How to curb male loneliness and help boys find purpose

thank you so so much I know this is a very popular panel I'm honored to be here so I want to get right to it I'm nervous Katie cor's in the room um thank you so so much I think this is the most important topic and we have such a special panel Michael strp Manis is with us from the Obama Foundation uh Richard Reeves is here president of the American Institute for boys and men and future [Laughter] pre hi everybody I already screwed up I already screwed up governor of Maryland Westmore um before we start I want to have this conversation with the understanding that this is a safe space and not a safe space and that we're going to make sure we don't hurt anybody's feelings a safe space in that we can say real honest practical things that could offend someone because we all have the collective goal of making sure our boys aren't just okay but they're thriving because I personally think we don't talk about them enough um so Rich let's start with you what does it mean to be a boy in 2024 well I'm I'm not a boy anymore in case that's not obvious to to the crowd but I have raised three sons all in their 20s now which is one of the reasons I think I'm drawn to this work and and I think the very fact that that doesn't have an obvious answer anymore that that's a box with a big question mark in it now and a lot of boys are struggling with that and I would say that the best answer to that is probably not to tell but to show and what we should be showing is that mature masculinity which is a phrase I much pref prefer to thinking about toxic and non-toxic which maybe we'll get into is actually just about being generative I think I've tried to raise my boys I think we should try to raise our sons actually just being for yourself is the opposite of masculinity that masculinity and being a boy is about relationships it's about being generative it's about giving more than you get and so there's this online movement some of you may have heard of called the men going their own way movement it's like a male separatist movement basically saying oh screw this I'm off everyone hates me men going their own way aren't men at all in my view is that men who are in communities in families who are kind of giving more than they get that's what I think it means that's what I think the aspiration should be but but I Hon think a lot of boys right now don't have a good answer and so they go looking they go looking online for an answer and find some pretty bad ones honestly Michael you know I find and we we saw this um in the Obama White House we did something that was interesting we took a look at the well-being of the American people and then particularly the well-being of young people and we disaggregated it by race and gender and what we found was pretty staggering that on the bottom of every good statistic and at the top of every bad statistic were boys and young men of color and it and it didn't correlate to income it didn't correlate to Neighborhood um there was something there that uh cut across those lines and and what we found is that our young men and particularly our young boys particularly of color and and and this happens in Indian Country this happens in Black and Latino communities with Asian communities um find themselves in communities that are not designed to support them at a very young age just one thing that we found that makes a huge difference and I wonder if you saw this um uh we'll we'll we'll skip you so I you didn't grow up here if you uh Governor Moore how many male teachers of color you had in your school um I had one he was actually a guidance counselor and I spent time a lot of time with him and uh we found that just having a teacher at a kindergarten age um before third grade gives a young person of color the opportunity to really for the first time learn that they can be successful in school just that simple thing you know if you go to the and I'll I'll I'll I'll end with this if you go to any of the schools around the Presidential Center uh site where we're building the Presidential Center in Chicago you see kids around 10 11 12 years old who know because they're smart that their schools and their communities have given up on them that they don't think they can be successful and if that's what you learn at 10 or 11 at 12 you have to make a choice about how you're going to define success for yourself and as as Richard describes there is an entire world out there that will give you a message as to whose fault it is that you're not successful who you can depend on on who your enemies are and the community that will support you and uh and we find that those communities um are not the ones that can give our young people the opportunity to be the citizens that we need them to be um and and and and and that's something that we're looking to tackle Les I um I mean I Echo what um what both Richard and and Str said it's um you know I think part of the challenge is is that we got a lot of young boys who are kind of figuring out on their own uh and their definition of manhood is one that they are developing in real time depending on who is in front of them and helping them to develop that definition of manhood uh I remember I thought about this where when I was younger I had a chance to go to South Africa and um I stayed I lived in in a Township called lunga and while I was there my Homestay brother was going out for essentially a manhood ceremony and what they would do is they would all go out into the bush on the first day uh all the boys were circumcised and then they would spend the next week's healing physically healing but also learning about their history learning about what it means to be a closer man and the the history of the closer battles and who the other closer individuals were like Nelson mandelo and DBU and Becki and they'd learn this history and then after this process of around three weeks they would then come back to community and they would all be dressed in white they would return back to their their neighborhoods and there would be a huge feast for them because the idea was that a boy left but then a man has come back and they understood what that meant they understood the responsibility of it meant for their families the responsibility of it meant for their communities um I think about it in many ways where you know I uh came you know had friends who had Bar Mitzvah the same type of thing where you come up and you have this experience of you're making this journey into manhood and I I feel like part of the thing that uh that has to be understood is that unfortunately for a lot of boys as are coming up if you ask them what does it mean to be a man you're going to get a multitude of different answers and because it's the answers that are being that they everything in their