A Heavy Heart and a Little Headiness

In this season of giving thanks and for all intents and purposes of good cheer I find myself both with a heavy heart and feeling a little headiness.  Heavy hearted for the fact that another African American male has died at the hands of a known assailant and yet no one is to be held accountable for his death. 

Heavy hearted because no matter if you know the victim or not as an African American male you carry the weight of his death as if it was your own or one of an immediate member of your family.  Heavy hearted because with every instance of such public deaths a portion of you dies and yet you are still conscious enough to ask yourself why and what can be done to prevent such occurrences from happening again.  However, in those instances I remember Emmitt Till, Johnny Mae Chappell and Fred Hampton and the countless others that died the same kinds of public deaths only to have their perpetrators go knowingly free. 

Heavy hearted because you want to believe in those who have sworn to protect and serve and in a system of laws.  Yet the realty is you know that our lighter shade of brown brethren don’t die because of loose cigarettes, loud music, whistling at women of a different race or simply walking through neighborhoods at night with nothing more than Skittles and ice tea. 

Hang ups, let downs

Bad breaks, set backs

Natural fact is

I can't pay my taxes

Oh, make me wanna holler

And throw up both my hands

Yea, it makes me wanna holler

And throw up both my hands

Crime is increasing

Trigger happy policing

                                  Marvin Gaye

Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)

The headiness I feel is paralyzing because as a conscious African American male you want to over stand because to understand may cause you to miss something that can be the difference between life and death.   Therefore, you relive both your youth and your present for instances when you could have been a cautionary tale about what can happen when you forget the rules of code switching.  And you immediately account for the young African American males you are responsible for to make sure that you have taught them the rules of engagement. 

There is a level of headiness as you try to find a plausible escape for the emotions that you feel when your entire humanity has been reduce to a hash tag that simply says black lives matter.  However, the moment I have to remind you of my humanity as a man, in particular an African American man is the moment I have lost because it gives you the right to not see me as human and therefore my right to exist becomes a matter of your judgment.

That’s My Truth and I AM Sticking to It

I AM

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

2014 The Summer of Discontent

The Revolution will not be Televised

2014 the Summer of Discontent

You will not be able to stay at home and play with your video games, my brother

You will not be able to download the latest porno flick and simply lose yourself

You will not be able to roll up a blunt and poor a glass of Ciroc

Text your boo thang and let her know you’ll be through in 45 minutes

Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be brought to you by Puffy/P-Diddy or any other hip-hop artist

Or will be hosted by DJ Drama

The revolution will not show you pictures of Obama with cool shades on dapping up Jay-Z and Beyonce with Michelle standing off in the cut nodding here head to “Partition”

The Revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be brought to you via satellite in HD with subtext and a Spanish interpreter and will not have guest appearances by Kevin Hart or a tribute to T.D Jakes or a special appearance by Rev Al or Jessie

The revolution will not get you to Heaven but will accept your contributions.

The revolution will not make you popular

The revolution will not make you slimmer if you commit to a plan of 5 days a week and 2 hours a night, Family.

There will be no post of you taking a selfie next to a burnt out storefront or an overturned vehicle for anyone to like on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

There won’t be any Google analytics to help you get to the top of a web page or trending topics for you to Tweet

The revolution will not be televised.

There won’t be a Happy Hour with a roped off VIP and bottle services or valet to park your car, Uber and Lift won’t be available to drop you off.  You won’t be able to use acronyms like lol, lmao or ijs to describe the time you are having to your BMF or BFF.

The revolution will not be televised.

Real Housewives of Atlanta, Love and Hip Hop or Scandal wont be so damn relevant because it won’t matter who slept with who or who got shot.

Folks will be rioting in the streets because they will know the names of who got shot (Michael Brown, Timothy Stansbury, Oscar Grant, Aaron Campbell, Alonzo Ashley, Wendell Allen, Eric Garner, Jonathan Ferrell, Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis) - the pain and the blood will be more real than any housewife in Atlanta and the love will be so deep that not to start a revolution will be the least of the scandals that people will be worried about.

There will be no Fox News commentary to slant the views of what went on or Don Lemon to tell the world they called me the N word and no hash tag to start a trend or motherly looking white women to say it could have been my child.

