In Georgia, one of the states in the US where the legacy of segregation is still heavily felt, African Americans are hopeful that the state will get its first ever black governor – Stacey Adams. But will that help the daily lives of the many who live in poorer areas surrounding the large cities? A private initiative didn’t wait for the outcome of the elections and tries to achieve where politicians failed until now.
A group of young African-American kids are standing around computer screens, frenetically tapping away on the keyboards.
Location: a class room at B.E.S.T. Academy in one of the suburbs of Atlanta, capital of Georgia, US.
Python coding allows them to manipulate drones, the size of a small bird.
But it doesn’t immediately work.
“Those whose drones are connected to wifi, tell me now!” says Bishara Abdul-Hamid, who stands in the middle of the teenagers, some of them with hoodies, others wearing masks.
The first test: make the drone go up. The ultimate test: make it fly through two hoops.
The class is part of an initiative by a group called 100 Black Men of Atlanta. The group is part of a conglomerate of similar organisations that was first established in 1986 by Atlanta-based entrepreneur Nathaniel R. Goldston, III.
He encouraged a group of friends to go and help the city’s underprivileged youth – mainly African Americans living in the poorer suburbs.
According to Keith Millner, Chairman of the 100 Black Men of Atlanta, the group tries to push for a “nontraditional experience within a high school” where the traditional Euro-centrist Caucasian narrative on US history is confronted with education on slavery and field trips to Gettysburg.
There, the pro-slavery confederate general Robert E. Lee – still honoured in parts of the US, most notably in an enormous carving on the side of Stone Mountain just outside Atlanta – was defeated.
Students can research for themselves “whether it was a truth that was ugly or whether it was a truth that has been misrepresented,” Millner told RFI.
The organisation is registered as a 501(c) non-profit with the US Internal Revenue Service, and in 2019 filed gross receipts of some $2.7 million.
Income derives mainly “from grants” from corporations, and, unlike similar projects in many European countries, gets only “some” state funding, says Ray Singer, project manager at B.E.S.T Academy.
The academy is a public, all-boys school which services students from grades 6-12 and partners with 100 Black Men.
Currently, the group focuses on helping kids getting access to universities via its “Project Success”.
It also fights against excesses of America’s love for weapons with an “awareness program” on gun violence, saying that “black Americans are disproportionately impacted by gun violence.”
“They experience 10 times the gun homicides, 18 times the gun assault injuries, and nearly 3 times the fatal police shootings of white Americans.”
But the showcase of the group are efforts at the B.E.S.T Academy, located in one of Atlanta’s suburbs.
Teachers also stress the importance of support beyond financial help and mentoring. “We want them to look at some of the histories, specifically here in Atlanta, specifically during the Civil Rights movement,” explains Bishara Abdul-Hamid, a software engineer who volunteers as technology teacher.
“We want them to be able to connect to the fact that there have been obstacles in the past, and we’ve been able to overcome some of those obstacles.”
He later confides that many kids see the school as a reprieve from “sometimes difficult situations” at home. According to Millner, 100 Black Men’s chairman, the B.E.S.T. Academy is located in “one of the worst areas in Georgia” with a high crime rate.
When students get rowdy as the mini drones don’t immediately start flying, Abdul-Hamid remains calm and calls for “respect for each other.”
This directive help, the crowd falls silent, and listens to his instructions.
“A large part of that is just being patient,” he says, “realizing that coding can be challenging, it can be frustrating, working in the group. But if you’re patient, the students eventually resolve some of that conflict themselves. They have that ability to do that.”
In the end, the drones do fly, and the students cheer.
Brighter future
The idealism instilled by the 100 Black Men and their project shines through to some of the elder students, who managed to enter college and have set their hopes on a brighter future.
Asked about the upcoming elections, Anjali Gramble, a junior psychology major at Atlanta’s Spellman College, observes that “a lot of the racial tension and a lot of the gender imbalances is really affecting the race.”
Gramble, President of the Spellman’s “Collegiate 100” chapter, another initiative of the 100 Black Men aimed at helping college students, says that once people understand “… the idea that the issues that we’re facing are larger than us, because they will affect the generations that come after us, there will be more of an understanding.”
Budding realism is expressed by Atiyah Kennedy, who is “Collegiate 100” president of Georgia State University, where she is an senior in international economics. She sees “education as the key that we as society are thriving.”
Lack of connection to others is what frustrates student Elijah Turner.
“Black students very rarely sit with the white students because the white students very rarely sit with the black students” and that racially-based groups generally don’t mix very well, he says.
And this point of view is easily understood when you look at how people spend their Sundays- “the most segregated day in the US”.
Sunday is when religious America withdraws in its individual, and highly segregated pockets of worship. His solution: building bridges.
“It takes someone to step out and say, hey guys, this is wrong. One of my favorite professors, Dr. Illya Davis, would say ‘disagree without being disagreeable,’ which is one of the hardest things to do while building bridges,” he says.
Still, he’s optimistic. “We may have cultural differences, but at the end of the day, we are still humans, we all still have to provide for others.”
Drone class is over. The kids have succeeded in making the drones fly, but the final test, having them fly through the hoops, hasn’t worked – yet.
But the atmosphere is cheerful, and a sense of camaraderie surrounds the teenagers who walk towards the school exit.
In two weeks time there will be another chance.
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