environments are very much informing them and uh you know it goes back to something that I I um when I I wrote this book called the other westm I remember speaking with him uh once uh about it and I asked him do you think that we're products of our environments and he actually said to me and this is a person who's now serving a life sentence in prison um and he said to me actually I think we're products of our expectations and I thought to myself that he was right that we weren't products of our environments we are products of our expectations and part of the challenges is that for a lot of young boys they're coming up into this journey into manhood and the expectations that are being laid out for them are not necessarily the hopes or expectations that society that we would want for them to be able to embrace and then that becomes the tension but aren't some of them coming up in an age where the world's mad at them we have boys right now that are being um scolded for toxic masculinity on a regular basis before they can even spell masculinity and we're never finding the space Richard to say that masculinity or being an alpha male isn't a crime but we're not giving them that path yeah I think it's really important that we understand why that happened though because one of the reasons people are afraid even to have this conversation right so the title of this session is are we failing our boys and men and one way to think about that is think about policies the structures of education system and we could get into that for sure but I think one of the biggest ways we're failing them is in the way we talk about it the way we talk about them the way we explain their problems very often by putting it on them and so if they're struggling at school it's because they don't try hard enough if they're struggling with their health it's because they don't look after themselves well enough and so we individualize what we would otherwise maybe see as structural problems and so the problems that boys have with boys are very often turned into problems of boys like what's wrong with you and so we treat boys in the school system sometimes like malfunctioning girls all right and so we use that as like a as a default and I do think at at its worst it blurs into almost this the slur I'm afraid it's become sometimes of toxic masculinity but the reason for that is because we've had so long when we've had to fight and we continue to have to fight for women and girls but it's not a 10-year-old boy today's fault and and the history that you're talking about he didn't grow up with he doesn't know anything about it putting it on him of all that his forefathers did to oppress other people and he's 10 but that's the problem then if they go online or they end up you know end we're all alluding to where they might get these answers from which is you just said they'll find someone who'll explain it to them and they'll say the most successful online reactionary figures say you're struggling because they hate you they being the feminists and we should go back right and what they hear too often from more Progressive or Center left audiences about their problems is deafening silence because we're afraid that by talking about the problems of boys and men people will think we're somehow against women and girls that it's a zero sum game that we're only allowed to think one one thing at once in fact the Surgeon General talked beautifully about this recently where he said I've got a son and a daughter the idea I'd care more about one of them or the idea that because I love one I love the other one less but that zero some frame has become very crippling and so if the boys don't hear positive messages about masculinity only hear it framed either in a negative way or a reactionary way so sure many reactionaries want to turn back the clock on women sure but a lot of progressives feel like they're turning their back on men or blame them for their own problems and that's a very difficult environment Wes what do you think you know I I think it's it's it's right that we have to be able to strike a better balance you know often times um even if you look at policies and things put in in place it's often times about the repairing of boys um how we need to be fixed how we need to be healed how we need to do better and it is important because um it we cannot pretend like they're not listening we couldn't pretend like I wasn't listening an idea that somehow you were a deficiency that needed to be fixed um you know and and you know it was interesting I was talking with um uh I was in a barber shop uh I was I was taking my son I don't I I just go for the conversations now at this point I just go hang out I was taking my son how much do you how much do you pay oh I got I got the the cheapest the cheapest haircut on Earth um but it was interesting because we were we were talking about this actually more so in a political context because they were having this conversation about what's going on you know uh are you know are black men going to participate in this election and what's happening with voter rates and all that kind of stuff and someone said something I thought was really interesting where he said um uh he said we put so much of a focus on supporting and uplifting black girls which was so important because we've gone for so long with essentially taking black girls and women for granted and a measure of neglect and the idea that frankly we all all of us and I don't care where we come from where we represent every single one of us we stand on the shoulders of black women and the contributions of black women have made to our society but the point that he made was actually really interesting he said and this is a person who had sons and daughters and he's like I see how all this stuff is about how to you know uplift my daughters and he said and it's been amazing to me how I just don't see that for my sons and how my sons are spoken about like they are a deficiency and he said he said I just I fear we don't want to turn black girl magic into black boy tragic that we have to make sure that we're coming up with a way of being able to celebrate these boys who they are what they hope for what they aspire to be and and that our society needs them because if you do not Embrace that if we have policies that are put in place to essentially to fix if you have language that is that is is is being used to curtail a measure of creativity then we are going to have measurements of unintended consequences that we are not and have not put enough thought into how exactly we deal with those kind of consequences I'm so glad you're saying this uh Strat because I guarantee right now there are laundry baskets in Wes's house and my house that have t-shirts in it that say the future is female girl power black girl magic and they're