Or, it was not the first time he had the experience. It had reached such a triggering point that he had to say something?
Wasn’t the speaker talking to a school that is plagued with problems and a heavy drop out rate ? I think that he was trying to get their attention as a way of saying that he grew up in a similar environment and yet rose above it and made a choice to take advantage of opportunities given to him and to make sure his own children did the same.
I felt like he was going off on the students to grab the audience and to pull them in and engage them.
Our high school had a motivational speaker a few years ago ( Chris Herren ) come to speak to the students about drug abuse…he held the audience’s interest and from what my own daughter said, moved many to tears…very moving , but I am not so sure he influenced the students as much as they should have been .
They were polite and respectful though…
I wonder if this rant wasn’t part of his means of garnering interest in his audience
First comment, and I’m still watching the vid: He does not speak as though he has a PhD. He does not “seem” to present with the air of one who has attained higher education, neither in his speech nor his dress.
Black kids certainly respond positively to the visual and aural signs of “having made it.” Most people do.
I have no idea what the rest of you see in the video, but I do not see anything other than kids (and one adult) sitting in a rapt manner, paying close attention to this man. They are moved to respond to him by a showing of hands when he asks them to consider points about the state of their lives, and their mothers’ working status, and he then further implores them to show him greater love/greater respect (?) by saying something I could not really hear, something like, “I’m asking you to act in faith.”
It is at that point, where he seems to want a wave of attention, that HE becomes more focused and stops his pacing and begins to take note of a little activity that is taking place among those in attendance. It certainly was not made plain in the video that the kids were being disruptive to any degree.
He sought to impress upon them that his time was valuable (i.e., worth money), and thought they would be impressed at the start.
I do not sense that he had planned the admonishment, though as someone up-thread said, he may have been brooding and stewing over this type of interaction, and let his frustrations and disappointment erupt at this moment.
At this point, (4:36), he is doing too much yelling, and sounding nearly emphysemic, for me to continue watching and listening.
As for the OP’s question, do you think the moderators/administrators would have allowed the speaker to continue on a powered-on mic were the audience not those of an inner-city Black school?
The person up-thread who said that Black kids don’t respect authority and that’s why they don’t learn/don’t listen, etc., was almost directly quoting, though out of context, the words of someone interviewed and showcased on NPR in the last two weeks.
The core of the radio guest’s message, though, was to take note of his own techniques at counseling young Black school kids (I think they were in high school), realizing that the methods of operation in a classroom setting (compliance, consideration, inquiry and request) were in direct opposition to the methods of survival the kids had to use out in their neighborhoods (resistance/defense and/or offense, single-minded self-preservation, demanding and unyielding insistence).
Understanding this dichotomy in the kids’ lives helped this counselor know how to introduce new forms, methods and figures of authority to them, and how to get the kids to term them to be such, and in so doing, to interact differently by understanding that in that place, in his counseling sessions and in the classroom, it was okay to operate under the new norm.
One more thing: this guy started talking to a bunch of kids about the hardships he knows they face, and then exalts that he had the chance to remove his child from the horror of it all. He distances himself from where they are right now by emphasizing that the lucky ones are not in that room with them.
He disrespected and undermined any stated compassion for them in doing that.
Next, and most importantly, when he began to scream and berate them (“out of love”- which I think could be present) he further undermined his ability to reach them in a way which would underscore their respect for him, and a willingness to come closer to where he “lives,” by turning away from the very positive aspect he sought to have them hold dear (peacefulness, respect). He turned toward the thing he proclaimed to have removed from his own child’s life, the thing he was bemused about sharing had never existed in his son’s life - a knowledge of how to fight. He was fighting with them to make them listen.
For all the parents out there, how well does that work?
@Waiting2exhale - you lasted longer than me. I turned it off at 2:53. Not because the kids were misbehaving. I also saw kids sitting still, facing and paying attention to the speaker. The speaker, as good his intentions may be, was all about himself and what he did for his kids. He wasn’t connecting to the kids in the auditorium. He managed to tell them (as if they didn’t know), they were failing, had rough lives, and probably didn’t have much. He told them he didn’t have any male role models (check). But HE was making sure that HIS kids had a present father. That’s great but THEY weren’t his kids so they just hearing one more way they lost in the lottery of life. That’s when he lost me. The kids may have lasted longer because they wanted to hear what changed for him. I think they wanted to learn something from him, but his opening lost them. Too bad. He wanted to inspire and they wanted to be inspired.
This is his ego talking. Why should these kids care he’s a rich guy who came to talk to them “for free”?
@SlackerMomMD: This bothered me so much I walked around my house last night trying to figure out what was needling me. Thank you for speaking to this issue.