Tufts' seventh-annual Emerging Black Leaders Symposium on Saturday drew a diverse range of speakers to discuss disciplinary practices in schools and the criminalization of African-American and Latino young men.
WGBH radio personality Callie Crossley mediated the symposium's two discussions, which addressed the theme "Prepping for the Penitentiary — An Exploration of the School-to-Prison Pipeline." The theme illustrated the social and institutional mechanisms driving up levels of incarcerated youth.
At the symposium's second panel, focused on the impact of educational practices, Boston anthropologist and attorney Lisa Thurau-Gray said that young African-American and Latino men experience disproportionate levels of criminal punishment.
"There's [an] open season on African-American and Latino youth right now in the United States; it starts in school and extends to the streets," she said. "Those policies … have criminalized, marginalized and destroyed lives."
Former NYPD Detective Marquez Claxton at the same panel criticized zero-tolerance policies and the use of legal punishments for in-school infractions in primarily African-American and Latino communities.
He said schools commonly punish certain behaviors that were in the past expected of adolescents.
"My generation has forgotten what it was like to be a child," he said.
Richard Celestin, who manages the Supervised Release Program of the Criminal Justice Agency, a program providing alternatives to detention and bail for felons in Queens, N.Y., noted a defeatist mentality among African-American and Latino youth.
"There is more of an expectation of failure if you look a certain way or dress a certain way," Celestin said, going on to advocate vocational training as an alternative for classroom schooling in certain cases.
Williams College professor and author Joy James spoke about higher rates of depression among African-Americans compared to Caucasians. She said modern culture is fraught with negative messages for minorities.
"We live in a uniformly hostile environment that's driven by anti-black animus, that's shot through with homophobia, sexism, classism and a number of other issues," she said.
Thurau-Gray, whose organization Strategies for Youth develops practices that have been used to train police officers across the country, encouraged college students to get involved in ending these patterns.
"Mentoring can be hugely helpful for young people," she told the Daily. "Silence is the greatest culprit here. If we're seeing something that's hurting young people, it's up to us to get up there and say no and do something about it."
Celestin said Tufts students could help by supporting underprivileged youth in the nearby area.
"Within a college campus you can develop clubs like the Emerging Black Leaders where you can get funding from the school itself and then turn around and provide programming for young people in the community," he told the Daily.
Celestin encouraged successful African-American and Latino college students to set an example in their communities.
"Every person that … becomes a professional or is a success or develops programming like this that's dedicated to giving back, you've already started to chip away at that stereotype that's been in existence for the longest time," Celestin told the Daily.
"Being in college is no small task. You've had to overcome a lot to get to that particular point," he said. "You have a story. It's a matter of making sure that your story is heard by the people that can learn from it and can grow from it."
In the symposium's keynote address, Jawanza Kunjufu called for more African-American male role models in schools and families. He also expressed his support for dividing genders in urban schools, which he said allows girls to be more confident in math and sciences.
Sophomore Joshua Reed-Diawuoh, the EBL's community outreach co-chair, hoped the symposium's messages would resonate with students and encourage them to bring about change.
"I hope that people come away from this with a sense of immediacy and urgency and know that this is an issue that for a lot of people is crucial," he said.
EBL Co-President Junior Josette Castillo delivered the symposium's closing remarks, stressing the need for continued dialogue on the national "school-to-prison pipeline".
"This is an issue that affects everyone," Castillo told the Daily. "Yes, it targets mainly black and Latino boys, but it does affect everyone," she said.
"You need to be aware of everyone's culture and everyone's differences and everyone's struggle in order to understand your own experience and how you relate to one another as human beings," Castillo added.