amazing but our boys laundry is in those same baskets how do we make sure they're not left out cuz those messages are are being conveyed to them all day every day you know the reason why I wanted to PR participate in this panel is because I wanted to be a part of something that I think is going to define whether or not we're going to be able to meet the challenges of our time we are going to have to have a both and conversation that's right we we are going to have to be able to be for our women and and give and do everything we can to make sure that our women can become the leaders that we need them to be and all aspects of society and at the same time be able to provide the specific interventions that we need for our boys and young men yes we are not going to succeed uh without it because there are Financial forces um political forces societal forces that are built on the division and the anger so we've got to stand for this and risk uh having this dialogue just one thing that comes to mind for me is we think about you know one of the one of the ways we're measuring success in communities for um for our particular our children of color our boys of color is are they entering School ready to learn right are they are they enrolled in a highquality preschool but one of the measures that we've had to take on is reducing out of school suspensions for two and threeyear old boys now what does that tell you that tells you that they are being seen at two and three years old as dangerous as unmanageable as as people who need to be removed from a classroom in order for the instructor and the rest of the students to feel safe now that carries through and they know that we're sending that message they've heard that maybe from their families they've heard that from the society and the one place they think they can be nurtured and safe sees them as dangerous and would want to remove them from the classroom when they probably act as unruly boys and and I think the the the part of what I think has to happen is we have got to change this narrative um you know Wes I know you felt this way I felt we've got all kinds of tools now that we use from how we dress um to who's around us so that we don't code danger I went for a walk this morning now I went for a walk this morning at 6:00 a.m. something I do in my neighborhood every single morning and as I started walking through the neighbor neighborhoods of Aspen I had to think am I going to be safe here because I knew that people might react to me and feel unsafe because of my presence because I'm an over six foot heavy set black guy I don't think you're heavy set I I'm working on it my wife's here and she she wants me to she wants me to let go of that so I'm let go of on with w and so I think I think we've got to I think we've got to help send a different message um not just to our young people but the society at large that now we need you if we're going to um be able to provide the jobs of the future we need you if we're going to be able to tell stories that bind us together we need you if we're going to be able to raise and heal our women we need you to be successful and we're going to listen to you as to what you need to be successful in this Society this this idea of rising together and the future being female and male as equal Partners is I think at the center of this conversation but I can't help building on your convers your comment about coding um this is one of these as you pointed out I didn't grow up here I'm a new US citizen but my godson is 6'5 black grew up in Baltimore and he turns up one day he sells cars for a living with with glasses on like very like yours said why hey you're getting old he said no no they're clear lenses I don't need them I just sell more cars this way because white people trust me more turns out this is welln it's well known welln right turns out almost no white people in America know about this but pretty much every black person in America knows about this and that criminal defense criminal defense lawyers will use it they call it the nerd defense which is if you want to make a black man seem less threatening put Spectacles on him that it doesn't so that's the moment where you think well maybe it's our I site that needs adjusting not his and especially for black men and that intersection they've talked about and this other coding that's happening now and it's this kindergarten thing is one of the reasons that at the Institute we're doing so much work on male teachers and in particular the imbalance around male teachers of color but more generally is I really worry that if boys see the teachers of women and it's down to 23% men now from 33% and they see and they see the girls doing better colleges are now much more female oriented than they were male oriented when we passed Title 9 it's flipped the education itself gets coded as female 2% of kindergarten teachers at most maybe one or two% of kindergarten teachers are men we have three or four times it's not considered okay for men or hasn't meanwhile we have three times as many women as a share of their profession flighting fight flying fighter planes as men teach in kindergarten to be clear I am all about the Investments the US military is making to make sure that women can our fighter jets but I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest it is at least as important that we have more men in our classrooms and I just don't see the effort going into that right now where are the policies where's the investment where's the where is where is the when every year we publish the data showing the share of male teachers going down where's the outcry where's the discussion where are the New York Times pieces about it we shrug our shoulders and move on we would not do that if it was the other way around the investment is happened in Maryland to be clear by the way here we go I'm just saying I was saying it starts in Maryland Maryland does it go further into how we Define masculinity when you think of who you are as a husband and a father and what your kids see you do at home right I think about all the work Jessica Seinfeld does with a good plus foundation and helping men helping fathers right actually be engaged with their children and know how to support them do we need to change the way we think of male roles right we want all of these women to have the highest educations and the biggest jobs but when a man stays home we're still kind of wiggling our nose going what's up with him we have to change that I I I mean I here's the thing I mean I take I take a sense of pride in the fact that I am my family's protector I take a sense of Pride that as my my wife says who's standing right there she says I never feel safer than when my husband's around me I take pride in that I take pride in the fact that I can be a provider and