Works through School to Produce Career-Character Prepared Black Males
Discovering
Choosing a career based on own feeling and experiences and, inclusively, on feedback from family, teachers, friends, and interest inventories
Pursuing
Practicing the art of loving (care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge) and exercising 100% Responsibility-100% Effort in preparing for a career
Achieving
Finding and maintaining a job, thereby, being able to provide for self and family
our mission
The mission of the Rempson Foundation is to enlist African American males in promoting black progress through strengthening the black family.
Also Works Through Home & Community to Produce Career-Character Prepared Black Males and, in Additional Ways, to Produce Strong Black Families
Loving
Integrating the practice of the art of loving (care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge) into every aspect of our daily living
Parenting
Providing our children a "hallowed presence" -- especially during the first three years of their life -- wherein they feel safe and loved and are provided life preparation
Priding
Deriving racial pride from the sound character -- forged through the "hallowed presence" of our childhood -- which enables us to replace system-responsibility with self-responsibility and a victim mindset with a growth mindset
About The Rempson Foundation
The Rempson Foundation was founded to promote the progress of African Americans. The black family is the foundation of that progress, and unless it is strengthened, our progress, particularly as pertains to the poor, will continue to be curtailed. The key to its strengthening is the black male.
The Foundation, therefore – relying on black male leadership -- undertakes and sponsors activities which produce career-character prepared and, therefore, family-ready black males. To strengthen the black family in additional ways, it also targets the black home and community for both support and collaboration in a combined black male-black community effort.
The premise is that a strong black family will provide our children the security and love (“hallowed presence”) shown by research to be essential to their development of the sound character traits on which school and life success depend -- and on which, likewise, the progress of the race, like that of any race, depends.
Making Sense of Our Plight
Eight Propositions: Guides to Understanding and Solving from Our African American Garden of Eden the Problem of Educating Black Males and Uplifting Black People, by Founder, Joe L. Rempson
Rempson urges fellow blacks to cut umbilical cord to white America and adopt his self-help evidence-based propositions
In a provocative departure, he takes issue with those who lay their plight on racism, not seeing it as a current obstacle to black progress.
Rather, he traces their plight back to what he terms the African American Garden of Eden. In it, W. E. B. Dubois outlasted Booker T. Washington and fathered a tradition which Rempson, a Bookerite, argues has produced a victim identity and an emphasis on the system rather than the self.
Rempson declares that only black males offer a way out because it is entirely “our black males who are keeping us down and curtailing our progress,” in contrast to black females, who “are doing OK.”
Black males are plagued by what Rempson calls the African American Male School Adaptability Crisis (AMSAC). Their academic performance ranks at the bottom, alone, below black female students and below white, Asian, and Hispanic male students. In large urban areas, their high school dropout rate is 59 percent and, nationally, they lag behind in college attendance and graduation rates. The outcome, Rempson argues, is dysfunctionality and the existence of hedonistic norms which hinder family and community stability.
But while black males are the problem, Rempson contends, it is, nevertheless, only they who can solve it because it takes males to bring up males. However, he elaborates, their crisis is inseparable from the plight of the entire black community, and while black males must be in the vanguard, the entire black community and nation must address it.
Rempson’s position is based on an analysis of extensive data and perspectives from various disciplines and sources. That analysis yielded what he concludes are the real causes of the black plight and, thus, made possible the formulation of real remedies. In his eight propositions, he synthesizes what they are and, overall, he offers a blueprint.
In entirety, the book is a lengthy 20 chapters, but, from the first and last chapters, one can get his message, reading the rest selectively.
Of particular interest to some, for example, will be his proposed evidence-based African American Male Career Pathway Program (AMCAP), Art of Loving (AOL) schools, Child Family Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s support of Booker T. Washington, or former President Barak Obama support of a black victim identity.
Of interest to others, for example, might be his treatment of such topics as black intelligent quotient (IQ), black culture, “acting white”, racism, police misconduct, Black Lives Matter, or critical race theory.
Throughout, Rempson’s conviction is that unless blacks confront their realities, “we will not solve our problems.” “Nor,” he continues, “can we solve them unless we cut the umbilical cord to white America. We have no right to expect it to be our savior; nor are we justified in perceiving it as our oppressor.”
Reviews
“Rempson, the former dean of students at the City University of New York’s Bronx Community College, is a lucid writer… it’s clear that the author has spent many years thinking about the particular problems of the community and formulating customized solutions to help solve them, as embodied here… A lengthy manifesto for AMCAP that lays out a vision for an ascendant black America.” -- Kirkus Review, original edition
“Rempson describes himself simply as an educator, and while some of his arguments are not revelations, others are. For example, he provides a unique angle on Dr. King’s attitude on self-reliance, and draws an interesting connection between King and Washington that many would consider startling…Rempson writes from the heart, but with purpose and clarity…is a fresh voice that deserves to be heard…At more than 900 pages, this book is initially daunting. But the narrative is so tidily laid out that, in the end, none of the content seems superfluous.” --Blueink Review, original edition
“Rempson powerfully advocates for applying the energy of the civil rights movement to the black family… book is surprising, with prose that can get fiery, and some may find the candor with which he approaches his topics offensive. He outlines a program to help black male children build a strong identity based on their personhood, rather than on the ‘cool culture’ of the street and the peer group, and calls black males to strong, responsible fatherhood.” --Foreword Clarion Review, original edition
(This book is a minor revision of the original book, The African American Male School Adaptability Crisis (AMSAC): Its Source and Solution Planted in the African American Garden of Eden.)