Boys of Baraka

Many African American families are suffering from the violence and substance abuse in their towns today, as reflected in the film “Boys of Baraka”. This film focuses on four young African American boys and their families from an inner city in Baltimore; Richard and brother Romash, Devon, and Montrey. As a result of the lack of discipline and an increased violence rate, these African American boys are suffering education-wise. Luckily, the Baraka School in Africa was designed for these children and gave them hope of bettering their lives as they enter high school. Due to the family’s situation dealing with their surrounding city, the five ways a family will thrive and function that we learned in class definitely pertain to “Boys of Baraka”. The family function, as we learned in class, is how a family operates to care for its members. Each family of the four African American boys that were selected to join the Baraka School in Africa portrayed the function in different ways. The first basic function is providing those basic necessities to survive, such as food, clothing, and shelter. Richard and his brother, Devon, and Montrey’s families are able to provide the best necessities that they can for their boys under some of the families certain financial circumstances. While Montrey has no father because he is in jail, and Devon struggles to deal with his mother’s drug abuse, the boys have everything they need to live a day-to-day lifestyle. Even without a father, and an unstable mother Montrey, Devon, Richard, and Romash’s families encourage the second family function; learning. The main reason the mothers fight so hard for their boys to be accepted into the Baraka School is because they care for their son’s and only want them to succeed academically. The third family function we discussed is self-respect. By devoting themselves to work inorder to help support their families, the mothers of these ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen year-old boys also try to embodied