university endowments, these funds would be invested, and the Cooperative would spend only the annual interest income—estimated conservatively at 5%—without ever touching the principal. This means a $1.7 trillion endowment would yield approximately $82.6 billion annually, which could be used to support the full cohort of 254,000 African American boys from kindergarten through 12th grade every year, in perpetuity.

In this model, once the endowment is built, there is no need to raise another $1.7 trillion for future cohorts. Each new generation is supported by the returns of a community-built financial engine—ensuring long-term stability, intergenerational continuity, and independence from political volatility.

In financial terms, $325 billion might appear colossal. But African American communities have learned through generations that self-reliance and institution-building are more durable paths to empowerment than waiting on national consensus. The federal government has consistently underinvested in the success of African American children, and there is little indication that this pattern will meaningfully reverse.

Instead, African American institutions—especially HBCUs, Black-owned banks, community foundations, and faith-based networks—must chart a Pan-Africanist course rooted in collective economic action. Just as African American communities once built schools under Jim Crow and funded college scholarships through Black churches and fraternal organizations, so too must this generation forge a new education endowment through cooperative wealth strategies.

A national African American Education Endowment Cooperative could be seeded with pooled resources from HBCU alumni, Black entrepreneurs, entertainers, athletes, and Pan-African allies across the diaspora. A modest $1,000 annual contribution from one million African Americans, matched by Black institutions and philanthropic partners, would yield $1 billion annually in capital formation. With prudent investment management, even that could lay the foundation for a $30 to $50 billion fund over a generation—entirely self-directed.

Moreover, diaspora investment from African nations seeking to strengthen transatlantic ties offers another opportunity. Countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa have both strategic interests and moral incentives to support African American educational uplift. A global Black education compact, co-stewarded by HBCUs and African ministries of education, could institutionalize these alliances.

The return? A generation of African American boys empowered not by charity but by communal sovereignty. Doctors, engineers, scientists, historians, entrepreneurs, and leaders grounded in African cultural capital and global competitiveness. To fund their ascension is not merely a financial imperative—it is a declaration of belief in our own capacity to shape the future on our own terms.

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No, Your (Black) Parents Are Never Giving You Your Birth Certificate

Posted on July 5, 2025 by | Leave a comment

“History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day.” – Dr. John H. Clarke

“I am 32 years old. I am married. I just had a baby. I called my parents for my birth certificate… these people gave me a photocopy.” — J.J. McAvoy

Cue the collective Black laughter that says, “Yeah… that tracks.”

For many African Americans—and children of Black immigrants—this scenario isn’t just relatable. It’s practically law. There exists in our households an unwritten yet universally enforced mandate: You do not own your documents. Your parents do. Whether you’re 12, 22, or 42, asking for your birth certificate is like requesting access to national security archives—at best, you’ll get a heavily redacted photocopy; at worst, a reminder that “they’re in a safe place” and no further information will be disclosed.

Yet what begins as a meme-worthy moment veiled in humor reveals something deeper—intergenerational trauma, immigration anxieties, institutional distrust, and the invisible threads of caretaking and control that define Black familial life.

Birth Certificates, Blackness, and Bureaucracy

Black people in America—and Black immigrants especially—understand the stakes of documentation in ways others simply don’t. It’s not just paper. It’s protection. It’s legitimacy. It’s survival. From the days of freedmen who needed freedom papers to prove they weren’t property, to Caribbean and African immigrants who were taught by necessity to file away every school record, immunization report, and ID in a manila envelope the size of a novel manuscript—documents are currency. And parents? They’re the vault.

HBCUs have long understood this dynamic, too. Campus move-in days often feature parents armed with accordion folders bulging with immunization forms, financial aid papers, and—yes—original birth certificates that will never see a dorm room drawer. Even at 18, as a student legally responsible for yourself, the assumption is clear: your documentation stays in the family archives unless and until it’s needed. And only your parents decide what constitutes “needed.”

The (Unspoken) Reasons Why

So why don’t our parents just hand it over?

1. Institutional Distrust:
Historically, Black people have had good reason to distrust American institutions. From stolen land deeds to denied voter registrations to medical exploitation like the Tuskegee Study, paperwork—or the lack thereof—has been used as both sword and shield. Birth certificates especially were once used to deny African Americans social services, employment, and even their very existence in the eyes of the state.

Holding onto that paper is, in some ways, holding onto power.

2. Immigration Mentality:
Immigrant parents—particularly from African, Caribbean, and Latinx backgrounds—often operate under the logic that documentation must be preserved, not just for legal reasons, but because replacement is not guaranteed. Many come from countries where losing a document meant spending days in government offices, or worse, being permanently excluded from education or employment. The habit of over-documenting is one born from necessity, not paranoia.