The theme song won’t be “Happy” or contain folks singing and dancing with smiles on their faces, instead James Brown’s the “Big Payback” or Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” might be playing in the background

The Revolution will not be televised

The Revolution will not return right after a message about

Christian Singles or E-Harmony.

You wont have to listen out for jingles that say they would like to buy the world a Coke and fill it with perfect harmony or even tell you to have a Coke and a smile.  It won’t contain the most interesting man in the world, but might have images of angry people both black and white

The Revolution won’t be safer in a Subaru or in the suburbs or allow you time to comparative shopping for his and her matching Glocs

The Revolution will put you in the front seat and disrupt all your creature comforts.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,

will not be televised, will not be televised.

The revolution will be no re-run family;

The revolution will be live.

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

A Nonpolitical Poverty Conversation

I recently read an article published by the Heritage Foundation (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor) regarding poverty and came away with how subjective poverty is based upon the individual’s social lens. I read this article not only as a practitioner, but also as someone who has an academic interest in the subject matter as well.  Therefore, the following is my reaction to the information I read. 

The term poverty as the authors’ uses it is subjective when the idea of what it means to be poor in this country is far more complex.  Simply put poverty in the U.S. can have negligible and legal consequences that do not exist in other countries.  Therefore, to look at poverty through the lens of the nightly news and a late night infomercial and determine what passes for acceptable poverty levels domestically are rather shortsighted, if not naïve. 

It seems to me that the authors’ define poor simply in terms of access to goods and services.  However, at the very onset of the article they acknowledge that the cost of goods goes down considerably following a products introduction into the marketplace.  Therefore, cost and access are relative depending upon where we are in the products market cycle. 

The authors identified a combination of at least 10 of the following items as an example of an improved lifestyle that contradicted what “liberals” define as poor.  As if to say if you own any of the 10 you are no longer poor, you simply lack comforts.  The list are as follows:

• ·      Microwave Oven
• ·      Air Conditioner
• ·      Car or Truck
• ·      VCR
• ·      DVD Player
• ·      Cable or Satellite TV
• ·      Cell Phone
• ·      Video Game
• ·      Personal Computer
• ·      Internet Service
• ·      Dishwasher
• ·      Stereo
• ·      Big Screen TV or LCD
• ·      Video Recorder

Going back to an earlier point depending on where the product is in its life cycle consumers can obtain the aforementioned at relatively inexpensive prices.  Case and point with a microwave oven.  You can purchase one for as low as $38.00 from Wal-Mart brand new.  Also, both a DVD Player and a VCR can be purchased for basically the same price with the later not available in some cases.  

Also, you would be hard pressed to find any well meaning, social conscious advocate to consider items like cars and trucks, personal computers and internet service as examples of “luxury” items. 

Depending on the city access to adequate transportation is absolutely vital in terms of functionality.  In Jacksonville, FL dependable transportation can be the difference between employability and being unemployed because of our lack of investment in an adequate public transportation system.  Furthermore, the suburbanization of job opportunities makes access to a car far more important to those who live in core communities than it ever has been in our country.   The lack of investment made in core communities regarding jobs and the infrastructure associated with jobs continues to be a leading indicator regarding generational poverty, which leads me to my next point and that being technology.

Technology or lack thereof can be a major factor in terms of lifting up or keeping people in generational poverty.  I would question if the authors have ever had to fill out any public assistance forms.  To merely apply for “help” requires you to have online access.  Given the Internet as an access point to even get services I would question if you could still consider a computer or the Internet as a “luxury” amenity.   In some cases it is actually a cheaper proposition to access services online because of the fees associated with talking to a live a person.  Therefore, creating a codependency on the part of poor people who cannot afford to be with or without ample technology. 

Computer and Internet access is all-together a different story when it comes to children, particularly children from poverty stricken families.  Research is very clear regarding technology and child development, those who have access achieve and those who don’t simply fall behind.  Furthermore, given our country’s propensity for testing technology is simply a must have access.  In the State of FL starting this year certain aspects of the statewide assessment will be done solely online.  Can you imagine being a student who only has access to a computer in school or at the neighborhood library, who by the way have limited access and only allows you up to an hour per session?  This is not to even mention that here in Jacksonville the library and its hours are the 1^st targets for cuts in at least the last 2 different mayor’s budget.     

