My Confession

Confession…

I 

AM 

Conflicted 

I like everyone else was waiting with baited breath, particularly Black America on the verdict of Derek Chauvin and while I was relived in the sense he was found guilty I found myself conflicted.  Conflicted in the sense that “accountability” is a thing when the life of a person of color is held in the balance.  It’s as if Lady Justice has the capacity to develop a level of spontaneous capriciousness when a black body is involved at the hands of law enforcement. 

Today justice was served, but bills are still past due for Oscar Grant, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Corey Jones, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, Matthew Williams and Eric Garner just to name a few.  Further, my conflict lies in the FACT the aforementioned and countless others not named here will NEVER see justice or accountability.   They will only see settlements and Lady Justice will continue on remaining blind, deaf and willfully ignorant to them and their subsequent deaths.  Therein again lies my conflict.  

As I said before I am happy justice was served and I pray the Floyd family has found solace in the fact that someone will be held accountable for the death of their loved one.  However, I have been conditioned to know that neither my degrees, my 800 credit score, my relative good standing in the community, my nomination for an Image Award or anything else will save me if my movements are sudden and an officer of the law determines he or she felt threaten.  In some cases it might not even save me if I am in my own home.  I can just as easily be another name in the platoon of names that look like me who were killed at the hands of law enforcement and no one was ever held accountable for my death. 

My conflict is both real and heavy and is part of the duality I labor with every day. If I am honest it’s the double consciousness that W.E.B Du Bois talked about.  Knowing that I must navigate a dual justice system that has the capacity to turn a blind eye to my cause and call for justice and accountability.  This reality has made me condescending when it comes to verdicts like Derek Chauvin's. 

As I reflect today the system simply worked, but yesterday (Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, etc.) it didn’t and tomorrow it may not especially if there is not a preponderance of evidence to make it.  The burden of proof George Floyd’s death and subsequent Derek Chauvin’s conviction left for others to have to establish simply to get justice is untenable and poses a problem that mutes my capacity to celebrate. Because what I know is that between 2015 – 2020 people who identified as Black (1,480 or 296 people each year over 5 years) were killed by law enforcement and very few of the people involved saw a courtroom.  Let alone a trial.

So pardon me if my exuberance is tempered by a scoreboard that reads them 296 me 1.

That’s my truth and I AM sticking to it…

I AM 

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen  

The Cost

As a generality I would venture to say black men never want to be martyrs.  However, the almost daily public execution of black men has created martyrs of many men without their permission.  The frequency at which this is happening, I am embarrassed to say, has rendered me numb to the news of another black man’s death.  See at one point, a small part of me used to die when I heard that a black man met his death in a senseless manner and it somehow got blasted into my consciousness.  I would spiritually, intellectually and emotionally mourn his passing as if I knew him, when in fact our only connectivity was race, gender and the news.  I would chide the collective community for what I considered our collective carelessness and normalizing his death because I wanted to live, and no matter who he was or what he did I am sure that on his worst day or in his worst moment he did too. 

 

Fast forward to now and my spirit has intersected with the Law of Self Preservation and the Law has won; which suggests that I cut off that which may harm me, and the weightiness of black men dying is a lot to bear. Now you add law enforcement to the mix of participants, and the ask becomes entirely too much.  At least for me.  What’s more grim and heavier relative to law enforcement is the movie-like appeal their role in the death of black men has taken on (Cops = Good Guys, Black Men = Bad Guys).  The implications and permanence of good guys versus bad guys and the death of said bad guy being uploaded almost daily to my psyche has created a cycle of social confusion that I just can’t/refuse to carry around. 

 

I would venture to say death at the hands of those who may have some real or imagined beef is one thing, but layer in those who took an oath to protect and serve and it becomes akin to the Chinese torture method of lingchi (death by a thousand cuts).  Therefore, as a means of coping I chose to mentally check out and preserve ME instead of waiting and watching while I die a spiritual and emotional slow death. 

 

This is not to say I have become or intend to become any less of a conscious objector to the spiritual, intellectual and social genocide that is playing out before me.  I just had to make a choice and the frequency of those thousand cuts made me rethink my collective actions.  What does that mean or what does that look like I am not sure, but what I do know is it doesn’t look like me clicking on or watching every tragic story about a black man dying.  I simply don’t have room at the inn for that.  

 

That’s my truth and I AM sticking to it…

 

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

 

904Live.com

Truth as I See It

The discernment of truth from fiction has never been as arduous a task as it seems to be these days.  Outside of the human element to flower the truth, the flowering of the truth as manufactured by artificial intelligence has made discernment and truth seeking a conscious task.  So much so that there are articles that focus solely on “Best Practices” for discovering the truth. 