a protector for my children I take pride in the fact that even if you think about you know if you think about the Bible and biblical about about how the man needs to take a role in a household I take pride in that and so I don't think that I I know I I actually don't think that the idea of saying we have to lift up and embrace our women and the roles that they play the importance they play in our families the importance they play in our society and also saying and we are asking our men and our boys to take a sense of pride in the fact that they have to take a sense of leadership in their families they have to take a sense of Pride and leadership in their communities that it's not something that we should shy away from I actually don't think that these have to be mutually exclusive goals and I don't see me lifting ing up my wife as minimizing me nor does she ever think that her lifting up her husband is in some way diminishing her role I think there's an importance in both of us lifting each other up that is the intention that is the goal and that's why I think all of us should be able to Aspire towards sure can I maybe just add I don't know if I'm adding or disagreeing but I'll pretend that I'm adding because that's more polite first thing is my wife doesn't say that about me but I'm not a former US paratrooper something to do with it she would say about you but actually like I I agree with everything you've said about being partners and Rising together I was a stay-at-home dad for a while my my wife was doing a very very very high intensity job and we kind of agreed we wanted to share child raring together and I I think I was was as much of a partner and a provider to our family during that period as any other period because it gave think Society felt that about you I think we have a way to go and actually a paid leave would be great and B paid leave for dads would be nice too the military has that now but let's have it for dads and let's but it takes more of a but and the reason is because it enabled her to focus on what she was doing right then and I was engaged and I was in the community and I was doing all that and I think I I'm going to take the risk of saying what I think women want which is always dangerous on a panel like this but I I actually think there's something to be said like women want Partners they want men who are kind of with them who are going to pay equal effort and maybe that will allow them to be more of a traditional protector provider in many cases there is nothing wrong with that we should never pathologize that but sometimes they can provide love and energy and they can provide by being stay-at-home dad while you pursue your career Etc right and so we've got to expand these ideas of provider and protector I think and bring them up to date for the modern world because I got to tell you whatever Society was telling me I didn't feel any less like a man raising my own kids raising my own boys and any society or institution that tells you you are is our enemy you know there's this great program in Chicago um it's called the dovetail project and they work with um young men who are um uh who are Justice involved I think is the word you call it it's the phrase you'd use now um who want to be great fathers and a couple things they found at least in Chicago that black non non cial fathers are more involved with their children's lives than any other uh demographic that's right so they're participating in their present so we have to get rid of that myth yeah um of the of the of the absent father in that way but and I experienced this in my own life um my father left our family before I was born um I ended up I know that we can work um across divides because um my mom remarried this long-haired lavian immigrant um who adopted me and and and I took his name and and so he loves me so I I I know that that's true but there is a but because of that experience I didn't have and I find these young people in the in the dovetail project don't have the knowledge and the skill set and therefore the sense of um uh efficacy and how to be a father and so Society gives them the opportunity to just kind of stand back they want to participate but they don't want to make any mistakes yeah they don't want to screw up their kids' lives because they feel like what they got perhaps from their families wasn't the best and and I think one of the things that we've learned is that you know that carries in our DNA right you know I don't know where my father got his perspective on being a young father at the time but having grown up black in America and having come to Chicago through the Great Migration I don't know what his father went through and I don't even know if my if if his great-grandfather even could have had a family or stayed connected to his wife and his children right so we carry that with us but the beautiful thing about us as human beings is we can heal from that and write a new story and we have not just generational trauma we can have generational healing and so we can turn these young people like this program does they are now the heroes in their society they're the heroes back in their neighborhood because they're the ones non-custodial coming out of prison coming back to their Community choosing to become the leaders and present in their families and are given the skill sets so you know changing diapers uh dealing with a A rockus Child trying to set boundaries and set limits they've got tools for how to do that and how to protect participate um not only as fathers but also as spouses and so I I think if we choose to take this on what we'll find is these young people will do more than we expected them ever to do because they're beautiful human beings just like everybody in this room then let's stay in the beauty because we're talking in large part today about what are we missing when it comes to our boys or how are we failing them think back to when you were just a boy and all that we're trying to do now is it better to be a boy today than when you were a child cuz I'm guessing there wasn't a lot of people talking about empathy or addressing your emotions or expressing your emotions when you were five and six years old maybe your family was but Society wasn't and the education system wasn't and at least we're talking about it yeah no you know it's and it's fair and so um you know from and from my background I I I I was raised by an immigrant single mom um and a woman who didn't get her first job that gave her benefits until I was 14 years old um you know some of my earliest memories was um I watched my dad die in front of me when I was three because he didn't get the healthc care he needed um and so I I've I came up in a way where my earliest memories were watching systems fail us and then had to figure out how to navigate this world