The final category in which I take particular issue with is the authors’ lack thereof “evidence” regarding poverty-induced malnutrition.  They suggest that overconsumption of calories is a major problem within the U.S. in general and not germane to poor communities.  As evidence the authors’ sited the nutriment intake of adult women in the upper middle class as resembling that of poor women and suggesting the same evidence was consistent across the board despite the ethnic or gender subset.  However, the one glaring issue that is overlooked is choice.  The lower subsets of people have very little choice based upon access.  In poorer communities’ access to healthier food options is limited at best and simply not available worst case creating terms like “food desert,” which mean an urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food.  Therefore, foods that are high in calories become part of an unhealthy diet out of necessity rather than a life style choice.  All of this combined leads to run away medical bills, which can have a crippling effect even on the best-managed households. 

What this article does is it makes the issue of poverty simply an issue of choice, particularly regarding marriage and work ethic.  I have coined this the  “urbanization of poverty,” which means if poor inner city black and brown people would simply make better choices socially, get married and get jobs their social and economic condition would change. This approach not only simplifies poverty to fit in a nice explanative social commentary box, but it also adds a level of racial stereotyping while ignoring the social conditions that create poverty.  At the same time it further de-humanizes people based upon the idea that somehow poor people, particularly those from inner city communities’ somehow make poor decisions, don’t get married, have out of wedlock children as a result of some cultural norm and neither have the aptitude or attitude to work.  However, all of those statements are over generalizations and inaccurate regarding poor people.

Finally, what I do know as a practitioner first and an academician second is poverty is less about choice, although it does play a small part, but more about the environmental circumstances that create the conditions that lead to poverty.  And it is those environmental circumstances, which are created through the vessel of public policy that allows politicians and policy makers the ability to inflict their social will. 

No one wakes up in the morning and decides that today is a great day to be poor.  Nor do they wake up and decide that I want to be educated in the worst schools, or eat the unhealthiest foods and find a job that’s the furthest away from my home.  However, this is the reality many poor people find themselves in yet the expectation is to somehow simply pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make it without any social safety nets. 

That’s My Truth and I AM Sticking to it….

I AM

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

Schools to Prison Pipeline

Last night I was part of a forum that discussed the school to prison pipeline and amongst the many issue that resonated with me the one that particularly struck a chord was how adult solutions have crept into child/adolescent behaviors.  When I hear adults using terms like “tough on crime” and “zero tolerance” I cringe because what that symbolizes to me is adult concerns have superseded the mistakes that young people often make on their way to being responsible adults.

Part of being young and an even bigger part of the learning process is to be afforded the opportunity to make mistakes, but now mistakes have consequences that can cost you a lifetime of opportunities.  That experiment with marijuana or that fight with your now best friend can result in adult consequences that at 16 you never knew would impact you for the rest of your life. 

That being said what’s even bigger for me and a point that I think is often overlooked is our acceptance of the prison culture that has now impacted our school system.  What I mean by this is, anyone would be hard pressed to distinguish the difference between what is a school and what is a detention center (i.e. metal detectors, surveillance cameras, uniformed students, and armed security guards).  Therefore, it could be easily assumed given the aforementioned we are conditioning students for what may be their ultimate fate.  And if you live in a public housing complex and attend an urban school then your home environment reinforces the idea. 

Sometimes I wonder if the gates were put up to keep crime out or keep our ass in….

                                                                                       -Cell Therapy (Cello Green/Goodie Mo)

What’s of further concern to me is our resolve to ignore or at the very least our unwillingness to discuss how the historical framework by which the public school system was formed and its history of delivering particular populations to low wage jobs. Thereby, ignore the consequences when those opportunities where no longer available or shipped to China the same populations became and are still becoming fuel for the criminal justice engine.  There again helping us to become the world’s leader in incarceration.