Imagine the work one must go through in every aspect of his or her life to get to the point of making intelligent decisions based upon facts.  Also take into account that according to research humans make upwards of 35,000 decisions a day.  I don’t know about you, but I want to have some universal truths around certain aspects of my life.  I want to believe without much thought that the food that I eat, the air I breathe, the institutions I depend upon (government, religious, etc.) are operating with my best interest at heart and truth is at core of those entities.

I frame this particular musing in light of truth because what the recent protesting has brought to bear is how many of my white brethren have been vested in facts that simply are not grounded in truth.  See what the deaths of Armaud Arbery, George Floyd and Brianna Taylor’s death has shown white people is the ghost of race and racism that black people see are real and are not just figments of a time gone by.  It has made plain that people of color complaints of a systematic ideology based solely upon the color of one’s skin can both be a cause of death and or an economic barrier. 

However, if there was a silver lining to the issues of today is the fact that when I look at the front lines of the revolution there seems to be a shared responsibility in terms of moving humanity forward.  Which brings me back to truth.  What the revolution has further done is made my white brothers and sisters look in the mirror and juxtapose the untruths their parents have been raised to believe about black and brown people against the truths they as young adults have grown to know for themselves.  It’s hard to justify death and systematic inequality when you see it in real time and right before your eyes.  

While white supremacy spun at its unconscious normal rate the pandemic slowed the world down to a crawl.   Making the entire world acknowledge separate and unequal treatment, particularly here in America.  While a resolution is still TBD that will quell the Negrophobia that has gripped the country for over 400 years what is happening now makes some of us hopeful.  At the very least it gives those that went on before me solace that at least the revolution moved from Soutel to San Marco and from Auburn Ave to the doors of CNN.

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

I AM 

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

Fathers Day Speech Manuscript

Giving Honor to God for allowing me to share this moment and space with you.  In this day and time with so much going on within the world and within our own community the ability to be here with you I don’t take for granted.  I often say somewhere and someplace a 48 year brother just took his last breath so again I AM just thankful to be here with you.  Secondly, I would like to thank my man Bo Gator for asking me to share this moment with you brothers.  The ability to be in a room of conscious men who have taken up the mantle of fatherhood in such a deliberate fashion is such an energizing experience for me and to not be here would almost be criminal.  Lastly, I want to thank you the “FATHERS, the wanna be FATHERS and all the dudes who fill in as FATHERS for being here.  As a reasonably new father in terms of name I know how thankless at times our role can be.  We often get the worst gifts, the least amount of credit when things go well and ALL the credit when things go bad.  It’s funny just the other day I was doing some reflection and it came to me that we don’t even have a song.  I mean there is “Dear Mama,” “I’ll Always Love My Momma,” and just plain ole “Momma.” 

To that end I won’t hold you long, but I wanted to share with you what I see as the 3 paradigms of manhood, but more importantly how those things fit into the paradigm of fatherhood.  But before I do that allow me to say by no way shape form or fashion do I see myself as some sort of parental expert but I do see myself as a father sharing his thoughts about fatherhood with other fathers. That being said here we go.  

1.    We have to be our own truth tellers.  It is my belief that we have internalized so many of the untruths about who we are as black men particularly as fathers that sometimes we find ourselves representing and even quoting the very lies that were told about us.  Matter of fact here are a few that I often hear that I want to simply dispel. 

a.    There are more black men in prison than in college 

For the record, there is NOT and I repeat there are NOT more Black men in prison than there are in college.  Matter of fact according to the Department of Justice, the U.S Census Bureau and the National Center for Educational statisticsthere are approximately 1.4 million black men in college versus 840,000 in prison and this number is inclusive of federal, state and local jails.  However, the education numbers didn’t even take into account some of the large state HBCU’s like FAMU or TN State, etc.  

b.    If the black community had more back men particularly fathers taking care their families, then communities wouldn’t be in the shape they are in

According to the National Center for Health Statistics when it comes to Black men and their families particularly with children under 5 for which the data was kept Black fathers led every group including white men in terms of time spent with their children, reading to their children, eating a meal with their children, playing with their children and even giving their children baths.  That is for those who live in and outside of the house. 

c.    Brothers don't get married and have more children out of wedlock than anyone else  

In terms of marriage according to the same source above black men are no more likely to be married or not married than any other racial group.  However, our lack of commitment to the institution has somehow made us the scapegoat for what’s wrong when the fact of the matter is black marriage has always been a fragile institution since the days of slavery when master was the determining factor on who got married and who didn’t.  Not to cast any type of shade or downplay what’s going on at the Boarder today, but African Americans been getting separated from the parents since our introduction into this country.  