and and and to be very honest and like listen my mother um you know I I always say that God's greatest gift that he ever gave me was the day that he asked Joy Moore to give birth to me um it was the greatest gift I ever could have gotten uh I also know that there were certain things that she could not teach me about going into manhood because she had not experienced that she needed help she needed supports and and you are right that honestly um coming up in communities and frankly a society that was not there to help that was actually there uh and in many ways was causing harms uh and making that navigation making that Journey that much that much trickier you know it is it is it is powerful that we are being able to talk about it that we're able to embrace it that we're able to discuss this and understand the dynamic and the challenges I just think we also have to be very honest that so many of the obstacles that are sitting in front of our boys right now they are systemic and we are stories like mine shouldn't have to be exceptions but they are and so when we are you know and I and I think about it coming from you know the a world of of philanthropy I give a shout out to Rich buy Who's My Success over at Robin Hood he's doing amazing work over at Robin Hood and we continue to realize that you know every single year we're making Investments of hundreds of millions of dollars into elements that focus on everything from food insecurity and housing insecurity and educational supports and all this kind of stuff but there's a reason why the reason that we have so many programs that invest in food insecurity is because we have so many people who are food insecure the reason we have programs that invest in housing insecurity is because we have so many people who are housing insecure the reason we can have programs that are supporting boys and specifically boys of color making this journey into manhood is because we have so many boys of color who feel like they are doing it on their own and so we actually have to be courageous enough to actually look at some of these systems policies that we have in place because we're never going to have enough support systems or philanthropy there's not enough philanthropy in the world to be able to fix that that we continue to have young boys who feel like they're navigating this world and seemingly are doing it on their own because they don't feel like they're coming up in communities or Societies or policy Frameworks that are in place to support them they're really more in place to control them yes but it's worse than our boys are doing it on their own they're doing it with the help of the internet yeah Richard talk about how dangerous that is as the road map or the guide or or almost in some ways this surrogate parent for our children we talk about the impact it has on our girls the impact it has on our boys is equally as devastating sometimes it it might be because there aren't people in their lives showing rather than telling uh Role Models so they go looking it could also be that just they don't a lot of young men and boys feel like the things they're struggling with they almost feel like they don't have permission to ask about them and to talk about them you know they kind of fear that they'll that they it won't be taken as seriously but they don't have to because the internet is there waiting with unlimited pornography or or advice on quotes modern masculine Google like how should I beat it and very often what happens is they're looking for they're looking for stuff that's kind of benign to start with it's dating advice it's kind of Fitness advice it's like how do I get a friend you know we have this huge crisis in loneliness particularly for kind of men so they're looking for connection they looking for advice and very often what happens partly because of the way the GMS work they end up with someone who actually might have some quite good advice about some of those things but then leave that's the first L invite them in then follow with a story which is basically as I you're struggling they don't care come to me reaction it's the the rise of women is what's causing your problems and so they're invited into an analysis of what's Happening which gives some sort of sense of an explanation for what they're doing we need an alternative explanation which is yes you are struggling and maybe our schools need to do better for you and yes we're going to help you rather than turn it into this kind of zero some game that they get online but I think it's a profound mistake for us not to recognize the search if we don't like the answers that's good but why are so many of our men on that search and if we are failing to provide better answers in a compassionate and an open and a non-zero some way it is our fault that they go looking somewhere else and so I love this panel I love the fact we're having this convers ation cuz I just feel like if more boys and young men hear men like this talking like this you cannot overestimate the power of that because so many of them just want to feel seen and heard and so many of the people online make them feel seen and heard that turns out to be magic right now for young boys and men to feel their problems are being taken seriously so how about we take them seriously and cut off the supply lines to the misogynists online well the first thing I would say is I actually you don't know this so I'll say it here I I uh want to thank you for your research on loneliness because I did not realize that I was uh lonely and had not paid attention to my male friendships until we were on a panel together I had to read your book uh and uh and my wife uh uh you know basically pointed out the difference between what her definition of friendship Is by what she does with her friends and what I seem to be doing with my friends which did not seem to meet the uh same definition same standard and and and I did not want to end up you know as one of those like lonely men lonely old men uh who had spent so much of their middle uh uh their time focused on family and career and not really valuing friendship so I I just want to thank you uh I just want to thank you for that I I think what what we see is that uh the boys um and particularly the Young young men that we find and I think we saw this in the P pandemic in Chicago and other cities around the world uh or particularly around uh the United States where all of a sudden in downtown and in other communities that used to be immune to this there was all these young people who were uh who were acting out and uh and there was this outcry about how dangerous things were and and I think what I'd say what I heard from the people who lived in in the communities where they young young men lived was like welcome to the party um this is the this is the neighborhood