Education. It is an issue that I’m already researching, worrying about, borderline obsessing over. Because I’m raising a black boy in America, and I know that he can’t afford NOT to be educated, and educated WELL.
Enter the trailer for the new documentary American Promise. It showed up on my Facebook timeline, I watched it and could instantly relate.
The brainchild of Joe Brewster and Michelle Stephenson, an Ivy-league educated married couple in Brooklyn New York, the film follows their son, Idris Brewster, and his best friend, Seun Summers, as they journey through the elite and private Dalton School in New York.
I’ve watched the trailer, like, 5 times. And read and watched interviews with Joe, Michelle, Idris and Seun. The film raises questions of black male identity at prestigious institutions, that often lack meaningful diversity, and examines the sometimes unfair pressures well-meaning middle-class black families can put on their children to succeed (you know the whole ‘you have to work twice as hard as white people’ thing).
Ladies, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!