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What does it mean to be a black man? Imagine three African American boys, kindergartners who are largely alike in intelligence, talent and character, whose potential seems limitless. According to a wealth of statistics and academic studies, in just over a decade one of the boys is likely to be locked up or headed to prison. The second boy -- if he hasn't already dropped out -- will seriously weigh leaving high school and be pointed toward an uncertain future. The third boy will be speeding toward success by most measures. Being a black man in America can mean inhabiting a border area between possibility and peril, to feel connected to, defined by, even responsible for each of those boys -- and for other black men. In dozens of interviews, black men described their shared existence, of sometimes wondering whether their accomplishments will be treated as anomalies, their individuality obscured by the narrow images that linger in the minds of others. This unique bond, which National Urban League President Marc Morial calls "the kinship of the species," is driving many black men to focus renewed attention on the portrait of achievement and failure that hangs over the next generation. A recent spate of scholarly studies have brought urgency to the introspection, as the studies show the condition of poor, young black men has worsened in the past decade despite the generally strong economic conditions of the 1990s. Black men now number 18 million, and many are pondering their roles in a country that is undergoing significant social and demographic changes.
Posted By: DAVID JOHNSON
Thursday, December 20th 2012 at 8:27PM
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David,
Isn’t this blog of yours another good reason why we must desire to have our own of everything starting with a country of our own?
Friday, December 21st 2012 at 11:15PM
Harry Watley
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Mr. THE BLOG KING DAVID JOHNSON SR ----WHY do you -- interchange 'blackMan' with three African American boys, kindergarteners.....?
that sentence youWrite does not MATCH, in my opinion
1. 2013+ is the LifeTime for the African American
2. 2013-2016 an African American is President of the USA
3. 2013-2016 an African American is Attorney General of the USA
but those that think of themselves as COLORS rather than Americans are probably going to be unClear or unCertain
and probably will be
1. trying to appease their 'babyMama'
2. hipHopping,
3. learning to wear pants correctly,
4. and heading toward lawLessNess and prison..................
let us at the BIA African American wwwebSite for Families CHANGE with Our President Baraka Hussein Obama and go FORWARD..............
Saturday, December 22nd 2012 at 10:21AM
powell robert
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Robert,
Black Americans do not see themselves as a color like a crayon color yellow or black. We see our selves as a race. The word BLACK denotes ethnicity. So, the word Black in front of Americans serves the same purpose as the word Chinese in front of the word American. Chinese American, Black American and African American are referring to three different races of people. Why is that so difficult for you to understand?
We don’t want to be confused with African people because we are not Africans. I’ve explained this to you hundreds of times already.
I understand your confusion because you think that you are an Arab man following the Arab religion and their ways. But, the only one that is confused is you because everyone else can see you are not an Arab man to be following the Arab religion and their ways. This confusion of yours laps over into you not being able to understand that Black Americans are not a color people.
Saturday, December 22nd 2012 at 1:40PM
Harry Watley
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REGARDLESS of what you both think ,1 trying to take Africa out African American and 2 trying to Incorporate a fake leadership to the people of African American decent "the kinship of the species," is driving many black men to focus renewed attention on the portrait of achievement and failure that hangs over the next generation. A recent spate of scholarly studies have brought urgency to the introspection, as the studies show the condition of poor, young black men has worsened in the past decade despite the generally strong economic conditions of the 1990s.”this has nothing to do with you theory robert !
Black men now number 18 million, and many are pondering their roles in a country that is undergoing significant social and demographic changes.
If you will allow me Harry and ROBERT to showcase the full intent of this post is the show one can only wonder how serious Black churches (including Black Reformed churches) are taking this matter. I believe some of our churches are too busy with fundraising this, new class on that, new (expositional) series on this, ministry project with that, church event this, and etc to be able to speak with any gospel clarity and relevance. Of course, a good deal of that stuff is all well and good, but generally we stop there in our ministries. Generally speaking, broadly evangelical churches are trying keep up with the mega-church models while Reformed churches are too preoccupied with gazing at their doctrinal and expositional navels.