However, by a show of hands how many of you have heard or in some cases even repeated the narratives I just referenced.  

That being said as I mentioned earlier we have to be our own truth tellers and be willing to stand in our truth and what that doesn’t allow you to do particularly those of you in this room is to be willfully ignorant because the one thing you can’t do is unknow the truth and the truth is we are not what we get told we are as black men and particularly as black fathers everyday.  

2.    We are as the late Derrick Bell wrote in his book “Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism” the faces at the bottom of the well.  However, what we don’t often realize or realize to late is there is wisdom down there and we particularly as black fathers and specially as black men must do is find a way to communicate that wisdom to our children.  For as long as I have been doing this work involving community I am continuously amazed at how many of us spend our days trying NOT to be that face. That somehow in the midst of everything that we will accomplish our individual accomplishments will somehow be the ID badge we need to gain access to a better quality of life.  While having access is not a bad thing at all where it turns sour is when OUR access becomes insularly from the collective struggle of our larger community. No matter how we point to erroneous statistics and believe you the individual are the exception to the rule the global minority will always remind you that you are NOT and as black fathers that can be a detriment to us. So the wisdom and tenacity that has sustained us as Black men and was forged in us through the middle passage and seared into us through slavery and Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement and allowed us to come through the crack epidemic and the prison industrial complex has to be instilled into our children because I will tell you from my lens WE are producing a collective of smart yet delusional generation of children.  It’s beyond criminal when we as Black men walk away from our children and leave sisters to navigate child rearing alone.  And no amount of Jordan’s or KD’s or even monetary contributions can create what kids are going to need that only comes through time and your presence.  

3.     Finally, in the words of my dear brother the late Orrin Reddick “We All We Got.”  In other words we are our brother’s keeper and that in and of itself means that we have to hold each other accountable.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise it is NOT rough out here.  Our children and their children’s children are inheriting a world where the rate of change is unprecedented.  Therefore, we have to step up.  We have to help each other step up.  At the same rate, we have to hold brothers accountable, just like we do when it comes time for putting gas in the car or his half on the hotel bill on a road trip, weed, his part of the bill at the restaurant, we have to do the same when it comes to their children.  We cannot afford to stick our heads in the sand when we know our boy or main man got kids and won’t take care of them.  That has to be a deal breaker for us.  And no sister can keep him from that.  You can’t let that be his excuse let alone your excuse.  We have to have the same level of vigilance about seeing our kids as they do about collecting child support.  

And when it comes to our kids we have to be prepared to meet contempt with outrage, we have to be prepared to meet complacency with a sense of urgency, we have to meet lies with truth, we have to meet all the things that we know that go against our children being decent human beings with a sense of righteousness. And sometimes that accountability starts with the man in the mirror and once that is done we have to be prepared to take someone else along with us.  That someone could be another brother or a friend of our kids, but we got to bring someone along.  The road is filled with too many challenges for you to think all you have to do is look out for you and yours.  The reason we are here today is because a brother had the wherewithal to start Better Dad’s Society and bring all of us along for the ride to learn from each other and grow from each other and support each other therefore you don’t get to think I AM doing my job simply by taking care of your own.  We come from a collective community concept and our very survival has been built upon it no matter what the global minority says to you. Our bootstraps have always involved other people.  

Finally, when its all said and done and our time is done it is my prayer that the wisdom we have learned from each other as men and fathers will be transmitted down to our children’s children children and we will be able to say finally free at last free at last thank God Almighty we are free at last.

Right on to the Real and Death to the Fakers…

I AM 

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

When Cultural Norms Prove Financially Costly

By Dr. Irvin Pedro Cohen – I often say children represent the hope of what a community can become. But many of us know it takes a village to get there to ensure our children receive the best education possible, both in and outside the classroom.

In recent years, we have seen tremendous progress in student achievement. High school graduation rates are on the rise. In fact, over the last four years alone, the number of students who graduated in Duval County increased by 11 percentage points, according to the Florida Department of Education.

And while reading, math and science are all core areas of education that are critically important to our children’s futures, we must also make sure they receive the right financial education to reach their fullest potential.

We don’t have to look very far to see why this is so important.