and the community we've been living in and living with for such a long time that's number one I I think number two jobs and opportunities for these young people to do something productive has always consistently been an effective answer right because all they want to do is the same thing you wanted to do which is live out their dreams make a couple bucks to be able to enjoy life and do the things they want to do and build the skills so that they can have the life that they see on the internet um and on television right we we've we've sort of one of the things that happened you were asking whether it's better to grow up as a young person now uh and when when when I was young I I say now for sure because I saw so many cousins friends and neighbors who were smart as me smarter than me had talent that I didn't have get dropped off the side hit a pothole things that I avoided because of my mother because of teachers because of Grace and because of dumb luck and I look back and I know that I am an outlier because I look around me at the people who I grew up with and I don't see them anymore they're gone they're either dead or they're out of society and so I I think the the the opportunity we have is to move and and and and you're doing this through your research and Governor you're doing this through your work is we know we can run a great program for young boys or young people right you can go and throw a rock at any community and I think this is a good thing and you can find a program that does mentorship or uses sports or helps young people you know with their homework but we have not yet accepted that our standard of success has to be population level change we've got to stop highlighting just these great individual programs while the graduation rates in these communities are at 40 30 20% % a great program can't be the success anymore can we do what Yonkers did and move those graduations to 90% can we do what Omaha did and cut homicides in these communities in half can we do what the mayor Baraka has done in Newark which is change the definition of Newark which used to be literally called the Myrtle capital of America to have Mur murders and homicides down in the teens and uh uh a rate of closing open cases in the 90% so that can happen if we set that standard and I'm kind of sick of celebrating just celebrating these great programs I want to celebrate them we need to support him but can we set our sights a little bit higher and change outcomes for communities Wes when did things get political in this sphere right so there's a lot lot of young men right now we're starting to see kind of Veer to the right a and and in the misinformation machine there's this idea of what masculinity is and maybe while one political party is focused on inclusion that inclusion is leaving out that masculine male how do you solve for that because it's just not true but it's being fed to young men and some are going down that path the path that Richard started talking about men going off on their own it's AB absurd but it's true and it's happening yeah I mean I I I I actually don't know when it hasn't been political because I think the separation has always been politically advantageous um being able to exclude particularly boys of color isolationism and we're talking about literally since the inceptions of this country a separation a breaking apart of families and fabrics I I I don't know a point when this was not a political phenomenon I actually think that um the the way that we have to be able to think about this is when we talk about a natural inclusion being a societal benefit that's actually how we begin to alter and change this narrative a need and a necessity for men of color for black men and boys to be able to be active growing participants within our society because it's going to help the entire Society grow you know I I um I I I think about I think about what you said stra and and I and I think that's really important because I I think it comes back to for example what we're seeing right now in in Baltimore where Baltimore and many people and the narrative around Baltimore of the wire and all this kind of stuff and and the the reality is is that there is a hidden truth in so much of that narrative they see within Baltimore that Baltimore did go eight straight years where you had three 300 plus homicides in a city that used to be a city of 920,000 people now is a city of just shy of 600,000 people but still the thing that was not declining while the population was declining the homicide rate was not right and then by going in and saying we need to have a direct change of focus and not just in terms of the image not just in terms of the realities but the images of the participation that we see for black boys and being able to really shift that to say that when we're talking about focusing on Public Safety that that does not mean militarize our way out of this it means creating new opportunities for our boys that when we're talking about economic growth that actually if you want to have an economically growing Society make sure that you have more people participating in that society and so there has been a direct correlation now between what we've seen that Baltimore now right now has the eighth fastest growing economy in this entire country that Baltimore right now has had the steepest drop in homicides of any major American city in this country that Baltimore that Baltimore right now the homicide rate has dropped so significantly in the city of Baltimore the last time the homicide rate has been this low in the city of Baltimore I was not born yet that's the kind of drops that we're seeing but what's happening not just greater levels of participation that we're seeing within our communities and our societies but a change in the psychology for our young boys who Now understand that nothing is going to be impossible for you and that you have a society that's actively rooting for you that you have a society that's going to invest in you that you have a society that sees you in a way that has not seen you before and so we have to be able to understand and shape it and to your point break apart this political because it's always been politically advantageous to to disregard black men and boys always and so if we can actually shape our society to show that you're going to have a growing and a sustainable society when we can have a society where everybody is seen and included inside that larger equation then that's the benefit of participatory economics that's the benefit of economic growth Richard how do we do that the important work that Wes is talking about while at the same time ensure that there's not an alt-right website right now with a guy with a short haircut and an American flag behind him saying to my sons you're not going to get into college because