Essay 656

The following appeared in news sources nationwide…

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‘CSI: NY’ star offers lessons for black youths

BY ERIN TEXEIRA

NEW YORK -- In Hollywood, even bad publicity is good publicity. But in the real world, the bad news about black men is overwhelming.

Actor Hill Harper of “CSI: NY” wants to help.

His first book, Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny, offers life guidance to black youngsters. It was written as e-mails sent between Harper and a young fan, and includes advice from the spiritual to the practical.

Harper’s advice starts with how to choose good friends and make school less tedious, even fun. One chapter helps readers make sense of being reared by a single parent, true for two-thirds of black children. There’s advice on how to impress girls, recover from mistakes and not get caught up in today’s bling-bling culture.

Not typical topics of conversation for a young actor looking to elbow his way into leading man roles. But Harper, 39, isn’t typical. He was studying economics and sociology at Brown University when he stumbled upon an acting class. He got a law degree and a master’s in public administration at Harvard, graduating cum laude, while going on auditions.

He recently talked about life and the new book.

Q. You’ve mentored black boys for years, and you often visit schools. Is that where the book idea came from?

A. Yes. About 18 months ago, two young men at a middle school in New York pulled me aside after I gave a talk. They said they wanted to go to college, but no one in their family had done that and they didn't have any money and they weren’t good at taking tests. “What can we do?” These were answerable questions, but I realized I can’t talk to every kid. I went home and started writing the book.

Q. The questions from your “young brother” are specific: “Hill, what if school is not for me?”

A. Those are all questions and issues that real young men have asked me personally. I write about my life lessons, but I bring other voices in, too. There are quotes from people like James Baldwin and Will Smith. I have an e-mail from the rapper Nas about being a man. I also have my professor from Harvard Law School, Charles J. Ogletree Jr., write about how he succeeded even though his parents didn’t finish high school. I want to show that these people can exist in the same place. They’re not mutually exclusive.

Q. That’s tough for a lot of kids to accept, isn’t it? Many black kids feel like being good in school is not cool. So much of “cool” today starts and ends with hip-hop.

A. My biggest problem with hip-hop: It doesn’t explain the journey. Rappers say, “I went from standing on the corner to riding in a limo.” But they don’t talk about the work they did to get there. I mentor a little boy, and a few years ago he said, “Hill, I cannot be happy unless I have a platinum Rolex and a Bentley with 20-inch rims.” He was dead serious. Where does a 9-year-old get that? It’s from TV and music videos.