This paper examines the mentoring of African American youth, critiques the accepted theoretical basis for most programs, and offers an alternative framework. Following an introduction in section 1, section 2 describes conventional mentoring and contains two case studies of programs in the San Francisco Bay Area (California). A key finding of the case studies is that in many cases, the proteges did not feel a need for mentoring, and so entered the relationship with very different goals from those of the mentors. Section 3 discusses the theoretical assumptions behind planned mentoring that African American youth, especially males, are members of the "underclass" that emerged in the 1970s. This section argues that this is not a phenomenon that emerged so recently but rather a problem faced by African Americans as a minority group. Section 4 presents the paper's thesis that the absence of role models of mainstream success in the inner-city is due to adaptation to involuntary minority status, which produces traditional success models different from those of the mainstream and makes the adoption of mainstream role models problematic. Section 5 focuses on role models and folk-heroes of African American history and culture growing out of the adaptation to involuntary minority status. A total of 110 references is included. (JB)