Poor, Young, Black & Male

I attended a 2-day conference at the University of Pennsylvania, here in Philadelphia about the state of young Black men in America. The actual title was "Poor, Young, Black & Male: A case for national action?" The conference pulled together several excellent panels of experts who have done research and direct service work with young Black men in America. They had two lunch sessions, with powerful keynote speakers for each. On Thursday they had Cornel West, whose talk was titled "Strong men Keep Coming" and on Friday Michael Eric Dyson spoke on "Brother's gonna work it out?". Overall the two days were a mix of sadness, grief, inspiration and motivation. One thing that was left out, as usually is in Black male spaces was the conversation on how Black gay men fit into the picture. I think we all know that anything young Black men experience, young Black AND gay men experience even deeper, having to deal with an extra level of oppression and discrimination.

One of the panels was about the disproportionately high incidence of suicide among young Black men. I can’t recall the figures, and there were no handouts at the conference, but young Black men have a much higher suicide rate than young women do. The man presenting on this data also noted in his research that Caribbean young men who lived in the US had an even higher rate of suicide attempts than American born Black men. I think this speaks to the need to improve and give greater access to mental services for young Black men. I think these services ideally need to be provided by Black folk. I think it also speaks to the need beyond that to really work on building the self-esteem, self worth and resiliency of our young people, both boys and girls. I work with a few young men in my mental health work and these are the very things I work on with them. A few of them don't have a father figure who is consistent in their lives. I am currently working on mending the relationships of two of my male clients’ relationships with their fathers. I think this is important work, because both parents (mother and father) if possible need to be involved in their children's lives. This conference lit the fire under me to continue doing this work, but it also challenged me to figure out how I can be involved on a more macro level, because individual work doesn't necessarily create the larger change that's needed to more qualitatively improve the state of young Black men.

Michael Eric Dyson, talked about the failure of our Black public figures to effectively deal with uplifting Black folks. He talked about Bill Cosby's verbal assault on poor Black folks needing to pick themselves up and stop blaming the White man for their situations. Dr. Dyson made a very good point, which is simply that it's very easy to blame the victim, which is what has been done for many years, but it's another thing entirely to fight against the White system of oppression and other larger systems that don't provide the resources necessary to help the poor and marginalized truly improve their circumstances. Welfare, while it helps people meet their basic needs, does not in itself help to improve the state of Black folks. To me it's like taking medicine for a cold, you may treat the symptoms (immediate basic needs, such as food and shelter), but you're not doing anything to the virus that's causing the cold (i.e.: lack of access to resources, substandard education, institutional discriminations, etc).

Dr. Dyson also talked about some of the powerful sociological prose in hip hop and cited some lyrics from Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. to exemplify how hip hop has the insight and power to transform young Black men, but most hip hop figures fall short of moving lyrics into action. Following are my thoughts and not those espoused by Dr. Dyson, but I often feel that many rappers also glorify detrimental values to young Black men, via violent and misogynistic lyrics. Another short coming of the hip hop community is a lack of collective efforts to develop structures and systems in urban cities across the country to promote education, economic development and to fight discrimination that plagues decimated urban communities around the country. Imagine if all the rappers who make millions of dollars off of urban youth (and lots of money from white suburban youth and youth in countries outside the US), gave a minimum of $500,000 from each of their album sales, which often makes them multi-millions. If they took that money and put it into a national coalition that was dedicated to helping rebuild neighborhoods that suffer from poverty, urban decay and lack of economic resources, we would see massive changes. Add to that, if other Black entertainers and sports figures did the same thing, imagine what these communities and the state of Black folk would look like. I think for far too long we have depended on the government to help solve this issue and we now see that it will never happen if that's our sole source of hope. They have found billions of dollars to pump into the war in Iraq over a relatively short period of time, but have not chosen to attack poverty and urban decay with the same hate and viciousness. I do believe that many Black entertainers and public figures are doing this kind of work, but if their efforts were more centralized, the impact would be much greater.

There was so much more to this conference, all of which I couldn't even begin to encapsulate in one post. I am hoping they will provide all the presentations and discussions from the conference on their website as the information shared is too valuable not to be documented. The conference has inspired me to do my part in helping to improve the lives of young Black men. While I also have a focus on Black gay men, we are all part of a collective community and I hope that eventually our Black heterosexual brothers will see that gay and straight, we are one and need to stick together as neither of our lives are expendable and sexual orientation is but one part of what makes us who we are.