by Paul Butler
The Rev. Jeff Brown, from Boston, was angered by the administration’s calculated approach. “When you say something like that and you represent the President of the United States, and the first African-American President of the United States, you know, that’s hugely disappointing,” he said.
Former administration officials said they thought it was tragic that the everyday killings of black children did not get more political attention. “I totally agree with their frustrations,” a former official said. “At the same time, when the nation listens, you’ve got to speak, and you don’t get to pick when the nation listens.”82
There is one remedy intended for African American men that has been endorsed by many politicians, policymakers, and ordinary citizens, regardless of their political affiliations. Given what we have learned about the Chokehold, that should make us suspicious. The next chapter explains why the suspicion about “black male achievement” programs is warranted, and explores both the pitfalls and potential of this kind of intervention.
5
Do the Brothers Need Keepers? How Some Black Male Programs Perpetrate the Chokehold
Being a black man is demanding.
—Black Star, “K.O.S.”
The launch of President Obama’s signature racial justice project, the My Brother’s Keeper initiative, was the most bipartisan moment of his presidency. February 27, 2014, was a mild winter day in Washington, D.C., with no sign of the near-record cold the next day would bring. Gathered in the East Room of the White House were what had to be a record number of African American men. They included Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, Magic Johnson, the entrepreneur and NBA Hall of Famer, and Kenneth Chenault, the CEO of American Express. The leaders of the major civil rights organizations showed up as well, along with politicians including Mayors Mike Bloomberg of New York and Rahm Emanuel of Chicago.
In his remarks, the president joked about seeing the civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton and conservative Fox News host Bill O’Reilly at the event. He said, “If I can persuade Sharpton and O’Reilly to be in the same meeting, then it means that there are people of good faith who want to get some stuff done, even if we don’t agree on everything. And that’s our focus.”1
Seated in the front row were the parents of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed seventeen-year-old who had been gunned down by George Zimmerman, a self-appointed “neighborhood watch man,” in Sanford, Florida. Trayvon, wearing a hoodie, had been walking home to his father’s residence from a 7-Eleven store when Zimmerman called 911 and told the dispatcher, “This guy looks like he is up to no good or like he is on drugs or something.” The dispatcher told Zimmerman not to follow Trayvon, but Zimmerman disregarded the dispatcher. An altercation ensued, and Zimmerman fired a bullet into Trayvon’s chest. Zimmerman was prosecuted for murder but was acquitted.2
Obama said that the concept for My Brother’s Keeper came to him after Trayvon’s death. The president did not explain what he saw as the relationship between Trayvon’s homicide and a program designed to foster achievement among African American and Latino males. Obama’s other remarks, however, were more revealing about the problems that he saw afflicting African American men and that his new program would address. He observed that growing up, “I didn’t have a dad in the house. And I was angry about it. . . . I made bad choices. I got high without always thinking about the harm that it could do. I didn’t always take school as seriously as I should have. I made excuses. Sometimes I sold myself short.”3
My Brother’s Keeper was rolled out in the middle of Obama’s second term, a time when there was widespread disenchantment among black progressives with the president’s record on racial justice. There was a sense that Obama had not been as proactive on issues of importance to the African American community as he had on issues affecting other constituencies, for example the LGBT community. Some African Americans felt that the usual civil rights advocates weren’t pushing Obama hard enough. A couple of years earlier, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus had admitted that if Bill Clinton had showed the same inattentiveness to race that Obama did, the Black Caucus would “probably be marching on the White House,” but the caucus was giving Obama a pass because its members didn’t want to empower the president’s detractors.4
The death of Trayvon Martin represented a turning point. The homicide and subsequent trial and “not guilty” verdict attracted international attention. Commentators noted the irony of a racially motivated killing of a young black man during the administration of the first African American president. They urged the president to comment, and when he did, finally, his statement—Trayvon “could have been my son”—was classic race speak from Obama.5 It was ambiguous enough that people could project on it whatever they wanted it to be.6 But the journalist Tavis Smiley, a prominent critic of the president, called the remarks “as weak as pre-sweetened kool-aid.”
The times seemed to demand that Obama use the power of his presidency to do something specifically for black people. And so he did. There was an almost celebratory atmosphere in the East Room on that February day. But some people, outside the room, had questions. Why would the most feminist president in U.S. history create a racial justice initiative that left out women and girls? Obama is, after all, married to a woman with a law degree from Harvard, father to two daughters, and given to boasting that his first official act as chief executive was signing a bill promoting pay equity for women. What were people like Bill O’Reilly and Michael Bloomberg, reviled in the black community because of their critiques of young black men, doing at the launch? And what did it mean that My Brother’s Keeper raised little outcry from the president’s usual conservative critics, who one might have thought would be the first to complain about a race-based program from the White House?
