Fifty percent of all meaningful education takes place in the home. What do you share with your child? You share your interests. I was a book person. I read with my son. My wife is an artist. She dragged his little butt around to museums. He's an illustrator of children's books.
Within the black community, roughly 60 percent of children are born to single moms. Moms don't have the emotional wherewithal to deal with their children. Their English is atrocious. Their speaking is atrocious. The dropout rate is horrendous.
Children have adopted a consumerist attitude - I dare you to entertain me.
So many organizations have a mentoring arm, but they don't really do it. Their idea of mentoring a kid is giving them general advice. But what they need to do is read with children.
My dad was a janitor for U.S. Radium Corporation, and he stayed there for 37 years. So he didn't read.
I think it's difficult for young people to acknowledge being smart, to knowledge being a reader. I see kids who are embarrassed to read books. They're embarrassed to have people see them doing it.
There were two very distinct voices going on in my head and I moved easily between them. One had to do with sports, street life and establishing myself as a male... The other voice, the one I had from my street friends and teammates, was increasingly dealing with the vocabulary of literature.
There was a time I was no longer going to be black. I was going to be an 'intellectual.' When I was first looking around for colleges, thinking of colleges I couldn't afford to go to, I was thinking of being a philosopher. I began to understand then that much of my feelings about race were negative.
One of the problems is that kids who don't read - who are not doing well in school - they know they're not doing well. And they want everyone to be in that same category.
Now, my mom did not read well and she read 'True Romance' magazines, but she read with me. And she would spend 30 minutes a day, her finger going along the page, and I learned to read. Eventually, by the time I was four and a half, she could iron and I could sit there and read the 'True Romance.' And that was wonderful.
When we think of war, the tendency is to picture young soldiers only in their military roles. To a large extent this dehumanizes the soldiers and makes it easier for society to commit them to combat.
The most difficult idea to reconcile in war is the notion that anything is going to be solved by killing a stranger, or in risking your life for a cause anchored in some distant political arena.
As a kid I didn't see black cowboys on the screen. What that said to me was that there were things I couldn't do or be because of my color. What we see others like us do gives us permission to expand our own horizons.
We need to tell young people that America was built by men and women of all colors and that the future of this country is dependent on the participation of all of our citizens.
I admired the work ethic of the cowboys I read about. The idea of these young people taking on this much responsibility was impressive. I would like modern readers to have an appreciation of this.
There have been two areas identified as being vital to reading - and that's for very young children between the ages of one month and five years and for teenagers. I've been trying to find ways of approaching both groups.
I am very much interested in getting parents to read to children, and trying to get people mentoring children. If I can do both I'll be happy.
I don't want to approach reading from the viewpoint of that it's a pleasant adjunct to your life. I want to approach it from the idea that you have to read or you're going to suffer. There's a difference to be made - and you can make it if you read with your child.
Like the Negro League players, I traveled through the segregated south as a young man. Because I was black, I was denied service at many restaurants and could only drink from water fountains marked 'Colored.' When I went to the movies, I would have to sit in the Colored balcony.
I remember one time being told I could not play in a basketball game at the College of William and Mary because I was black, even though I was playing with a United States Army team.
