Aliyya Swaby Photo
Ismail Abdussabur asked a table of black mentors to extend their support to the “middle man” — “regular” students who could become either society’s leaders or gang members depending on the direction they receive.
The Central Connecticut State University engineering student brainstormed the best way to help those young men slipping through the cracks, at the third of meeting of the “Black Man’s Think Tank,” held Saturday afternoon at Gateway Community College. Students and successful black professionals continued an ongoing conversation about how to rebuild the black community, in part by recruiting young men to take over leadership positions.
Chris Randall Photo
The meeting came happened to coincide with a series of local protests this weekend against police brutality, sparked when grand juries failed to indict two white officers who killed unarmed black men in Ferguson and in New York City.
“We’re not here to talk about Ferguson. We’re here to talk about a solution that is much more sustainable,” Shafiq Abdussabur — Ismail’s father and newly promoted New Haven sergeant — told participants before the discussion.
The point was to reach young men who aren’t in trouble and who can fall through the cracks. Rather than speak in the abstract, organizers brought eight young people — all of them in high school or college — together with local black professionals for the discussion.
Restauranteur Miguel Pittman brought his son Miguel Pittman Jr., a student at Gateway. Contractor and entrepreneur Yul Watley sat next to his nephew Marcus Watley, also a Gateway student.
The group plans eventually to use the series of discussions to create a report for young black men on how to pursue professional careers.
“This ain’t a bunch of guys meeting in the basement,” Shafiq Abdussabur said. “People here today have connected values and morals. We’re from the city.”
Help us help you, the mentors said to the students, who shared their personal difficulties avoiding peer and media pressure to bypass educational opportunities.
“I was that 20-year-old not ready for college,” said Bruce Bonner, a retired NHPD sergeant.
State Sen. Gary Holder-Winfield sat in the audience before the conversation got started, then soon moved to the table with the rest of the black professionals. He asked the students exactly what they need to feel supported — just a day before sharing with a crowd at an NAACP rally his own experiences being racially profiled by the police.
Marcus Watley said he motivates himself by thinking about harmful stereotypes about black men. When he was younger, people thought he would get “into drugs” or become a basketball player, “nothing more,” he said. “I’m shocked today that I made it to college.”
He said it’s hard to help people who don’t want to try, but somehow those are the students “who get the most attention. Kids like me don’t get as much … but if we only know a little, we should get help, too.”
Ismail Abdussabur (pictured) described the cycle pulling young people off of the college track: “Kids that messed up in school — in general, they get all the attention. All the people in the middle get overlooked. Regular kids become the bad kids to get all the attention. When the middle man becomes the bad man, it becomes really hard for them to get back up to that 1 percent.”
Street outreach worker Douglas Bethea challenged the professionals in the room to “put our money where our mouth is” and hire the students when they come home for summer breaks — a practical way to help them succeed.
One way to recruit more young black men is to present them with pens or ties “to show that we’re serious,” said Miguel Pittman Jr. (pictured). Black professionals could change the meaning of what’s cool for a group otherwise only looking to hip-hop artists.
Those suggestions do not go deep enough, said defense attorney Michael Jefferson, who stood up from the audience to address those at the table. “We sound so immature and unsophisticated,” he said. “All we have to do is control the politics.”
Black men shouldn’t ask others for jobs; they should create jobs for each other and pull each other up the ladder, said Jefferson (pictured): “You want to control the police in your community, all you have to do is have influence over the police commission.”
Both the “middle man” and the struggling man are important, Shafiq Abdussabur said. He said one goal for an upcoming conference in February should be to “fill the room” with both types of young people.
“It has the potential to go far beyond this table,” he said.