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An exclusive telephone interview with Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu.
Interviewer: Paul Osbourne
NuB: Alright. Um...well, let me start with this question first. Um, what inspired you to become a voice on Black child psychology?
Kunjufu: (Pause) Well, I think that if you love life, you have to love children, and when I graduated from college in 1974, um...I saw that our children were dying. Especially our boys. And...so the first, I...I guess the first catalyst was um...I saw the pain. And then I began to read...um, about the state of not only Black people but the state of Black children. I began to have dialogue and discussion with parents and community, uh, workers. And then I put all that into, uh, various books that I began to write from that point to the present.
NuB: Okay. Um, okay, speaking about that...why did you decide to concentrate more on, uh, the young Black boys as opposed to the young Black girls? Like in your books, Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys?
Kunjufu: Well, I'm an educational consultant in numerous school districts around the country and I would give presentations to teachers and than after the presentation I would, uh, visit the various classrooms. And I noticed that in the Special Ed classrooms and the Remedial Reading classrooms and in the Principal's Office, waiting for suspension, um, maybe 75 percent, if not more, of the students were males. And, as an outsider looking in, I simply began to ask questions. I mean, if your school is 50 percent male and 50 percent female, then why the disproportionality, uh, in Special Ed, Remedial Reading and suspension? And they really couldn't answer that.
That was one reason. Uh, secondly, when I was in college, I did an Internship and, um...or exchange program at Morgan State University and I got a chance to stay in a Youth Detention Center, um, for boys and...(pause) I didn't notice anything different in those boys and myself when I was their age, except that I had a nurturing home. And so, um...what I saw here was that this was simply a stepping ground for the penal population.
I think that, last but not least, I mean it's obvious that if you live in a world controlled by white males, then the greater threat to white males would not come from females, it would come from other males. And especially the males with the most melanin. And that just happens to be African-American males.
NuB: Okay, um...What, uh, suggestions would you have, other than Special Education or Remedial courses for these young youths?
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