Another point that I have come to believe is that the school to prison pipeline is just one cog in a complex wheel.  What I mean by that is you cannot deny the relationship between our insatiable appetite for test data and how that impacts the relationship between schools and prisons.  Yet we continue to invest more and more into systems of testing and those schools who have done poorly and the children that attend them become the fuel for our incarceration engine.  Simply look at the correlation between testing data and the decision to build prisons.

The research is clear regarding schools that have the highest rate of teacher turnover, the highest rate of new teachers, the highest rate of discipline issues and are located in most cases poor neighborhoods and have high incarceration rates.   Therefore, prison or some level of criminal justice system contact becomes almost an inevitable fate for children living in them.

Finally its not that I personally believe in some nefarious plot by school systems to send young people to prison.  I do however, question are we prepared to change the system that fosters a school to prison pipeline especially when there is an entire economic system tied to it. 

That’s My Truth and I AM Sticking to It…

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

I Got A Story To Tell

It is a commonly accepted truth in real estate that location is everything.  However, for many students living in the urban core that widely accepted truth can serve as a barrier to them maximizing their full potential.  Far too often issues associated with abject poverty thwart student achievement and ultimately morph into crime and violence.  This is not to say that poverty is a catch all excuse for low student achievement and the wide spread violence that has engulfed many of our urban communities. 

The New Town Success Zone is slowly and deliberately developing into a testimony to what can be done when a comprehensive focus to student achievement is taken with their built environment as the center point.  Far too often student achievement is relegated to what happens inside of the school without much consideration to what is happening outside of the school thus leaving teachers as social interpreters in a maze they are not equipped to navigate much less understand.  Therefore, the narrative of who and what a community is often defined by letter grades without consideration for the social factors a community muchless the children that live in those communities are dealing with. 

In the case of the New Town Success Zone all of those things are considered and the results are a 94% promotion rate of children who are actively involved in the afterschool programs and an overall grade point average of 3.10 for 3^rd graders, but more importantly the Success Zone has seen a decrease in numbers of violent incidents.   The aforementioned points are not to suggest New Town as a community is a panacea (New Town is still a food and financial desert and has a high rate of poverty), but it is to suggest full consideration is given to the built environment and how those factors impact student achievement.

We cannot continue to idly sit back and hope that student achievement will somehow get better in light of the social conditions many students find themselves in.  Fore it is many of those social conditions that often trump the learning that is supposed to occur within the classroom.   It is not a debatable fact that learning does not occur when students are hungry, homeless, sick or just been involved or witnessed an act of violence. 

The work of the New Town Success Zone represents a comprehensive, all hands on deck, radical approach to student success through the lens of built environmental change and although we are not where we want to be as a body of work we are not where we were.  However, the success of our neighborhood students says that we might just be onto something.

That's My Truth and I AM Sticking to it.

I AM...

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

Executive Director

New Town Success Zone

I AM Not a Cause

Lately I have found myself feeling some kind of way regarding this national movement that sees Black men and boys in some sort of perpetual victimhood state that requires saving.  I firmly believe that my ability to be employed, not incarcerated and educated at a relatively high level has NOTHING to do with my perspective or my condition.  Rather in my mind it has everything to do with my belief that I AM the captain of my fate and the master of my soul.  This is also not to say that I have not experienced the opposite of any of the above.  Furthermore, I am not constantly reminded about the social implication my race and gender can have regardless of my accomplishments. 

This notion that I am destined to a state of indefinite victimhood based upon my race and gender I am having a difficult time accepting.  The consistent preaching and teaching Black boys and men to see themselves as victims further emasculates the same population in which so many are interested in empowering.  Are their unique challenges that Black men and boys face relative to structural and institutional racism ABSOLUTELY YES.  But this engrained idea that I am somehow powerless in the process to affect change and subsequently impact my own outcome makes me an active participant in my own oppression.  To suggest that Black men and boys somehow must contort themselves in order to avail themselves to success and avoid adversity ignores truly who one is destined to be and places ultimate power in the hands of someone else. 

The above statement does not ignore the accommodations one must make in order to get from point A to point B, but I contend those are just not germane to race and or gender.  People like what they like and are comfortable with what they are familiar with.  Someone’s lack of discovery is their own limited thinking not some reflection of who and what I am.  The economics though of me owning that deficit changes the paradigm and thus has created a movement with saving my peers and I at its core.   

