Just ask Alejandro Ibrahim, a senior at North Carolina Central University, about the Black Community and fasten your seatbelt! He is well-read; he values dialogue; he is a man of action and deep reflection and he truly cares! Gun violence, gang culture, financial literacy, food insecurity, business ownership…he is thinking about it all and desires transformative change.

A graduate of Walter Hines Page High School in Greensboro North Carolina, Alejandro was a student in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Program. After his move to Durham for college, he became inspired by seeing Black men serve as mentors to gang members. He decided to join the NC NAACP Youth & College Division in October of 2021 and currently serves as the Vice President.

Needed Transformation

Needed Transformation
In Alejandro’s opinion schools are in need of transformation. Sadly, throughout his years of K-12 schooling, he recalled that he was never interested in history and never thought he would be. K-12 schools left him with a distorted view of history and who “the good students” were. He particularly did not like the segregation of advanced courses that he witnessed. “Students [in high school] related the higher-level courses to Whiteness,” he remembered. As a Black male in those higher courses, he felt alienated in the classes and ostracized among his peers.

In college, Alejandro is majoring in History. “I try to read a lot,” Alejandro stated as he recounted times he even took his books to football games. Alejandro’s primary goal is to ensure that the education of Black children is rooted in the appropriate mindset. By his accounting, Black children “can compete with anybody” and HBCUs need to promote such thinking for these children (and others) in the K-12 environment.

“A lot of these counselors see black boys as athletes,” said Alejandro about public schools. “That’s it!” Adding to his point, he lamented that many Black students are also “conditioned to believe intelligence is not fun.” These circumstances stand in urgent need of transformation and Alejandro is not the wait-and-see type. He is adding his voice and his ideas about change.

First Show Up

Along with a fellow NAACP college student, Francisca Altenor, and his college adviser, Dr. Roderick Heath, Alejandro piloted a reading program at a public elementary school in Durham. His team decided that the first thing they needed to do was show up in the lives of the most impressionable. The new initiative, Reaching Education Across Districts (READ), involves collaborations with parents, school leadership and book donors to not only read books to the children but to give them the books as well.

The YCD leader wants to infuse a new culture among the Black students especially as he understands the influence of culture on the molding of attitudes and behavior. He wants a culture that promotes curiosity, self-confidence and collaboration. Sadly, for Black children, Alejandro opines, “there are not enough positive role models.” For them to be readers and to believe that they are as intelligent as any other children, they need to see Black people around them be enthusiastic about learning, excited about reading and confident about their abilities.

The READ program developed by NCCU’s chapter of NAACP is not about grades and reading to be tested. It is about a passion for reading, learning, talking and sharing their voices. Alejandro believes that a student who is confident enough to say what he thinks and takes the time to hear what others think will be on a path to discovery of the possibilities in life. That student will not settle for mediocrity, and Alejandro should know because he never has.

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