In many Jacksonville neighborhoods, I see that poor financial habits have become ingrained as a cultural norm, particularly within low-income African-American households. For decades, our young people watched their parents, grandparents and other relatives rely on check cashers, money orders and other alternative financial services to access their money and to pay bills.

These unbanked or underbanked families often spend nearly 10 percent of their income annually on the fees associated with these alternative financial services. That’s the same percentage the average family spends on food every year. And yet, these facts do not account for the impact the abundance of alternative financial services providers has on neighborhoods in terms of being destinations where people want to live.

I realize we have to meet people where they are and for many years, these services seemed like the only option for a variety of reasons. In some cases, it was that traditional banks were absent from neighborhoods. In others, people didn’t trust them or had bad experiences in the past. Whatever the reason, we must help our children develop healthier financial habits so that we can break the cycle of poverty that perpetuates when check cashers and alternative financial services become the sole options for people.

And there are ways to do that. For example, while many families have little-to-no access to mainstream financial services, many do own smartphones. Combined with a good prepaid card, instead of using a check casher, they can have their paycheck deposited on the card. And instead of purchasing a money order, they can use that card and their smartphone to pay bills online or with an app.

This does, however, require those same communities to have adequate access to technology platforms. But I’ll save that for another conversation. Bottom line, it’s not an either-or choice – the two go hand in hand.

Adult family members must set the example for how children can manage their money, save, budget and, ultimately, reinvest in their community.

The First Coast YMCA – particularly the James Weldon Johnson Branch and Tiger Academy, the YMCA’s charter school – has made financial navigation on the part of the families and students we serve a focal point of our work. Through collaborations with financial institutions like VyStar and Fifth Third Bank around financial literacy and simple saving tips that consider families’ fiscal capacity, we’ve made inroads. Although small, each step forward counts.

Sometimes, it’s easy to keep doing things the way they’ve always been done. But together as a village, we can help our children see a new way and pave the way for Jacksonville’s brightest tomorrow.

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen is the vice president of social responsibility at the First Coast YMCA.

4:44

There is a beautiful yet undeniable intersection between age, wisdom and culture.  That point in your life where you become consciously conscious about your actions and their implications and the inevitability of growth trumps (did I just use that) whatever momentary satisfaction you may incur.  That point where no becomes yes and yes becomes no for no other reason than it’s the right thing do. 

That being said over the weekend I had the opportunity to listen to Jay Z’s new CD.   What I came away with was an artist whose artistic contribution has evolved through thought, deeds and arguably through his experiences.  What this album did for me and many of you is put being grown in the context of having been born and raised with hip-hop as your soundtrack.  

Life

Death

Credit

Gender

Sexuality

Infidelity

Investments 

Parenting are all issues that we as part of the hip-hop generation grapple with NOW and somehow when you juxtapose your reality against all of the aforementioned rolling to a tune that celebrates bitches and hoes, death and destruction and all day drug usage just don’t fit.  See QUALITY OF LIFE at this stage of the game really does matter and the inability to pass on a little something to ensure a bit of a jump off for your children can have consequences that perpetuate generational poverty. The beauty about wisdom and time at this intersection is you can’t un-know what you know. 

What this CD further did for me is gave me another tool in my generational tool kit, much like What’s Going on did for my mother and father. For me and for many of my peers who grew up in hip-hop we never saw this point coming because for many of us big swabs of our peers just vanished through the hell hole of the criminal justice system or died tragically to the grips of the streets.  We never saw ourselves as the OG’s or old school or the keepers of the sage wisdom because there was never a true transfer of power or information for that matter that said at this point you do this. Our parents and their parents are still trying to make sense of America and discern was their cause all worth it.  Thus we sort of learned on the fly and now we are here in a place and space where real things matter and being an adult is not an option.   

I as well as many of you understand the unique power someone of Jay Z’s magnitude has.  Hell look at how many people now have contracts with Sprint and TidaI because of him.  Lord knows Tom Ford has found its way in my collection of things because of his influence.  However, I am not looking for Jay Z, OJ, Lil Wayne, Colin Kaepernick or Lil Baby Jesus (I mean Barack Obama) or any other icon to come and do the grimy work of cultural and community change for me.  I understand that falls on me.    I am simply looking for them to help when and where they can and not make the road any more laborious than it already is.

Therefore, thank you Jay for giving a grown man a grown man hip-hop album that not only he can listen to but, most of all teach these young cats out here in the streets too.

I AM

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

Hip Hop Listener since 1979

And this is my truth and I AM sticking to it…