I Too Am America - On Loving and Leading Black Men & Boys

Introduction

Whilst at Poetry in Motion I stopped to look

For a brother with ways to write a book.

Arranged round me with a story to tell,

A billion brothers who know all too well.

Bout unwritten words that unwillingly die,

Before bred and bound and able to fly.

Why do my brothers’ words wear weights of woe?

My ears to the ground…I’m dying to know.

We must give our words wings so they can sing,

A song for all brothers they will bring.

The ability to dream, to fly and to soar,

It’s to you my brothers these words are for.

To give your words a life you must sit and write,

Your story with tales of what life is like.

Do me a favor and set your words free,

Cuz I need to hear them…do it for me.

—Shawn Dove, 1988

Poetry In Motion

Poetry, writing, and publishing have long been my salvation, my healing balm—my go-to when nothing else seems to cease whatever is ailing my heart and soul. As a 16-year-old boy on a prep-school campus in the boonies of Massachusetts and far from my New York City neighborhoods, I discovered my penchant for writing and reciting poetry. A strange man in a strange land, poetry centered my inner compass and allowed me to cope with my life. Poetry provided an escape hatch to free me from the tightening grips of adolescent flailing, depression I didn’t know I had, and a deepening addiction to drugs and alcohol. Poetry nudged with a fuzzy, liminal feeling that I had a purpose for my life, one I worried I would never find. Poetry allowed me to put those fragile feelings and unexplored emotions, first on paper and then spoken out loud into my world. That self-expression—my spoken word—saved me from myself. I didn’t know it at the time, but poetry saved my life.

With profound respect for poets and life-saving reverence for the often grueling process of producing poetry, we borrow the title of this book from the venerable Harlem Renaissance poet, Langston Hughes. The moment my co-author, Nick Chiles, suggested the title, I Too Am America: On Loving and Leading Black Men & Boys, I knew it perfectly captured the story I wanted to share in this book. This is a story of a Black baby boy born in 1962 in New York City during the Civil Rights Movement who comes of age and grips with the paradox of promise and peril for most Black boys and men in America.

When Langston Hughes penned his prophetic poem in 1926, he portrayed what it meant to be Black in America. “I, Too” profoundly depicts the paradox of promise and peril in just sixty-two words. Sadly, almost a century later, the “tomorrow” he foretells has yet to become “today.” Hughes wrote his poem during the Harlem Renaissance, a seminal movement to claim our culture and proclaim our worth in this country. We wrote this book in 2019-2020, during the equally powerful emergent movement for Black lives. In the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery (among too many others) and amid a global pandemic, this country wrestled with what many have been calling a “racial reckoning in America.” Such a declaration is premature for this era of American history as still, I too, sing America.

It is in reverence to Langton Hughes and the many voices, translators, and amplifiers of the Black American experience that we present, I Too Am America: On Loving and Leading Black Men & Boys. Though equal parts memoir, historical account of the Campaign for Black Male Achievement (CBMA), and a manifesto for a hopeful path forward, it is offered as a protest against America’s continued racism, anti-Blackness, and systemic oppression of Black Americans, with a unique lens on the impact on Black men and boys. Courage, Resilience, and Vision are characters in this book, as are young men like Jamare Winston and Romero Wesson. My story is their story; our stories are yours. These stories of loving, learning, and leading for and by Black men and boys epitomize the work described by Judy Touzin, author of Exceptional: Black Men Leading, Living, and Loving, in her mini-manifesto contribution to the book:

“We need visionaries who can inspire us to reimagine and believe in what’s possible. Finally, we need builders who can help create and sustain the infrastructure needed to guarantee that the Black boys born today inherit a more just world than we did. This is the work. It is big, and it is important.”

Leading the Campaign for Black Male Achievement and working alongside courageous and committed men and women in the Black male achievement field over the past dozen years has been the highlight of a career devoted to youth development, community-building, and racial justice. When we launched the Campaign in 2008, many experts and well-intending partners warned me that a field for Black male achievement simply did not exist. Fortunately, I was not smart enough not to listen to them and just began to call it such. Be careful what you declare because it just might appear.

The Moment We’re In

“The barriers to success that Black men face have been in plain sight for decades, so it’s particularly heartening to see a movement taking shape that is specifically crafted to address these challenges and change the odds of one of the most disenfranchised populations in America.”

—Geoffrey Canada

What does it take to help an entire population achieve the long-promised American Dream? What does it take to make that possible while also counteracting systemic obstacles built over generations that work to hold back that same population?

These were two of the overarching questions that fueled the Campaign for Black Male Achievement launch in the Summer of 2008 at the Open Society Foundations (OSF). CBMA began as a three-year campaign in the backdrop of President Barack Obama’s historic surge to the democratic nomination for President of the United States of America. Our mission was to ensure the growth, sustainability, and impact of leaders and organizations committed to improving the life outcomes of Black men and boys.

We recognized that eliminating the disparities facing Black men and boys takes strong leaders and organizations, sustained attention and investment, a change in perception of Black men and boys from the typical deficit-based narratives to an asset-based narrative, and a coordinated effort by a cross-section of leaders. But as we have witnessed in the political landscape of late, it will take an honest racial reckoning that reaches beyond the pledges and platitudes we saw in the wake of the horrific public lynching of George Floyd on May 25, 2020.

In order to change the life outcomes of Black men and boys, we must deeply invest in leaders and organizations like Joe Jones, founder of the Center of Urban Families in Baltimore, which is doing ground-breaking work on the west side of Baltimore to accelerate the social and economic upward mobility of Black fathers and their families. We need to invest in leaders like David Banks, founder of Eagle Academy Foundation, a network of seven all-boys public schools in New York City and Newark, NJ. And then there is Anthony Smith, who leads a national organization called Cities United, which is tackling one of the thorniest issues in this country with its commitment to cut in half the homicide rates of Black men and boys by 2025. The list of organizations and leaders is long—more are listed in the appendix—and their stories amplify the loving, learning, and leading desperately needed at this moment we are in as a nation, which I hope will inspire you to learn more about these movement builders and support them.

Over the years, I’ve created and curated countless “mission mantras” that I share with our network. They serve as necessary self-talk that all leaders and change agents require to weather the many storms and keep on keeping on. One such mission mantra over the past decade is There is no cavalry coming to save the day in Black communities. We are the iconic leaders that we have been waiting for, curators of the change we’re seeking to see. We hold fast to the vision of an America that sees Black men and boys as assets full of potential with an equal opportunity to obtain the American dream, the opportunity to say, “I, too, am America.”

What Had Happened Was…

“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks, and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

—Arundhati Roy

It has taken me all 59 years of my life to birth this book. Brene Brown professes that “owning our story and loving ourselves through the process is the bravest thing we will ever do.” In many ways, telling my truth, being transparent about my journey, and sharing it with you, has been an act of bravery. My time in therapy over the years has helped me to realize that two things can be true at the same time – in this case, writing and publishing this book has been an...