This month’s Illinois Issues cover story on “Young black males” is recommended reading as the nation turns its attention again to Ferguson, Missouri. In the article by Maureen Foertsch McKinney, the guidance dean at Springfield’s Lincoln Magnet school is quoted saying her sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade black boys are “terrified” with thoughts that what happened to Michael Brown could happen to them. A parent of African-American males explains that she teaches her teenagers that if they get pulled over by police to roll down the window and put both hands out, rather than reach for their papers in the glove compartment. A Benedictine University professor says feeling under constant threat – from poverty, violence and police – is a way of life for many African-American teens and can be “powerfully discouraging.”
–Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher
This article appears in Nov 20-26, 2014.
