The Dallas Morning News
Black and male in America
Dr. MARCUS MARTIN and VICTORIA LOE HICKS share their e-mail exchange on this nation's 'endangered species'
On Sunday, The Washington Post ran an extensive poll delving into the experiences of black men and their attitudes toward themselves, as well as other Americans' attitudes toward them.
Here, two employees of the Dallas-based Foundation for Community Empowerment – an African-American man and a white woman – mull the implications of the sometimes surprising findings on this highly charged subject.
Victoria Loe Hicks: So, Marcus, what jumped out for you in the poll? For me it was that black men are their own toughest critics.
For instance, a majority of all respondents said that black men are too focused on sports and sex and not focused enough on getting a good education, but black men were much stronger in those critiques than black women, white men or white women. Of course, no one knows us as well as we know ourselves.
Marcus Martin: I think what surprised me most is how many black men have internalized the obstacles and hardships that many black men across America face. They blame themselves, just as others blame them, for not overcoming those obstacles and hardships.
Hicks: So what I interpreted as self-awareness, you interpret as something more like internalized oppression?
Martin: Exactly. And part of this, I believe, is rooted in the way we measure whether a person has achieved the American dream – typically, we look only at the end result. I believe that is a flawed measure.
Hicks: But what is there to measure, other than the end result?
Martin: Well, I as a black man and you as a white woman have the same goals: a good education, good job, nice home, etc. However, because of my starting place – poverty, single-parent home, racism, etc. – I have 50 obstacles to overcome, where you have five. You manage to overcome those five and achieve the dream. I manage to overcome 30, but if the other 20 leave me by the wayside, society is ready to tell me I did not try hard enough.
The African-American single mother who manages to get her three kids to graduate from high school has been just as successful as the upper-middle-class family that managed to get their three kids through Harvard – although society won't agree.
What we have to do is remove the barriers so that each person can truly achieve based on their merit.
Hicks: Absolutely. Don't you find, though, that people look at you – an African-American man who grew up poor, raised by a single mother in rural Louisiana and who earned a Ph.D., teaches at the university level and heads a think tank – and say: "Well, obviously, the barriers can't be all that big, if he managed to get where he is?"
Martin: I figured early on that one of the best ways to get those obstacles removed was to become a great athlete. So I dedicated myself to athletics, went to college on a football scholarship. Once there, I decided that the time was right to focus on my academic skills.
The preponderance of African-Americans in sports actually reflects the fact that in America it is one of the few avenues fully open to them.
Hicks: Turning back to the poll, another "aha" for me was the sharp disconnect between whites and blacks on crime and punishment. For starters, 48 percent of black men said they've been treated unfairly by police, and 62 percent said they're very or somewhat worried about that happening to them; but only 17 percent of white women worry about it.
It's hard to grasp the size of the gap between your experience and mine.
Martin: In the end, this is the defining factor. Regardless of how much success I have had – a Ph.D., two master's degrees, survived the hardship of being homeless in college – the thing that I will never be able to overcome is being black.
I have been treated unfairly by the police at times due to racial profiling. I have had security follow me around in department stores due to racial profiling. This is what my friends and I call "doing time without doing time." In other words, as a black man, regardless of your success, in some circles, you are always a suspect. This creates tremendous stress, especially as a black man with a 3-year-old son. I know that he will face some of the same hardships.
Hicks: Since you mention families, I found it disturbing in the poll that majorities of black men and women said a big reason so many black men go to prison is that their parents don't teach them right from wrong. Among black men, 58 percent said that, and 44 percent said that black men are less likely than other people to think it's wrong to commit a crime. Do you agree?
Martin: No, I disagree. Many black men are growing up in fractured family structures and in a society that heavily promotes the value of material well-being. The message is that if you do not have the material possessions, there is something lacking about you as a person, and having or getting those things will fix you.
In addition, often there is only one parent or no parents to give these young men the guidance they need. And even when the guidance is there, like it was in my family, my two younger brothers did prison stints for drugs. In many cases, the financial temptation overcomes everything else that these young men are hearing, because there is direct evidence, based on what they see, that the only true economic opportunity for a young black man is the drug trade.
Hicks: Black respondents saw a strong link between the number of black men who are in prison or have been killed and the low marriage rates in the black community. But white people didn't tend to see that link. What does research say on the subject?
Martin: Research shows that there is a correlation. In Dallas, as in the nation, there are more males than females in most ethnic groups, except among the elderly. However, for African-Americans, the opposite is true. About age 14, you begin to see a significant imbalance among African-Americans, with females outnumbering males. The gap is greatest in the 18-to-34 age range – at the very time many young African-American males should be marrying and during an important period in one's wage-earning career.
So it's true that you can reduce crime by removing all of the young men from the neighborhood, but at the price of dramatic changes in family structure, unstable neighborhood conditions, low marriage rates, etc.
We talk about black men being endangered, but prison and premature mortality are tremendous threats to African-American females as well. It is very disheartening to know that my 5-year-old daughter has less than a one-in-two chance of getting married.
Hicks: Why are so many black men – at least the ones interviewed in this poll – so upbeat about their lives? Sixty percent said this is a good time to be a black man in America, and 79 percent said they are mostly optimistic about their futures.
Even more striking to me is that the people who look like me report feeling the greatest stress in our lives, rather than black men – who are actually faring worse on virtually every measure, from the likelihood of experiencing violence to the likelihood of graduating from college. Are black men in denial, or are they just hugely resilient?
Martin: I would not say they are in denial. I would say that society has put tremendous pressure on African-American men to not complain about their plight. I would also posit that many of the African-American men who find themselves in dire predicaments were not available to discuss their plight. They are dead or in prison.
As far as white women are concerned, very few of us have the ability to look outside our own reality to make comparisons. Thus, we begin to believe that our burden is the greatest burden. But the fact is that black men around the world are an endangered species.
There are more than 6 billion people in the world. Most live in abject poverty and misery with no hope for a brighter future. At the end of the day, the plight of black men is not just a black man's tragedy, but a human tragedy.
The plight of world poverty is also a human tragedy that can never be addressed until we transcend the examination of our own lives and examine the lives of those around the world. Beginning to honestly examine the human tragedy of black men in American moves us in that direction.
Victoria Loe Hicks is senior writer for the foundation. Her e-mail is vhicks@ fcedallas.org.