Paradigms rooted in reality or not?: Judge Mathis, Coach Dungy et al

First let me applaud the work of two positive social and justice pioneers. The work of Judge Greg Mathis and that of Coach Tony Dungy speaks for itself. Both men are very successful in their respective fields where Mathis has become a succcessful judge and Dungy is a retired successful major league football coach. Both are African American and both have overcome odds that are not foreign to African American men who are striving to create a life of dignity and pride for them and their love ones and for the community at large.

Through the Black Prisoner Initiative, PEER, (Prisoner Empowerment, Education and Respect), Judge Mathis is working to assist young (and old) African American men rebound after being criminalized and imprisoned for their alleged mistakes in life. The Initiative pushes for another chance for these individuals that would help them to redeem their place in society and attempt to replicate the success of other African Americans who have learned to overcome in environments that most would consider hostile.

His website declares that African American males make up over 50% of the national prison population and are incarcerated at a rate of 6.5 times that of white males. At the same time, African American males make up approximately 6% of the entire population of the United States. The majority of those incarcerated do not have a diploma or GED and return to prison within 18 months of their release. While these numbers are staggering, these figures may reflect the lack of positive male influences in the lives of African American males and failed education systems.

Mathis says that he kept his violition intact after falling and defers to his mother as being the primary motivation. It was to her encourages him even today. Judge Mathis fulfilled the deathbed wish of his mother, Ms. Alice Mathis, to change his path, with the compassion of a Judge who ordered him to educate himself and get a GED as part of his jail sentence. He then successfully obtained his GED, Bachelor’s degree and law degree.em>

Dare to be Uncommon, a bestselling book authored by Coach Dungy helps us in being able to captivate his uncommon passion for experiencing an significance life. In an introductory summary, the book's website tells the story. Super Bowl-winning coach and #1 New York Times bestselling author Tony Dungy has had an unusual opportunity to reflect on what it takes to achieve significance. He has worked every day with young men who are trying to achieve significance through football and all that goes with a professional athletic career —such as money, power, and celebrity. Coach Dungy passionately believes that there is a different path to significance, a path characterized by attitudes, ambitions, and allegiances that are all too rare but uncommonly rewarding. Uncommon reveals lessons on achieving significance he’s learned from his remarkable parents, his athletic and coaching career, his mentors, and his journey with God.strong>

While it is clear that the life of both of these men lives may converge especially in their cultural racial composition and their shared compassion to help others, it is just as clear their their personal backgrounds are not parallel except that both are become wildly successful in a hostile world. They are like not characters Brandon and Dallas in Dungy's book where both ended in jail, but in this case only only did.

However, the the bigger question lies in whether either or both (or can) have successfully developed social paradigms in their life's work that can realistically contribute to a redemptive value where it concerns the embattled African American male population? The short answer would be 'yes'. The fact that they both are extremely committed to helping those who have stumbled in life, helping them to overcome their barriers, is noteworthy. And, because of that truth, probably a significant amount will be positively affected through their work and inspiration.

Moreover, the longer answer becomes more complex and uncertain if words like 'significant' and 'redemptive' are defined within the constraints of a Western and Euro-centric base of thought.

If the truth be told, there is just so much that is defined as success that can be spread around within the above context. As people are taught to receive visuals that are displayed in Black magazines like Ebony, Jet or Heart and Soul, which are further qualified by positive stories about their being successful Americans, statistics don't lie. Some of these somber statistics can be clearly read an extracted from an articles like the one written by Alan Caruba is reporting on the Urban League's Annual Report on Black America found on Canada's Free Press.

Empowering black men to reach their full potential is
the most serious economic and civil rights challenge we face today,” said Marc H. Morial, the Urban League president, adding that is necessary, not just for blacks, but for the entire American family.

Here’s what the Urban League had to say in 2007.

African-American men are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as white males while earning 74% as much per year. Unemployment for black men was 9.5 percent, as compared to 4 percent for white men (Today it is 17% vs, 10%).

Black men are nearly seven times more likely to be incarcerated, with average jail sentences about ten months longer than those of their white counterparts. Black males between 15 and 34 are nine times more likely than whites to be killed by firearms.

Black males are nearly eight times more likely than whites to suffer from AIDS. After attending elementary school, blacks “begin to fall behind on standardized tests.” (President Bush’s heralded No Child Left Behind). The Urban League reported that in fourth grade lacks perform at a level of 87 percent of whites. By the time they reach twelfth grade, their scores are at 74 percent of whites.
By high school blacks are more likely to drop out—15 percent, as compared with 12 percent for whites.

There’s no point laying out more statistics because none of this
should come as any surprise to anyone in the black community and are understood by whites as a kind of cultural contagion, a pathology that defeats black males and presumably their female counterparts.

While the general lot of the African American race has spuriously improved in the previous century, the pervasiveness of racism appears to have found a mainstay in American society where we have yet to see a black generation, shamefully so, enjoy what it means to experience an actual and 'genuine' post-racial existence.

The Need to Define a 'new' Standard
or Standard of Significance

This article has made it clear about the good work that people like Coach Dungy and Judge Mathis delivers, yet the most challenging question is asking whether their paradigms for hope is realistic for all those suffering African American men? This time, the short answer would be probably no and the long answer would be absolute not.

Of course, one can easily deduct in this discussion that the work of Dungy and Mathis is being rendered as hopeless. But one the contrary, their important work is much needed based on the presupposition that 'it's better to same as many as possible'. At the same time, the universality or whole of their paradigms lack real foundation in a real physical world. These are the hard truths:

• Even though tolerated, African American men would never be a natural part of a progressive white dominated culture.
  


• Even though those who qualify as being successful in America can mentor others, it is impossible to think that there's enough success (as mentioned earlier) to go around. And,
  


• No matter how hard one tries to make the present world a perfect place and it's only the people in it that are imperfect that person is pretty much bound by laws and practices that are unfair and institutionally racist.

If the above statements can be judged as truth, than African Americans (and especially their leaders) must start telling other African Americans the truth about their existence in a white world. As long as a Dungy or Mathis tells another African male who is bound and shackled in the white man's prison that all he has to do is 'A,B or C' to become redeemed in the white man's world, unfortunately, they are telling a lie.

Not until the African American community is able to define and live their own paradigms, where of course some are naturally connected to the community-at-large, would African Americans be able to experience a 'significant and uncommon' existence that is rooted and grounded in their unique calling in God's universe. Not until African American writers, preachers, teachers, parents and ordained (or self-ordained) leaders of the African American community are able to independently help the general African American population self validate and define their unique significance of their being, they have failed. This is the type of critical discussions that should be taking place in the African American communities. Our gift for mimicking the standards of other people communities (of course primarily white) as our standard for 'significance' has placed us in a bad place.

Sure, there will come along another Judge Mathis or another young man will become another Coach Dungy, but the beauty of justice and peace that was so elegantly espoused by the late Dr. King leaves no man (or woman) behind. Each and every soul is significant. The struggle to define this is a mighty but noble venture.

I've always advocated that the black community has a collective spiritual calling. This calling probably transcends the confines of the present world and it makes an insignificant community significant.

Therefore, let us continue the good works of people like Judge Mathis and Coach Dungy, but let also seek new paradigms that would qualify our community as significant and special--paradigms that are not simply being based on other people paradigms-- normally the ones espoused by euro-centric concepts and values.