I nor any of the African-American men I know (from ALL economic and social realms) have a desire to be paraded through folk’s mental and social consciousness by the very same entities that have failed us (education, criminal justice and religious).  All of the aforementioned hands are dirty in terms of creating the conditions that have lead to the state of Black men and boys.  However, to have all coalesced and leading a campaign of redemption suggests a sense of innocence that absolves them of their role in the conditions they have created.   Each has to make amends for their role in the deconstruction of Black men and boys before they can be authenticated as true change agents.

Finally, the campaigns that suggest Black men and boys need to be saved, helped, etc never actualizes the who and what from which Black men and boys need to be saved from and what we need help doing.  This glaring oversight in my opinion further institutionalizes Black men and boys to a system of care that has always proven itself to be elusive at worst and insufficient at best.  Indefinite help creates dependency and elusive help is a lie and I am not interested in either.   

That’s my Truth and I AM sticking to it.

I AM

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

"Change" and not the Kind in Your Pocket

In preparation for an upcoming talk I reflected upon some of the greatest challenges impacting communities like the one I work with.  While the challenges are many ranging from systemic poverty to structural racism, access to affordable healthcare to, violence the most underrated yet highly impactful is resistance to change.  Although you might not agree I would offer that change alone might not be highly impactful it’s the subsequent action or lack thereof that falls upon the perpetrator that has the ability to both serve as liberator and oppressor.

Action relative to change within communities that are impacted by negative social factors has the ability to move the social dial by simply making the participant do something different.  While I would again say there are many social factors that add to one’s situation it’s the repetitive behavior of doing what one has always done that leads to the same outcomes.  By the very definition of change at least another possible outcome is available.  Therefore, converting victim to liberated simply by a change in action. 

Within my daily work it’s amazing how something as simple as water versus juice or the attainment of a GED can have a ripple effect that not only impacts internal family bonds, but communal bonds as well.  Either of the aforementioned forces a different conversation whether its health or educationally related.  The close ties found in most urban centers makes the change previously mentioned impactful no matter if it’s in the house or on the sidewalk outside the house.  The change and impact is still real nonetheless. 

However, for most people living in urban centers the historical reference by which change is often thwarted finds a way to bind the people who can least afford to be stagnant socially, spiritually or morally to outcomes that don’t serve them or their families any good.  It is my opinion it is this same inaction that makes them an active participant in their own oppression by simply doing what they have always done.  I would go further to suggest that remedies to what ails struggling communities often times are bogged down in piles of mistrust based upon new solutions not looking and feeling like what members of the impacted communities are used to.  Therefore, recycled ideas being offered by recycled people with the same outcomes come and go and come again with nothing new being offered.

It’s amazing how “back in the day “ or grandma’s lived experience can serve as a strategic reference point and a strategic stopping point all at the same time. This is not to say either is bad, but it is to say both have their place.  However, as it relates to some particularly those living in urban centers both can serve as social, spiritual and moral shackles. 

Finally, this is not an attempt to blame those in struggling communities that are lost in nostalgia nor is it to say all change is good.  What it is meant to suggest is that through a different lens or reference point, change happens and when change happens the gift of discovery is unwrapped and when that happens true learning occurs.    At that point informed decisions can be made based upon fact and not antidotal information passed down and around.  

That’s My Truth and I AM Sticking To It.

I AM

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

Cash Rules Everything Around Me

Let me be the first to say pardon me if I don’t get all hot and bothered if the NBA bans an 80 year old white man from sitting in the VIP (courtside seats) and forcing him to make upwards of 500 million dollars (estimated profit if he is forced to sell the team) in the process.  This is not to say that I don’t find Donald Sterling’s comments any less vile than the next person, I do however understand that Viagra, mixed with old man insecurities, young girlfriends and a LA legend name Magic Johnson can bring out the worse in any man, especially one that’s 80.  I would even venture to say that had Magic Johnson been Justin Beiber the rant would have simply moved from racism to ageism because of all of the aforementioned.  Any man staring those types of odds in the face, youth, wealth and comparable resources is bound to lose his composure and say things that can get him in trouble and I assure you the same would be true if the surname was Ms. Sterling or Ms. Jackson as well.

