From the Dark Tower Countee Cullen

1. From the Dark TowerCountee Cullen • We shall not always plant while others reap • The golden increment of bursting fruit, • Not always countenance abject and mute • That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap; • Not everlastingly while others sleep • Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute, • Not always bend to some more subtle brute; • We were not made eternally to weep. • The night whose sable breast relieves the stark • White stars is no less lovely being dark. • And there are buds that do not bloom at all • In light, but crumple piteous and fall. • In the dark, we hide the heart that bleeds • And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.

2. “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” Plato (427 AD – 347 AD)

3. Frantz Fanon on Choices • “I find myself suddenly in the world and I recognize that I have one right alone: That of demanding human behavior from the other. • One duty alone: That of not renouncing my freedom through my choices.” • Black Skin, White Masks (1967)

4. PLAAY -Preventing Long-term Anger and Aggression in Youth • CPR- Cultural Pride Reinforcement • Anti-Violence Cultural Socialization Curriculum • MAAR- Martial Arts Anger Reduction • TEAM - Basketball • Teaching Empowerment through Athletic Movement • Intervening with Emotion during Play • COPE -Community Outreach through Parent Empowerment • ROPE- Rites of Passage Empowerment

5. CPR-Cultural Pride Reinforcement • Hour-long weekly sessions • Cultural Socialization focus • Teaching • Acting • Talking • Teaching culturally relevant critical consciousness through • music, video, hip-hop, role-play, current events • Violence alternative, cultural socialization curriculum • Culturally relevant atmosphere • Black barbershop passion and argument/debate

6. Stevenson, Jr., H. C. (2003). Playing with anger: Teaching coping skills to African American boys through athletics and culture. Westport, CT.: Greenwood Publishing, Praeger.

7. PLAAY Collaborations • Focus on 300 rejected Black male students • Discipline school can be both rejecting and safe context • Serious assault or weapons violation for admission • Some teachers and staff also struggle with rejection histories • Racial Socialization, Rejection Sensitivity, Depression, Aggression, School attendance; • Collaboration with multiple constituencies • Black Penn Undergraduates as staff • School cultures • Neighborhood cultures (West Phila) • Based on psychological benefits of racial socialization research • Stevenson, H. C. (2004). Boys in men’s clothing: Racial socialization and neighborhood safety as buffers to hypervulnerability in African American adolescent males (pp 59-77). In Niobe Way & Judy Chu, (Eds.) Adolescent boys in context. New York University Press: New York.

8. PLAAY Successes at Collaboration • Increased “safe” teachers and staff within the PLAAY model • Kids could access these safe people when PLAAY was out of building • Integrated into 2nd & 3rd periods of curriculum • Served as crisis intervention team at school during Philadelphia’s largest murder spree-Lex Street Murders

9. Conditions • 90 Students were randomly assigned to Control and PLAAY conditions • Control students received standard programming provided to all students within the discipline school curriculum including remedial academic and counseling services • The PLAAY condition included cultural socialization and movement intervention components

10. Angry Psychological Reactions: PLAAY vs Control Group Time*PLAAY Wilks lambda=.934 F (1,72) = 5.05* Control n =41 PLAAY n =43

12. Results, continued • PLAAY students increased attendance, homework completion rates, and school engagement; Reduced in-school assault rates and referrals to office • PLAAY students showed significantly lower retaliation cognitions and psychological reactions than Control group at Time 2 • No differences were found for rejection sensitive angry or anxious feelings. • PLAAY students rated by teachers as having poorer behavioral adjustment showed greater improvement than Control students rated similarly by teachers

13. HyperVulnerability • Can’t trust best friends or family, only self • Means living an exaggerated existence in a market-driven image management world • Interferes with living and surviving in other worlds (e.g. mainstream) • Based on psychology of insecure masculinity • Experiencing post-traumatic stress symptoms

14. Hypermasculinity • Violence can be necessary & functional • Protecting manhood at all costs is key • Fighting is one way to do that • This is American, not Black urban • How do you challenge, bond, or intervene with a value that is so endemic to manhood? • ”Last Man Standing”

15. Hopelessness • Exaggeration/Devaluation of self • Reduced fear of calamity • Internalize dehumanized racial identity • Lack of RS skills to protect from & combat dehumanization • Alertness to Discrimination • Coping with Antagonism, • Cultural Pride Reinforcement (CPR) • Cultural Legacy Appreciation, • Mainstream Fit

16. Elements of Culturally Relevant Intervention Affection, Correction, and Protection • Challenge society’s pathology hype of Black males • Understand functionality of violence within male-dominated context & society; • Build trust daily over and over again in the small moments; Isomorphic attribution • Expect them to embrace their humanity, not society’s view of criminality

17. Elements of culturally relevant intervention, pt 2 • Provide alternative rationales, vistas, maps for managing insecure masculinity • Teach counter-socialization explicitly • cultural socialization strategies, not social skills • Survival and creativity/transcendence • Engage Black movement, culture, & style • Intervene during rough moments of boys’ life • Touch the boys to reduce emotional & physical distance

18. Elements of culturally relevant intervention, pt 3 • Reframe distorted beliefs; cognitions about others’ hostility, definition of self, & societal access • Identify and distract potential conflict • Use own personal and cultural style to influence others • Physically mediate conflicts • Coach basketball skills for social competence

19. Cultural Attunement in Relationship and Socialization Approach (CARS)Zamel & Stevenson (2005)Relationship, style, & socialization • A culturally affirming relationship is central to engaging Black youth • A youth’s cultural style, expressions and values should drive intervention process • Cultural socialization should be explicit • Alertness to discrimination; Coping with antagonism; • Cultural Pride Reinforcement; Cultural legacy appreciation • Mainstream fit endorsement

20. PLAAY-On-the-spot intervention • As conflict emerges, PLAAY is applied by staff • Pro-social pro-cultural behavior & frustration tolerance taught within “play” atmosphere • Success during spontaneous limitation testing increases competence and decreases noncompliance • Not only does anger and aggression occur during competitive and frustrating play, but can be influenced before, during, and after the conflict