The African-American intellectual, Cornel West, wrote, "I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope." If you have read this book, Mentors Matter but Poverty Sucks, you learned that the motivation behind my pursuit of higher education is to get beyond my ideological disposition and theoretical constraints. I want to affect practical, pragmatic solutions to societal problems and represent marginalized voices with integrity and scholarship. And I am committed to using my gifts and resources to help others. But perhaps doing this one child at a time - as I have - also falls far short of practical.
What this study has proven beyond a reasonable doubt -even though mentoring is a positive intervention for at-risk youth - it is surely not enough to break the cycle of poverty and its offspring. There are over 15 million children living in poverty in this country. The problems we face as a society are enormous - so are the opportunities.
What are practical things we can all do? We can feel moral outrage at the news of a drive-by shooting that takes the life of an innocent child - along with his potential and his talent -because this tragedy is a product of poverty. We can mentor. We can speak truth to power. And right now we can put negative labels that damage our identities in the backseat - how about "at-risk" and "racist" in the backseat, so we can let "hope" ride shotgun.