Black Excellence

Introducing Owen and Evan

As we move to other parts of the state, we go north then head south. Owen grew up in Elgin, a northwest second ring suburb of Chicago. Elgin was majority white, over 60%, and only 7% black. A city that has seen significant population growth over Owen’s childhood, growing up Elgin had just under 100,000 people.

Owen describes growing up in a middle class family as relatively sheltered. “The neighborhood behind me had drugs and gangs, but the neighborhood in front was white middle class America.” Fortunately, the neighborhood Owen grew up in was fairly decent, 54% of households were married couples, and the median income was $52,000 and only 6.4% of families lived below the poverty line. His household however was female headed, so he fell in the small 11% minority of female headed households. Like a lot of black families, and just like Tonya and Sasha, he grew up with his grandmother in the house.

He says “my dad was around, but not really in my life.” Evan knew what it was like to not have a dad around too… which takes us to the other end of the state, East St. Louis, Illinois, a well known city for its blighted conditions, and for having the “highest crime rate in the United States.” But how many people have taken a personal look at East St. Louis and not allow the statistics like: 48% of children live below the poverty line or less than 10% of the population holds a college degree, to let them write off an entire community of people?

Evan describes his neighborhood as majority African- American (97%) and low income (median income for a family was $24,500). Quite the contrast from Owen, I doubt from the description that Evan was very sheltered, but more importantly, Evan describes his neighborhood as a community.

“Our street had a lot of kids on it. There were long narrow streets and they all looked exactly the same, 80th looked like 81st and 81st looked just like 79th. We had about 20 kids on our block all around the same age. Most of us tried to stay out of the streets, and had older siblings or parents that kept us out of trouble. We had people behind my house who were thugs. We fought a lot, but still remained friends. It was one of those communities where if I got in trouble at Jerry’s house, his mom would punish me and my mom. It was like a black ‘Hey Arnold’.”

Both Owen and Evan were smart. Owen attended public school until high school. From 4th-8th grade he was in “gifted” programs and “was distanced, somewhat, from some of the things other kids were doing.” Evan says he went to the “geek” school, “it was simply the public school that had testing requirements to get in.” While Owen seemed contented that he received a decent education, Evan says he got in trouble a lot for “lack of challenge”… “I talked back a lot, I was curious, but teachers who didn’t want to address my curiosity labeled it as bad behavior.”

 In 2007 that school closed… I wonder how many other children, who were “gifted” or “geeks”, attended that school in hopes of being challenged academically, but left with tons of unanswered curiosity???

These two black males, despite the challenges that stood before them, many of which had still not yet been realized before their teenage years, were destined for excellence…