However, that is not the reason for this post.  What I find more appalling and more deserving for discussion in particular from African Americans is the fact that Donald Sterling was set to receive not his first, but second lifetime achievement award from the NAACP.  Not only was this not his first rant about African Americans, but he had a court settlement and other allegations to suggest that he felt less than positive about African American, yet he had received an award for his contribution to the Los Angles African American community and the NAACP.  My question is what does this say about us?  What does this say about the organizations we hold so near and dear?  And finally what does this say about their (Los Angles NAACP) ability to fight on behalf of African Americans when you are prepared to honor a man who thinks so little of the folks you claim to serve and represent?

What it says to me is cash is king and you can ultimately buy/contribute your way to good graces within our community.  While Los Angles may be the scene for this drama, across the country those who write checks or bring political appeal have silenced those organizations that were founded with the mission of serving/fighting particularly for African American causes. Entire communities and families have been eradicated right under their noses by public policies that have all but ensured a permanent underclass and those that were steering those policies or financing the same people are lauded for their  “contribution” to African American issues.  

While the blame does not solely lie at the feet of people like Donald Sterling it lies within us as a community and our lack of investment in causes or organizations that serve our own good.  We rather invest in rims and tires or homes that we can’t afford or Bishop/Pastor/Apostle new whatever church/car, etc.  Thus leaving those same organizations begging from people or companies that don’t have our best interest at heart.   Therefore, it should not surprise anyone when the hand or hands that feed you slap you.

Donald Sterling is just the latest, but he is not the only one who writes a check yet feels some kind of way about those who cash it.  However, until we as a community are prepared to invest in causes and organizations that reflect our own best interest and have earthly outcomes attached to it we will continue to eat and celebrate the hand that both feeds and bites us.

This is my truth and I AM sticking to it…

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

Financial Member of the NAACP

Progressive Black Men Conference Speech

·      As it has been stated I am Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen a product of Jacksonville’s Northside and I say that because I take pride in letting people know what we often times take for granted and that is that in the heart of many of our troubled communities good things do come from them.  Not that I am something special or some anomaly, but it’s important to know and even more important to publicly state that roses do grow out of the concrete and I do consider myself one of those rose. 

Whenever I give a speech I make it my business to lay out the aforementioned because so often the reality of what and who Black men are gets co opted by folks who have a vested interest in miss telling our story and leading us to embrace a paradigm that’s neither good for us or sometimes so far away from the reality of who and what we are that it borders on criminal and sometimes that fake reality can be flat out dangerous.

Case and point how many times have you heard misinformation regarding the following:

·      There are more Black men in prison than in college.

·      Better yet how about the idea that 1 out every 2 Black boys will drop out of high school and ultimately find themselves in prison. 

·      Black men are more likely to abandon their children than any other race. 

Very rarely do I flex my academic credentials, but this is one of those moments that being Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen allows me some level of authority and I am here to tell you that all of the above are utterly false.  However, if you were to buy into these falsehoods you could easily buy into the notion that something is wrong with Black men.

However, the fact that I am here speaking at the Progressive Black Men Conference says to me that some if not all of you understand that a lot of the widely held beliefs about Black men are part of a larger manufactured crises as it relates to Black men and boys and the very same ones who are sounding the alarm are the very same ones who created the crises in the first place.  This is not to say that Black men don’t have their issues, but so do white men, Asian men and Hispanic men and every other subset of men living.     

By a show of hands how many of you know Black men who are taking care of their children, how many of you know Black men who are holding down jobs, how many of you know Black men who are either in college or on their way to college, how many of you know Black men who are not under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system.

From the looks of it by the number of people who raised their hands in this room I would say we have destroyed the myth about who and what we are as Black men. Now give yourselves a round of applause. 

However, while we celebrate what we know to be true its imperative that we collectively understand we as Black men have work to do. 