a black teenage girl is that's not true but that's what scores of young men are being told and they're finding their way down an allright path and what we need to do is get to the first thing you all talked about which is how do we solve for all of it together the failure to acknowledge the problems we're talking about here these structural problems in education in mental health to acknowledge them and to say that we're dealing with them creates the very opportunity you've talked about which is that they will then go looking somewhere else I'll give you an couple of examples when covid hit the college uh enrollment rate dropped seven times more for men than for women it you didn't read that anywhere it was impossible to get coverage of that because it was no one's job to be drawing attention to that it's one of the reasons I create this new organization and I'm getting a little bit harder on on Democrats a national level than Governor Moore is being right now I think at a state level you're seeing where you're seeing Republicans like Spencer Cox creating work on boys and men you're seeing Washington State consider a commission on boys and but at National level true actually it is really hard actually even to get them to acknowledge the fact that we have these huge problems facing boys and men most tragically perhaps and the surgeon general's recent work speaks this the tragedy and the CR of male suicide in this country we are losing 40,000 men a year to Suicide that's about the same number as women die from breast cancer just to put it in perspective not to compare them that way uh gun deaths which VC just talked about six times as many men black men more homicide white men more suicide Etc these are very distinctly male problems School shooters they're not addressed in that way they there's a genuine feeling at a national level that simply to admit that that's a problem is to give a gift to the alt-right they'll say aha you see even they admit that male suicide is a problem the problem is it is a problem and so if you're not talking about it from the White House from HHS Etc Donald Payne tragically lost a member of Congress from New Jersey put down a bill to create an office of men's health we have many offices of women's health doing great work he died at the age of 65 African-American man from complications with diabetes we should rename that bill in his honor and the White House should come out in favor because the idea that when we are losing so many men to so many health problems that we can't have an office of men's health and offices of women's health is exactly the kind of thing that is a recruiting tool for the right so let's stop giving them the gift of this issue but that will require us to talk about it and Wes is talking about it but I got to tell you above his level on the left pretty hard to get anyone to talk about it I want to open it up to some questions oh oh oh no there aren't any going back to going back to your we're going to give you a microphone sorry going back to your former life in your adopted city of New York what would you recommend that the New York City public school system specifically do in the Bronx which includes the poorest congressional district in the United States to improve the outcome for black and brown students I um I I I think I think about the work that we're doing right now which in many ways has been completely informed by some of the best practices and thing that we saw uh when I was in Robinhood one you've got to start earlier um 80% of brain development happens in a child by the time that child is 5 years old so the fact that we have children starting school at five makes absolutely no sense biologically no otherwise you've got to be able to start earlier you also have to make sure that that that that issue of lifelong learning and Community Schools and those type of things that actually includes the family because the best way you're going to support a child is making sure that family is supported the best way you support that family is making sure that family is existing in a strong supportive Community the best way you support that Community is making sure that Community has strong supportive anchors inside of that Community to include homes of worship and their schools and so you have to ensure that you have a full family wraparound when it comes to those type of supports the other thing that I think we have to be able to be able to do that we're doing in Maryland is both a making sure we're attracting and recruiting additional teachers of color men of color Etc into class rooms because that that that matters not just qualitatively but quantitatively but the other big thing is this too it's how we're thinking about measurements of CTE Career Technical education being able to get young people an understanding of what it is they want to do earlier because I'm just a again I'm just a a very big believer it's the reason why Maryland became the first state in this country that now has a service year option for all of our high school graduates right it's the reason why it's the reason why we are focusing on on on Career Tech technical education for our young people because we do you know I was mentioning yesterday we have some of the best 4-year colleges in America and some remarkable two-year ones including Howard Community College as well M president um but we also have to end this idea and frankly myth that every single one of our students must attend a four-year College in order to be economically successful and so we there's a whole bunch when it comes to holistic lifelong learning that if we can do that sustainably and invest in that sustainably you're going to be able to move the needle on what are the prospects for our young people who are growing up in communities Mr Kart we can hear you Jonathan you don't need a microphone we can hear you um thank you very much and um you caught me by surprise thank you Stephanie um I wanted to pick up on something that Richard was talking about um in saying that the left it's really difficult in the Democratic party to have to raise the things that you're talking about and the word that kept coming to my mind was the patriarchy so can we please have a discussion about how do you address that and break through that because I think until until we have that conversation that's the wall I think we have to climb over so Wes you're Governor you're nodding I would love to hear your answer well no I but I um I I think I think it's spot on uh Jonathan because this idea and you see how it does become politically weaponized mhm and and and frankly that you have um you have political campaigns political races a current presidential race where the underlying theme or as uh as as our chief of staff says you know the note behind the note is this idea of who is