3. Generational Control:
Let’s be honest—sometimes, it’s a control thing. Documents are a symbol of adulthood, of autonomy. But in many Black families, adulthood is earned, not merely reached by age. Holding onto your birth certificate is just one more way to remind you that your elders are still in charge. Even if you have a spouse, a job, a mortgage, and a child of your own.

4. Sentimentalism & Safeguarding:
There’s also a layer of emotional preservation at play. For some parents, especially mothers, the birth certificate is a living memory. The hospital receipt, the baby bracelet, the inked footprints—these items are sacred. Giving them to you feels like giving away a piece of your infancy they’ve guarded like treasure.

A Cultural Running Joke… But Also a Warning

On Black Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram, stories like jjmcavoy’s are met with likes, laughs, and a flood of similar testimonies:

  • “I’m 38 and my mom just mailed me my baby teeth, but not my social security card.”
  • “My dad keeps the birth certificates in the Bible. You’ll never find them.”
  • “I asked my aunt for my birth certificate once. She said, ‘For what? You tryna run away?’”

These shared experiences are part of the Black collective memory—and they help build community through humor. But embedded in that comedy is a stark lesson: we don’t always feel safe in the system, so we create our own.

In Black America, documentation isn’t just paperwork—it’s protection. And when trust in state infrastructure is low, your parents become your bureaucratic buffer. They don’t trust “the system” to have your back, so they keep it all—just in case.

HBCUs and Documentation Culture

Within the context of HBCUs, this culture plays out in subtle but impactful ways.

Admissions Counselors at HBCUs are often more patient and understanding when a student says, “My mom has that,” in response to requests for transcripts or ID. They’ve heard it before—maybe they’ve lived it.

Financial Aid Officers are used to parents showing up to sign forms, not out of necessity, but tradition.

Registrars know that some students may not know their Social Security numbers off the top of their heads, because those numbers are still in a locked filing cabinet three states away.

This familiarity becomes a quiet advantage in navigating Black student life, especially when compared to predominantly white institutions (PWIs), where rigid adherence to individual responsibility can feel jarring.

When the System Fails, the Family Files

African American communities have long developed workarounds for systems that marginalize them. Oral histories compensate for redlined census data. Church records double as unofficial archives. Grandmothers are genealogists, tracing kinfolk across counties based on memory and letters, not legal filings.

Our parents’ refusal to give up your birth certificate is not just about withholding—it’s about preserving. Preserving your existence, your legacy, your ability to say “I am here, and I can prove it.”

Navigating the Handoff

Eventually, there comes a time when you must take ownership of your documentation. Whether it’s applying for a passport, enrolling your child in school, or—like Ms. McAvoy—giving birth to the next generation, adulthood demands paperwork. But the transition is rarely smooth.

So how do you make the leap from child to custodian?

1. Create a Formal Ask
Instead of casually requesting it, frame the conversation around responsibility. “I’m building my family file. I’d like to keep originals of all my documents for safekeeping and future planning.”

2. Offer a Digital Archive
Scan and share. Offer to digitize the family’s entire document archive as a service. You’ll likely earn enough goodwill to walk away with your originals.

3. Understand Their Fear
Recognize that their reluctance comes from love, not spite. Thank them for safeguarding you all these years—and assure them you’ll carry the baton forward.

4. Seize the Entrepreneurial Opportunity
This entire dilemma opens a major door for innovation. A Black entrepreneur could launch a culturally responsive document safekeeping and digital archiving startup designed specifically for African American families. Think of it as a cross between Dropbox, Notarize, and a legacy planning firm—infused with cultural empathy. This could include secure cloud storage, physical document lockers, and mobile apps with prompts for family milestones, estate planning, or even generational wealth transfers. Black-owned banks and credit unions are especially well-positioned to expand into this space, offering document protection services as part of their wealth-building and financial literacy programs. Imagine opening a savings account and also being offered a secure vault for your family’s vital records. In a world where trust and service matter, this is not just a business—it’s a cultural preservation mission.

Final Thought: A Legacy Worth More Than Paper

No, your Black parents are probably not going to give you your birth certificate—at least not without some emotional negotiation. And maybe, just maybe, that’s okay. Because behind their hoarding of paperwork is a story of resilience. Of protection. Of love in a world that hasn’t always treated our existence as worthy of documentation, let alone preservation.

They’ve held onto the receipts of your life because they knew someone had to.

So yes, laugh about the photocopy. Roll your eyes at the manila envelope. But when you finally get that official, embossed, gold-stamped certificate in your hands—thank them.

Because while you may just see a piece of paper, they saw proof that you mattered.

And they’ve been safeguarding that proof your whole life.

Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ChatGPT.

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