So why in the world am I talking about the church, anyway? Isn’t this about Black men? Yes, it is. And this may come as a shocker for some. But I would argue that the church, largely black churches, is given the task to define what does it mean to be a Black man. I can hear some of my Reformed folks now: “The church is suppose to preach the word, administer the sacraments, and blah, blah, blah.” You are absolutely right. However, if your church is preaching the word, even expositionally, for instance, and it never has anything to do with me as a man, let alone a Black man, then you can keep those sermons no matter how well the text was exposited. And please let us not try to count Father’s day sermons or some series on marriage or family that deals with men in passing or generally. That is not going to cut it! Who else is better equipped to talk about and exemplify manhood other than the church as she faithfully appropriate the self-sufficient Scriptures? Even if a church is mainly made up of women, there still needs to be a greater ministerial work regarding men because women need to understand what true manhood is all about too. I dare say you cannot truly comprehend womanhood without understanding manhood and vice versa, but that’s another issue altogether. Therefore, if some of our major institutions and organizations in this country think the struggles of Black men in America are important, but not the church, then we are in a world of trouble. Let me put this way rather…if a Black church do not consistently, directly and intentionally tackle these issues, then it should probably reconsider its role as a church.
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“The percentage of black men graduating from college has nearly quadrupled since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and yet more black men earn their high school equivalency diplomas in prison each year than graduate from college. Black families where men are in the home earn median incomes that approach those of white families. Yet more than half of the nation's 5.6 million black boys live in fatherless households, 40 percent of which are impoverished. The ranks of professional black men have exploded over four decades -- there were 78,000 black male engineers in 2004, a 33 percent increase in 10 years. And yet 840,000 black men are incarcerated, and the chances of a black boy serving time has nearly tripled in three decades, Justice Department projections show.
So where does that leave 17-year-old Jonathan McMaster as he ponders his future? The statistics show that fewer than half of black boys graduate from high school four years after entering the ninth grade. And yet here he is, a junior at Baltimore's exclusive Gilman School, running track, playing the viola in the school orchestra, approaching fluency in French. He has visited nearly 30 countries and is spending a month studying in London. It used to be "a hindrance" to be a black man, McMaster says he's been told by his elders. "But with everybody trying to diversify now, I think it has become almost an advantage."
If we think those stats are bad, I believe what is also worse, if not even more so is the fact that I’ve seen guys like Jonathan McMaster slip right through the cracks of many churches. It seems as though the only way young men like Jonathan will even get the attention of their church and its leadership is by dropping out of school, doing drugs or going to prison. Basically, Jonathan has to screw up his life before many churches become concern for his development all around beyond just him coming to church on Sundays or bible study here or there. But what would happen if more churches were a part of the formation of young men lives with great potential in more proactive ways, instead of leaving them to themselves since it is assumed they would be “okay?” What would the world be like if the church was the place where world leaders were groomed and developed? On a smaller scale, what would the various Black communities look like if more Black churches were the most influential training ground in the lives of young men?
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"Black men relate to each other in a special way," Morial says.
On the streets, strangers frequently give each other an uptick of the head when their eyes meet, a nod of black male acknowledgment. Black men have invented so many special handshakes that a recent McDonald's commercial turns on this fact. Their commonality is often defined by their style, their walk, their slang and even how they refer to each other ("Slim," "Shorty," "Dawg," "Mo," "Brother"). Wherever black men congregate, there is often a comfort level that crosses class and generational lines. There is even a universally acknowledged black men's club, the barbershop, where no subject is off limits.
It is indeed true that Black men relate to each other in a special way. I was actually in Chick-fil-A the other day and it wasn’t too long after another black guy came in we greeted one another with the famous uptick of the head. I didn’t know the guy from Adam, but it was definitely a rapport there that was quite warm, especially in an environment where Black men at times are invisible to dominant culture. How much less should we be invisible to each other?
