Rite of Passage Programs as Effective Tools for Fostering Resilience among Low-Income African American Male Adolescents

The authors discuss effective rite of passage (ROP) programs as strength-based, culturally relevant interventions for African American male adolescents. They also highlight the ethnocultural strengths of this population from a resilience perspective and articulate academic and dispositional outcomes of ROP programs. Recommendations for practice and future research are included. ********** Despite major efforts since the Brown v. Board of Educ. (1954) decision, African American students, male students in particular, continue to lag behind their European American counterparts in academic achievement (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2002). As early as the third grade, African American students demonstrate significantly lower performance in reading, mathematics, and science as compared with their European American, Latino, and Asian/Pacific Islander peers (NCES, 2002). As a group, African American students constituted roughly 14.8% of public school enrollment in 1998, yet compared with their European American counterparts, were disproportionately identified and placed in categories such as mental retardation (18.9%), specific learning disability (45.2%), and emotional disturbance (10.7%; NCES, 2001). Disproportionality also permeates decisions regarding which children are identified and placed in programs for the gifted and talented in U.S. public schools, with African American students being half as likely to be represented in such programs as compared with their European American peers (3.04% and 7.47%, respectively; National Research Council, 2002). The majority of research investigating low-income, African American male adolescents has been problem focused, spotlighting symptoms rather than root causes. Some scholars have criticized the negative approaches that have investigated interpersonal violence and aggression (Hammond & Yung, 1991), dropout rates (Alexander, Entwisle, & Horsey, 1997), crime and delinquency (DuRant, Cadenhead, Pendergrast, Slavens, & Linder, 1994), and chronic underachievement (Osborne, 1999). Fueling this pejorative view of African American male youth is the persistent and pervasive depiction of this population within the media that highlights the symptomatology of their sociopolitical realities as inherent, and sometimes even genetic, flaws (DeFilippis & Derby, 1980; Newkirk, 2000). Remedial responses to low-income African American male adolescents' persistent underachievement have included compensatory programs (Lange & Lehr, 1999), school-based intervention strategies (Bullis, Walker, & Sprague, 2001), referrals to alternative educational settings (Foley & Pang, 2006), and mentoring programs (Tierney & Grossman, 2000). Adding to this shortcoming is the minimal discussion of the strengths of this population, thereby contributing further to stigmatization (McMillan, 2003; Miller, 1999). Resilience theory (Seccombe, 2002) provides a useful lens for investigating the challenges and strengths influencing the educational achievement of low-income African American male adolescents because of its focus on risk and protective factors. The intent of this article is to highlight the strengths of low-income African American male adolescents and to articulate the academic and dispositional outcomes of rite of passage (ROP) programs for this population as a strength-based intervention. ROP programs are strength-based, culturally relevant interventions that have been effective with this population (Brookins, 1996; Brooks, West-Olatunji, & Baker, 2005; Harvey & Rauch, 1997; Jeff, 1994). REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Many of the early interventions with African American students stemmed from a cultural deprivation theory (DeFilippis & Derby, 1980; Rowe & Osgood, 1984) and served to identify individual deficits in order to respond with remediation. In particular, African American boys in public schools continue to be recipients of deficit-focused remediation (McMillan, 2003). …