Black College Students, Reading, and the Death of the Book

I have been very quiet lately and not posting. The deadline for my book is quickly approaching, and I am overwhelmed with too much teaching and not enough time to think. I am not disputing that there is thinking involved in teaching. But I have been shanghaied with issues that should not arise when students enroll in a college-level course. Thus, I have concluded that some of the stereotypes about African American students are true. I am going to share one with the hopes that those of you who read my blog and have children, particularly college-aged children, will heed my warning. I want to begin by creating a context for my frustration, and that context emanates from my personal and family milieu.

It was unheard of in my parents' household to be poorly read. That is, my siblings and I were introduced to classical western literature before we began school: from Grimm's to Aesop's tales. As we aged, my mother purchased a set of "The Book House for Children," which, if my memory serves me correctly, contained full-text of some of the better known stories in World literature. By the time I was in the 6th grade, my context for literature became the Great Books, as well as fiction, poetry and drama by African American writers. Our winter nights were often spent reading and talking, with my mother insisting that one of her four children run downstairs and pull a book off the shelf to support the point that she was attempting to prove. The winter when I was 18, my mother instructed all of us to read Dostoyevski, Camus, and Hesse; she must have been going through a existentialist phase. I matriculated in advance English classes in high school despite being enrolled in chemical-biological studies curriculum. I was raised to revere the sacredness of the written text. And my siblings and I were information connoisseurs. I know that my mother spent the majority of the family's disposable income on books. My mother always told me if I could read and comprehend what I read, I could accomplish anything.

I have taught at two research one universities that recruit from America's best and brightest students. I now teach at Howard University, that ideally, recruits the world's best and brightest students of African descent. I also teach at a community college where my students possess a range of aptitudes and levels of commitment to their education.

While teaching at the University of Michigan and University of Rochester, I never had to wrestle with students to purchase their books, or to read. Yes, these were predominately white institutions with a handful of Black students. However, even my Black students came prepared to work. In fact, having me in front of the classroom as their professor often gave the one or two African American students in the class a level of comfort that allowed them to reveal their intellectual prowess without fear of reprisal. I often marveled at how well-read my Black students were at these universities.

But my experiences at Howard University and Prince George's Community College, with majority Black student populations, have been quite different. If I were not African American, I would swear that the majority of Black students don't read.

Yes, you read me right.

It is the seventh and eighth week of classes at Prince George's Community College and Howard University, respectively, and students are still telling me that they do not have their books. And this is a normal occurrence. After hearing this confession yesterday, with both students pronouncing that they didn't have their books as if it were a badge of honor, I lost it. I pointed out to one of the students that she had an eighteen karat gold serpentine chain around her neck and the other had a brand new Blackberry. I told them that their priorities were misguided. Both students expressed the fact that their parents did not give them money to buy books. While I won't test the efficacy of their statements, the mere fact that both these undergraduate girls expressed this sentiment speaks loudly about the environments from which they have come.

My wonderful colleague and poet, E. Ethelbert Miller, interceded, and began asking the girls simple, but revealing, questions: 1. Are there books in your households? 2. Did you go to the library as a child? 3. Do your parents read? 4. Do you have your own library? The students' responses to these questions revealed that they had not been reared or educated in an environment where there was a respect for reading. I concluded that some of us are rearing our children and sending them off to college without a healthy respect for the place of reading, in learning and in their lives.

While I am far more tolerant of my students in the community college who are less likely to read a short story I assign since the majority of the students are at the college because they have not proven to be high academic achievers, I am intolerant of my students at Howard University, who are supposed to represent our communities' best and brightest. Like so many blacks in my generation, Howard University has been positioned as the Harvard of the HBCUs. Although it may be somewhat conceivable for a white student to matriculate and graduate from Harvard without reading, I don't have a Black friend who graduated from Harvard without reading. In fact, all of my friends and colleagues who are Harvard alumni are avid readers. I know that the majority of my students at Howard would not last one semester at Harvard without reassessing their commitment to reading, attending classes, studying, and improving their writing skills.

Ethelbert told me that I was educating the future leaders. I challenged him on this fact. I have not come across any future leaders among my students at Howard University. They do not read, they barely attend class, and they do not possess the writing skills that will make them competitive or successful outside of Howard University. My colleague told me that too many of the Howard professors don't demand academic rigor from the students. This perplexes me since so many of the faculty, like myself, have graduated from universities where academic rigor was a prerequisite for not only matriculating, but also for graduating. Then I must ask myself, have my colleagues also stopped demanding academic rigor of themselves?

So I have sounded off. If you are one of my friends with children and you do not have any books in your house, shame on you. If you send your children off to college without money to purchase their books, double shame on you. Our kids will not be competitive in a world that still revers the book, critical thinking, and excellent writing skills. The educated elite will always have access to elite positions in the job market, the better graduate schools, and a higher quality of life. Race will somewhat impede our children's access to this world, but not reading will certainly deny them access completely. While the book may be dying in some areas of Western culture, the elite will always revere the book. Get over it, and make your children readers before it's too late. And ask yourself, when was the last time you read a book for sheer pleasure? Remember our children learn from our examples.