There is nothing like the topic of black male achievement to create strange bedfellows. As every word in this book has demonstrated, African American men need help. But “keepers” is an interesting way to describe the kind of help they need. Some black male programs do more harm than good. They fall squarely within the Chokehold dynamic of blaming the victim. They are designed to fix African American men—to get them to pull their pants up—with the suggestion that once black men act right, everything will be fine.
These programs also make the plight of African American women invisible. In writing a book about African American men, I want to avoid the mistake that many others have made before me—a mistake that is replicated in the rationale for many black male achievement programs. While some of the problems that African American men face are particular to them, I never want to suggest that their situation is worse than that of some other groups, especially African American women. Policymakers and activists often make this error. They claim that by almost every measure of inequality, black males are on the bottom—exceptionally burdened and marginalized. For example, in a recent Supreme Court affirmative action case, a coalition of black male achievement organizations “acknowledged that many young Americans other than black male youth face serious life course obstacles in need of attention, but . . . the depth and breadth of the negative life outcomes experienced by black males are sufficiently grave to warrant independent investigation and policy prescription.”7
“Black male exceptionalism” is the term I use to describe the claim that African American men are worse off than anybody else, including African American women. The concept has been endorsed by organizations ranging from the federal government to big foundations to Afrocentric and black nationalist groups. Black male exceptionalism is a billion-dollar industry. But the premise—that black women are doing better than black men—is not only factually wrong, it reinforces the Chokehold.
Can we imagine interventions for African American men that recognize the unique race and gender discrimination they face but that do not position them as the only blacks worth caring about? Some black male achievement programs that now exist, however well intentioned, are anti-women. And other programs are not well intenti
oned—they are premised on stereotypes of violent, hyper-masculine black men. They are designed to tame the savage beast.
I come sympathetic to the cause of black male achievement. I want, however, to reconfigure the programs, to transform the black male exceptionalist project into a progressive one. How should we respond to white supremacy’s insults to black masculinity? Is it possible to specifically support men in a way that is not anti-feminist?
In this chapter I discuss the myth that created black male exceptionalism—the claim that black men are an “endangered species.” This problematic metaphor has had a major impact on public policy and the way many people think about black men. I then explain why it’s a myth that African American women are doing better than African American men, and the damage the myth does to both sisters and brothers. Finally I imagine black male–specific interventions that are not based on stereotypes and that don’t hold black women down.
BLACK MEN AS “ENDANGERED SPECIES”: A BRIEF HISTORY OF A TROUBLING METAPHOR8
Most importantly, the statistics . . . are reflections of a society which is, in some respects, an organized conspiracy against black masculinity.
—“The Crisis of the Black Male,” Ebony, August 1983
The Mack, a film released in 1973, is about the different paths taken by two African American brothers, and their ultimate reconciliation. Olinga is a black nationalist and Goldie is a pimp. The brothers come together to kill two white racist cops who are responsible for the death of their mother. The only women with significant roles in the movie are “Mother” and “Lulu,” who is Goldie’s head prostitute.
The Mack is viewed as a classic “blaxploitation” film, although its producers saw it more as social commentary. Its soundtrack is as well known as the film, especially Willie Hutch’s “Brothers Gonna Work It Out,” which has been sampled by a “who’s who” of hip-hop legends including Public Enemy, 2Pac, Dr. Dre, Wale, A$AP Rocky, and Chance the Rapper.
All brothers sing
Stop the pimps, the hustler and
The pusher man as fast you can
Open your ears and eyes to the fact
Of what’s truly holding you back!
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoh
Brother needs your help
Now, can’t you see?
Aw he’s got to have it
Oh right on
Ohhhh yeah
Brother’s gonna work it out (brother’s gonna work it out)
Brother’s gonna work it out (brother’s gonna work it out)
Think of “Brothers Gonna Work It Out” as the soundtrack of black male exceptionalism. It says the behavior of African American men—the pimping, hustling, and (dope) pushing—is “what’s truly holding them back.” Black men “got to have . . . help,” but ultimately they will work it out.
“Brothers Gonna Work It Out” contains only one reference to women.
Instead of brother turning on sister
Sister turning on brother
Now how you gonna get it together
Being against one another?
The idea that black women bear some responsibility for the plight of African American men is a subtext of many interventions designed for black men. Willie Hutch, the artist who wrote and performed “Brothers Gonna Work It Out,” does not provide evidence of “brothers turning on sisters” or “sisters turning on brothers.” The former is easier to come by than the latter. Homicide is the second leading cause of death of young black women, and the vast majority of the perpetrators are black men. Ways that African American women might injure African American men are more difficult to imagine. Still the song’s critique of black women is consistently reproduced in discourse about black male achievement.