The first thing we have to do is realize that only the educated are FREE and as fathers, brothers, uncles and neighbors we have to return back to supporting, encouraging and nurturing the spiritual vision of our children, far to often in our quest to create some financial “security” for ourselves and our families we allow the spiritual vision of both ourselves and our love ones to be kidnapped by secular realities that have specific limitations attached to them meaning our reality for many of our Black boys begins and ends with being rappers or athletes.  This is not to say there is no socially redeemable value to either, but it is to say there is just as much value being a teacher or a community service worker.  However, when we put C.R.E.A.M above everything else it leads us collective down a narrow hall that makes ALL of us look like characters rather than MEN, can anybody say TWO CHAINZ.  Again its not that I don’t like the brother but I find greater value in the fact that he is college educated rather than he wears two chains and True Religion jeans. 

The second thing I want to leave you with is GREATNESS doesn’t come with a platform it allows you to create your own.  Therefore, you are not shackled by any of the parameters associated with who you were born to, nor what circumstances you were born under.  Those are all manufactured boundaries that we internalize and sometimes glorify based upon someone else’s idea of what constitutes a good or bad lot in life.  If we are honest with ourselves we all know someone or we may even be that someone who were born in the least favorable circumstances yet they still managed to overcome the odds and while I don’t profess to be a theologian I can direct you to Jesus who was the son of a carpenter and born in a manger yet still had the capacity to be one of the greatest men ever to grace the face of this earth.

If you need further proof that limitations are not based upon genealogy nor geography I simply point to the fact that there is no achievement gap at birth and deficit thinking regarding any of your limitations can and will dissipate the moment you confess with your mouth and make moves with your actions I AM destined to be GREAT.  The moment Muhammad Ali declared he was the Greatest, guess what he was. 

The third thing I want to leave you with is that it is just as important to be adjectives as it is nouns.  What I mean by this is so often we as men limit ourselves to sustaining careers and life roles that simply end at a noun father, coach, athlete, husband, lawyer, doctor, engineer, etc.  However, I challenge you to see yourselves as an EXCEPTIONAL father, EXCEPTIONAL doctors, CARING coaches, BRILLIANT engineers, LOVING husbands and the list goes.  Anyone with a level of academic aptitude and stamina can be doctor, any sperm donor can be a father and anyone who likes a sport enough can be a coach.  However, it takes some next level stuff to have a descriptive adjective attached to who and what you are.  Furthermore, we have to also challenge the narrative that allows us to be just lumped together as Black men.  While I accept my melon content with a level of pride to stop my story right there is not recognizing my Serengeti origins nor the brilliance that I inherited from my ancestors who charted the moon and the stars to the ones who laid out the nations capital.  Limiting me to just being a Black man is stating the obvious, now what?

The fourth thing I want to leave you with is as Black men we must be conscious of the fact that TRUE freedom requires each of us to be a legislator for humanity, which means we must be fearless and be willing to risk it all including life and liberty for what’s right.  Far to many of us have become attached to the little bit of stuff we call our own, therefore we are not willing to risk it for anything.  Yet what we don’t realize is that life and death share the same plain only the ego makes us think that one is more important than the other.  The other portion of us are dying for streets, hoods, blocks and material possessions that mean nothing at the end of the day.  If you were to add all of the aforementioned together many us die leave nothing cause we don’t have anything therefore, in retrospect our lives end up being a zero sum gain. 

However, as I said earlier so many of us have allowed outside forces to shape not only our personal vision, but the larger vision of who and what we are as Black men.  They say the mirror never lies, but I challenge that sentiment and say yes it does when you don’t even know who you are in the first place.  As Black men we have to get back to a point where we own our reality and the vision of who and what we are is defined by us. 

As I said in point 4 we have to be legislators for humanity, but what that requires which is my 5^th and final point is for us as Black men we have to return to a point where service is real.  What I need you to understand is REAL men see themselves in light of two entities and that is their families and their service to others.  Real men understand that when you are dead and gone your stuff becomes other people stuff and no one is going to bury you with it.  See real men understand that there is nothing more fulfilling that having been the change agent for their families and their communities.  If you look at the lives of some of the greatest servants to ever live Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr. Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela etc. no one ever talks about their material possessions.  Matter of fact Martin Luther King died with very few assets and scripture talks about Jesus coming to town riding a donkey.  If anyone could have balled out it would have been Jesus, I mean after all he was the Son of God. 

