Perspectives: Mentoring Can Be the Critical Ingredient in Minority Male Academic Achievement: My hometown is among the communities with the lowest-performing schools. Milwaukee — where 75 percent of Black male eighth-graders read below grade level — graduates only 40 percent of its African-American students. Of my high school class of 900, only 197 students graduated in four years. I was one of the few males of color who went on to college. I graduated near the top of my high school class and found myself at a small state school in the University of Wisconsin system.
I have had the opportunity to work with young African-American and Hispanic male college students for more than 10 years at Iowa State University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and now at DePaul University. An overwhelming majority of these men came from some of the most underperforming public school systems in the country, such as those in Milwaukee and Chicago. Those men of color who reach college are often seen as anomalies.