I believe because of this instant camaraderie, Black churches are most poised to be a powerful agent of transformation among Black men. I would love to see Black churches become the new and better barbershop of our communities. We really need more churches where Black men feel comfortable and not have to check their “black maleness” at the door in order to walk the assimilated halls of many churches. Christian men would then be able to interact with non-Christian men in less prideful and humbling ways. It seems like to me if we had more churches like these, we wouldn’t have men running from the church, but rather tramping over each other to be a part of kingdom transformation in their own lives, communities and cities. Moreover, in a certain sense, no subject should be off limits in the church. And what better place to discuss any subject than within the context of Christ’s church? So where are the churches that are taking advantage of these unique God-given culture opportunities to reach these men in holistic gospel ministry?
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For black men, being poor has grown more perilous with time -- especially for the young. The 1960s sociological classic "Tally's Corner" charted the lives of what it called "Negro streetcorner men" in the Shaw neighborhood of Northwest Washington, painting a portrait of a group hobbled by weak education, dead-end jobs and fracturing families. Over four decades, wages and opportunities for uneducated workers have diminished, while the ranks of men disconnected from much of society have grown.
The path to the corner is set early for some black men. While school achievement has been a growing concern for boys of most every ethnicity, the problem is most acute among black boys, who are far more likely to be left back, be assigned to special education, score poorly on standardized tests, be suspended from school or eventually drop out than any other demographic group, numerous studies show.
Once they leave school, nearly three-quarters of black men in their twenties are jobless or incarcerated, an unemployment rate much higher than that of similarly situated white and Hispanic youth, according to a report from the Urban Institute.
"There has been a big change in what is thought of as normal in poor black communities," says John H. McWhorter, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, which is hosting a conference on black men this month. "Back in the old days, there were always black men who were not interested in working. They were called corner men. But years ago, if you were a black man and you didn't work, it was a shame. Now, the shame is gone."
I believe McWhorter is right, but not only is shame gone among black men, shame has also left the many of our churches, especially theologically conservative ones. I wonder how many Black churches are even ashamed of their role or the lack thereof in regards to this crisis in our communities? Do we feel that we ought to carry any burden in this? By the way, having these issues being address as a sort of monthly or quarterly addendum to your mercy ministry is not good enough. In other words, this crisis is not a mercy ministry issue, but rather a church issue. Therefore, this crisis should not be reduced to merely a mercy ministry item that we do every so often like feeding the homeless, howbeit, good and necessary. Instead, I would suggest that addressing these issues should be just as important as some of our building/capital campaign projects in our churches.
I will continue to say more on this in the coming weeks, but for now, consider the story of Franklin Gilliam among the other stories in the article like Colin Powell, for instance.
Several years ago, Franklin D. Gilliam Jr., a political scientist at UCLA, set out to understand more deeply the perceptions people have of black men. He chose a provocative topic for his experiment: crime. In his test, he showed groups of viewers a mock newscast, which included a short account of a robbery at an automated teller machine during which the victim was killed.
Gilliam manipulated the image of the "suspect" in the newscast, sometimes depicting him as black, sometimes as white and other times not at all. Afterward, the participants were asked to identify the suspect's race. Most of the viewers accurately recalled whether a black or white face was shown. But 60 percent of those shown no image remembered seeing one, and an overwhelming majority of those said they saw a black face. In fact, they had not seen a face at all. To Gilliam, that meant that when people saw crime, they often expected a black man to be linked to it -- not necessarily because of blind racism but because of the images they had consumed their entire lives.
Saturday, December 22nd 2012 at 2:34PM
DAVID JOHNSON
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David,
Firstly, we are not African people. Please, please stop referring to us as Africans. Africans are from Africa. We are from this continent of North America. We are a new race of people born out of the ashes of plantation slavery. There are no recorders or evidence that Black Americans ever existed in Africa.
This blog is another very good reason why we Black Americans must desire to become a sovereign people in a country of our own. All that you are doing is whining and complaining. You are adding more misery to the already misery we are enduring. We need a way out and I have said that our only way out is that we come to have our own hands on the wheels of our own destiny, am I right.
Join me if you wish good for yourself and the rest of us Black Americans! I am the way and the only way.
Sunday, December 23rd 2012 at 7:37AM
Harry Watley
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