But when you think or talk about the legacy of these brothers lives and the service these brothers had to humanity that’s the stuff you remember, not how much money Martin Luther King had, or how many ladies Malcolm X had or what kind of watch Nelson Mandela wore or even what kind of robe Jesus rocked.  None of that matters when you are a real man and a man of substance.  Matter of fact they become distractions from what your true mission is and life is all about.

See real men stand up while males simply shake in their boots.  Real men speak truth to power while boys’ integrity can be compromised by a little bit of cash.  Often times in many of our communities’ boys are often the loudest, but when the rubber meets the road their integrity has been compromised for a fish sandwich and a bottle of Hennessey or Ciroc.

The beauty of being a real man is that real men realize that there are no safe positions in life no one gets out of here alive and the same fate awaits us all no matter if you were born to a President or a pauper, a pimp or a preacher, a teacher or a vagrant, if their names were Barack or Crip we all become the nocturnal delight of a parasitic animal.  Men see themselves in light of their legacy and institutions they leave behind not in the meaningless things.  Think about scripture giants like Solomon and David, those were men. 

Therefore as I prepare to take my seat I leave you with the one of my favorite quotes by Maltbie Babcock not because I think any of you are weak men, but because as Langston Hughes suggested in “Mother to Son” there are going to be places where the carpet is going to be bear and you are going to need some words of encouragement.

Therefore, as Progressive Black Men I say to you…

Be strong!


We are not here to play, to dream, to drift;


We have hard work to do and loads to lift;


Shun not the struggle; 'tis God's gift.”

Namascar and thank you for having me…

I AM a Man

Every now and again something can stick in my spiritual craw so much so that I find it hard to let go.  Lately the conversations around “Black Males” represent one such case.  I think its not simply because I AM at last check a Black Male, but because the conversations that I AM both privy to and those that I often read about in articles and hear on TV and the radio somehow seem to view me and my brethren as a potential and soon to be obsolete tools. 

Because of my career path and chosen line of work professionally I am mindful of the following facts:  

·         According to Pew Research in 2010 Black Men were 6 times more likely than their white counter parts to be incarcerated.  In Wisconsin alone the incarceration rate for African Americans is 13%, which by the way leads the nation.

·         Nationally according to The Council of State Governments most recent reports Black male graduation rates were 47% compared to the 73% graduation rate of their white counter parts. Follow that up with 2011 report from Dr. Michael Holzman that only 10% of 8^th grade Black Boys could read proficiently. Compounded with the often quoted “urban myth” prison construction rates based upon 3^rd grade reading scores. 

·         Finally, according to a UC Berkley report in the 3^rd Quarter of 2013 Black Male unemployment stood at a whopping 13.8% (teenage Black Males unemployment for the same time was 53%).

Given all of the aforementioned FACTS I would venture to say me and many of my colleagues have contemplated the mental weight each of these play on us because regardless of your academic or professional accomplishments you are still subject to be impacted by any number of the issues that lead to such disproportionate outcomes.  Even as I type these thoughts I am mindful of their impact.

That being said in a recent conversation with a friend I suggested that Black Men in particular have to have a level of mental dexterity that rivals the most accomplished gymnast because we must be keenly aware of everything ranging from our appearance to the volume of our music to our surrounding and to forget can be the difference between life and death or relegation to a second class social status. 

By no means is this mental musing an acceptance of some permanent state of victimhood or even an instance of helplessness, but it is to acknowledge the complexity associated with Black Manhood and the fact that it does not get any better when my reality and the vision of who and what I am to be is not being shaped by me.  But rather those who profit off my demise and often times they don’t present themselves as the usual suspects.  Sometimes they present themselves as well meaning folks who’s reality of who and what I am is shaped by their limited access to those that look like me or the image they enjoy while being entertained by those who look like me.

Finally, this is not to say a conversation is not warranted regarding the state of Black Men in this country, but a conversation that does not include substantive policy adjustments (i.e. mass incarceration) and historical disenfranchisement is just as bad as no conversation at all.

That’s My Truth and I Am Sticking To It…

I AM

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen