Stop pushing our young, gifted and black into trades

When are we going to stop trying to push young black men into the trades?

When I need a plumber, electrician or carpenter, I need a good one, quickly.

A black one would suit me perfectly.

But what I need more than that — and what Bermuda needs desperately — are black managers, professionals, insurance executives and financial hotshots strutting in and out of executive suites.

We need more black Bermudian men looking and acting rich and important because they are rich and important.

In his report on young black men, Prof. Ronald Mincy gives a compelling description of the historical and cultural factors that have left young black men at the wrong end of the education, employment and income ladder.

Opportunities

You ought to read it for yourself but a one-sentence summary might go something like this — young black men respond rationally to opportunities and expectations they perceive.

We have to do much more to ensure young black men see a future in higher-paid professions and stop being lured in such overwhelming numbers into “working with their hands”.

There’s nothing dishonourable about working with your hands but it’s not where the money is.

The huge gap between white and black earnings — let alone the gap in white and black wealth — will continue as long as this over-concentration in trades and manual labour continues.

Premier Dr. Ewart Brown described the problem clearly last Friday in the House of Assembly.

He said that in an economy whose main pillar is international business, the push towards trades “means that a segment of this community will never be influencers in the economic engine that drives this country’s policies, social life and way of life. That is simply a fact”.

Prof. Mincy’s analysis “should challenge us to stop copping out by saying they can only work with their hands”.

Dr. Brown highlighted a small survey of black high school students who were part of Prof. Mincy’s report:

Of them, 38.9 per cent expressed interest in the trades, 27.8 per cent were interested in the arts, 27.8 per cent were interested in pursuing professional sports, 16.7 per cent were interested in the sciences and just one student was interested in becoming a lawyer.

Dr. Brown said: “Not one student expressed an interest in finance/international business.

“They have decided, and through a myriad of factors we have decided, it’s not for them.

“We must reverse this trend or we will continue to surrender our destiny.”

Yet speeches from Dr. Brown’s fellow MPs — not just from opposition parties but from his own colleagues and Cabinet — showed an obsession with pushing more and more young black men into “the trades”.

Speaker after speaker urged Government to focus on “technical education”, repeating the exact clichéd script Prof. Mincy warned against.

There were other clichés and appeals to personal responsibility.

“We can’t make excuses for young people,” former Education Minister Randy Horton declared. “How do you expect to get a job with your pants sagging around your behind?”

There were arguments about whether racism was even involved in the problem.

Works and Engineering Minister Derrick Burgess pinned the blame on white employers and the media.

Dale Butler asked: “What’s race got to do with it? It’s not a conspiracy to destroy black boys.”

The point Prof. Mincy was making, I think, is that race has everything to do with it.

It’s not a conspiracy but a structural problem in which cultural traditions, a flawed education system and a white-dominated business culture perpetuate racial inequity.

One thing that is crystal clear is there is no consensus among MPs about what the problem is and what should be done about it.

Even basic facts are subject to dispute, like the dropout rate of black male high school students.

Prof. Mincy’s research suggested it is something like 50 per cent.

Education Minister El James argued last Friday that the overall high school dropout rate is only about 1.4 per cent.

Problem

The Hopkins Report on education three years ago said “graduation rates are calculated and reported inconsistently. Current statistics are confusing”.

Some of Prof. Mincy’s recommendations are being worked on. School counselling services are being expanded and improved.

But there is plenty more work for everybody to do — not the least of which is to agree on what the problem is, what we should do about it and how we should monitor progress.

One thing we can do right away is stop pushing “the trades” as a wonderful catch-all solution to the problem of under-achieving young black men.

Young black men should aspire to any job in the land, from the lowliest to the loftiest.

Until they can and until they actually do, both they and their country are being short-changed.

As the Premier said on Friday, working with your hands should be a choice, not an inevitability.