A few years before The Mack was released, the United States government issued a report that also suggested that African American men are threatened by African American women. “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” written in 1965 by Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the same person who went on to write the memo to President Nixon in 1971 about the threat presented by African American men, was to have a profound impact on public policy.
Moynihan wrote:
The Negro community has been forced into a matriarchal structure which, because it is so out of line with the rest of the American society, seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole, and imposes a crushing burden on the Negro male and, in consequence, on a great many Negro women as well. . . . There is, presumably, no special reason why a society in which males are dominant in family relationships is to be preferred to a matriarchal arrangement. However, it is clearly a disadvantage for a minority group to be operating on one principle, while the great majority of the population, and the one with the most advantages to begin with, is operating on another.
The Moynihan Report contains what we can think of as the five rules of “brothers gonna work it out.” These rules are helpful in understanding contemporary racial justice policy, especially the emphasis on programming for African American men.
Rule 1: Fixing black male problems is a way to establish racial justice.
Rule 2: African American women bear some responsibility for the subordination of African American men.
Rule 3: Black male problems are more deserving of remedies than black female problems.
Rule 4: Racism, discrimination, and white supremacy have impacted black men more adversely than black women.
Rule 5: A specific kind of African American masculinity should be championed as a matter of public policy.
The “brothers gonna work it out” rules are evident in a famous Ebony magazine issue in 1983 devoted to “The Crisis of the Black Male.” In his “Publisher’s Statement,” John H. Johnson reported that black men have “borne the brunt” of the struggle for racial justice, and that the “special issue breaks new ground by presenting the first definitive analysis of an urgent national problem: The Crisis of the Black Male.” Johnson claimed to have received “hundreds of letters” from men and women who “cited alarming statistics on the mortality, unemployment and homicide of black males.” The letters said “almost without exception that something strange and ominous is happening to black males in this country and someone should sound the alarm before it is too late.”
Ebony editor Lerone Bennett Jr. wrote in the introduction that the “institutions of American society have been systematically and mercilessly manipulated to keep the black man down.” Bennett noted that African American men are “losing ground to white men, white women, and black women in offices and colleges. The black male-female ratio at some colleges is three, four, five to one!” He stated that there is an “organized conspiracy against black masculinity” but “history tells us it is a losing proposition to bet against black men.” His introduction ends with a quote from a poem by Sterling A. Brown:
One thing they cannot prohibit
The strong men . . . coming on
The strong men gittin’ stronger.
Strong men . . .
Stronger . . .
The articles in the special edition included “Are Black Women Taking Black Men’s Jobs?,” “The Challenge to Black Supremacy in Sports,” “What Black Men Should Know About Black Women,” and “Black Men–White Women: An Update.” Significantly, the Ebony issue contains the first reference I could find to an enduring metaphor in black male exceptionalism: the black male as an “endangered species.”
In “Is the African American Male an Endangered Species?” the author, Walter Leavy, answers the question in the negative because “the black man has been incredibly creative in finding ways to adapt to society’s demands.” Still the article reads like a pop-psychology version of the Moynihan Report’s embrace of patriarchy. Explaining the black homicide rate, the author writes, “America has always defined the male role as that of protector and provider but the black male is, in many cases, incapable of playing that role for a number of reasons. While he may understand that racism is frequently the
cause of his failure, the black male’s structured inability to play his role can take a psychological toll and lead to violence, drugs, alcohol, and other elements that can be responsible for his removal from society.”
The Ebony special issue deploys statistics in two ways that are commonplace in black male exceptionalism. First, data about African Americans that includes both men and women is used to support the case for special interventions for African American men. For example, one article states, “Since the unemployment rate is traditionally higher in the black community, many black men accept jobs that call for them to work under very hazardous conditions.” Likewise, “the black male is more likely than his white counterpart to die at a younger age due to the lack of, or inability to pay for, proper health care.”
Second, statistics about African American males are used to support the necessity of special interventions, with no description of what the corresponding data is for black women. For example, one article claims that because of “a lack of prenatal and postnatal care, the infant mortality rate of black males is more than double that of white males.” This fact would seem to support the case for a race-based intervention, but without the corresponding data for black females there is no way of knowing whether the intervention should be focused exclusively on black males. For the record, I am not aware of any data that suggests that black male babies have higher mortality rates than black female babies.
The article’s point about infant mortality also exposes another common move in black male exceptionalism: advocacy of interventions for African American women when, or because, the interventions will benefit African American men. So the problem with the lack of prenatal care for African American women is that it risks the mortality of African American male infants. The implicit “ask” is for better health care for black women so that more black male infants will survive.