the more masculine candidate who is the one that is you know the the the the the chest Thumper and as if that's somehow going to be the thing that is going to PE appeal to males or boys or in inside this inside this larger context so you're absolutely right that that this idea of this patriarchal wall and this historical context of it it is completely underlining uh you know how we think about all this I I just think that the way we need to be able to identify it is we need to reclaim what that idea of of masculinity and what that idea of what it is that we're asking our men and our boys to be that my idea in my definition of of of of manhood is not the person who's quickest to be the bully or to push someone down that my definition of manhood isn't the person who who has to be the loudest in the room my definition of manhood is not the person that somehow feels the the the the absolute need to disrespect other people that's not manhood manhood for me is the person who serves that role of protector of the person who supports others who lifts up others who sees the humanity in everybody the person who understands that they are an important part of the conversation but they are not they don't have to be the center of the conversation that idea of being able to lift up understand a relevancy but know that that relevancy does not mean exclusion is how I think we have to recapture and redefine this idea of manhood and I think that you know when we watch these elections or we watch these people who were just being not just opportunistic but malicious in the way they are trying to shape Define and refine there has to be a societal push individual and societal push for us to be able to push back on that and to be able to reclaim that with pride and to know that it's not being done because it's it's it's interesting but it's being done because that's the closest to our historical context that we have and that bastardization that we continue to see every night at every single Rally or or news conference that he or they hold we don't air the rallies anymore thank you that that's not something that we should lift up nor celebrate nor is that any form of a definition of something that we should be embracing nor nor uh nor uh nor loving Richard we should smash the patriarchy but we should also know what it is and when it's smashed um and I think the problem is that now it's used to Loosely I like the older definition which is not all men over all women but actually a society where a small group of men are over everybody else um and I have tell I I I live in southern Appalachia now um a very kind of poor rural kind of white area and and I think probably similarly in some of the areas we've been talking about in Black areas of America like the message to those men that they're Patriarchs and that they're living in a patriarchy just doesn't land very convincingly um I think the message that we've still got a more to do in terms of our leadership like look 25% women in Congress leadership in Business Media 2% of venture capital money going to to women Founders so I think that right at the top of society that kind of argument that we still don't have enough female representation is very powerful it's a mistake to take that and say that applies to everybody else and that creates that that implication like if you roll your eyes at a young black man that's struggling in Baltimore or a guy that's struggling with addiction in Southern appalache and you just say well what's wrong with you it's a patriarch Ary so if you're struggling it must be your fault and then we wonder why he might be open to some slightly more reactionary ideas so I think again we're kind of creating the supply lines to the misogynist by our own failure to take seriously and compassionately these real problems just two things that uh you know I've been hanging around Obama for a while so the Hope thing just comes up so two two areas that I might point you all towards um that I I think that we see are being successful I think the first is that people who don't have to use the right words to participate in helping solve a problem I think right now if you have to you know not only use the word patriarchy but know what it means and Define it in the right way you're not going to enter into the discussion um uh even if you have something to offer right we we we're we're creating a dialogue that is shutting people who want to be a part of this out and we need them in if we're going to participate um and and right now I don't know you know I'm sure the people in this room all love to participate in conversations about politics but I promise you most of your neighbors your family members and your friends don't because they don't feel like there's a place for them in it they haven't read the latest thing they haven't listened to the latest podcast they don't know the latest thing so they're not in Civic life and Civic discourse course and we need them in if we're going to solve that problem and I I think we've seen that work the other thing I'd offer that might work is there's something really unique about America and that is we have participated in this innerfaith experience in every hospital right now there's somebody working on someone saving their lives probably of three different faiths and one person with no faith at all all just participating in that challenge and there's language there of love of service of Grace routines and rituals that help people become a man uh that offer them an opportunity to participate in society that are right there for us I think to grab a hold of and people who are going to participate in helping these young people navigate the society that they're in right now with with love and affection and Grace and I think there's an opportunity for us to to to ask those people to participate maybe to listen and learn from them as well um that is I think a very there's some very fragile things about this country that we've got to fight for and hold on to the first is like it's still unique in human history to build a society that's not based on might makes right it is still unique in human history to build on a society where one group of people is not dominant over the other and it's still pretty unique in human history to build Society where people of different faith and no faith of all have decided to come together and bring that into the way we live and work together every single day and I I think there's some tools in there for us amen thank you thank you thank you thanks for watching stay updated about breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or follow us on social media

Channel: NBC News

Views: 16,116

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Id: _q27feeh__M

Length: 58min 54sec (3534 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 26 2024