Last June, just before summer break, I met with groups of young African-American males during my student listening tour. I visited each of the Madison high schools in an attempt to find the cultural and academic pulse of young black males. I needed to hear for myself how they felt about what’s being said — and thought — about them in our community.
Those discussions were one part of a much larger conversation I had engaged in with several hundred local African-Americans since writing “Justified Anger” one year ago. My personal essay for the Cap Times called on Madison to address pervasive racial inequalities here.