How to Live Up to Being a Bad Black Man

Stories bring facts to life, make the abstract concrete and, through meaning making, walk the listener through the mind of the scientist or mathematician (Ellis, 2005) to understand the value and application of such concepts. Wells (1986) argued that storytelling is a fundamental means of meaning making.

Stories are told for one of four reasons – to describe, to entertain, to explain or inform, and to persuade.

Table of Contents

A Story of a Rare Black Man

The rolling blackouts in Port-au-Prince guaranteed that by 7 pm, it was time to get some shuteye. On the off chance that my grandfather was in town, it was story time.

Most homes in Haiti were constructed with a courtyard. This was a cultural homage in that you always had a space to receive people or entertain a crowd. It was a time of no gates or walls. Neighbors knew neighbors and the community looked out for each own.

I was four at the time so I do not remember all the story details; however, I remember how it made me feel. It gives credence to the saying, “after death, what remains are your words and how you made others feel.”

The art of storytelling is a blueprint etched in our very DNA. It is our shared history, the rubric for public speaking, the development of charisma, and the spur of confidence and poise in the face of fire.

Was my grandfather full of it?

Most likely. All stories get a dash of embellishment here and there.

Was it true?

Most likely. The best stories are based on a pseudo-hyper-reality; even some of my stories are so outlandish that I start to doubt if they even happened. I once walked from one city to another overnight in California. Likely a two-hour drive, took me eight hours to walk. That one is true too.

A Master Story Teller is not necessarily the Writer

Born to an American mother of European descent and an African father, at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children. Of African and English descent, with some German, Irish, Scottish, Swiss, and Welsh ancestry, this child was already a melting pot of culture and history. His parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student on a scholarship. The couple married and six months later, he was born.

The Honorable 44^th President of the United States, Barack Obama was destined to be one of the greatest speakers of our time. As prolific and gifted as he is, his greatest speeches were penned by John Favreau. Obama referred to him as his “mind reader.”

A storyteller is not necessarily the writer.

Favreau could have written these masterpieces on a blog or in a book for quick retweets, however, the delivery by Barack Obama is unmatched. This is akin to Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson. A writer can construct the words; the storyteller can make them sing.

That is the art and the mastery.

The Storyteller Lands every word

At Century Campus on Morehouse College (Atlanta, Georgia), then President Barack Obama read what would forever be the most important speech that every Black young male needs to read and hear. I will highlight some passages but I implore you to read the words, of President’s Morehouse Speech of 2013, and to watch the speech.

The Best Stories are yet to be told.

Hello, Morehouse! (Applause)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I love you!

THE PRESIDENT: I love you back. (Laughter) That is why I am here.

The audience would never forget this day. Under the overcast and scattered showers, many stood for hours for a glance and an earshot at the first Black president speaking at an all-Black Male HBCU. It was unfortunately the last time that he spoke directly to black men. By the following Monday, Black Twitter (dominated by women) decry the speech as “speaking down” to black people. Ironically, as a black man, this was the most important speech that I needed to hear.

“Some of you are graduating summa cum laude. Some of you are graduating magna cum laude. I know some of you are just graduating, “thank you, Lordy.”

Too many are the obstacles and too few make it through. For Black men to succeed in America under the constraint of not having readily accessible role models or enough educational resources, the community must pull through.

“I want to congratulate all of you — the parents, the grandparents, the brothers and sisters, the family and friends who supported these young men in so many ways. This is your day, as well.”

Benjamin Mays said, “It will not be sufficient for Morehouse College, for any college, for that matter, to produce clever graduates… but rather honest men, men who can be trusted in public and private life — men who are sensitive to the wrongs, the sufferings, and the injustices of society and who are willing to accept responsibility for correcting [those] ills.”

The destination defines us. The choices we will make along the way, especially the choices that no one sees, cements our legacy. To be honest with yourself is the definition of freedom.

To cultivate good and upright black man who is accountable

Some of you probably came here from communities where everybody looked like you. Others may have come here in search of a community. You were suddenly in a group of high achievers, and that meant you were expected to do something more.

Too often, we relinquish our personal growth to the smallest pond with little to no competition.

You might have been the big fish in the school, however, once you enter the workforce; you are back to square one.

I remember the start of the pandemic when parents started to ask what to do with their kids. The answer was abundantly clear, “Parent them”. Too often, we ask what we are supposed to do and scapegoat it to others.

“Oooh I can’t pay for student loans, well here’s hoping the government cancels them.” In what universe, does your accumulation of loans falls to someone else to fix? That answer is also simple – “Make a plan and Pay them”. On top of that, start to teach others of the downfalls of going to college under-prepared and not overindulging on “Free money”.

This is what Accountability looks like! A man always pays what he owes.

And he, in turn, taught others to be Unafraid

For black men in the ‘40s and the ‘50s, the threat of violence, the constant humiliations, large and small, the uncertainty that you could support a family, the gnawing doubts born of the Jim Crow culture that told you every day that somehow you were inferior, the temptation to shrink from the world, to accept your place, to avoid risks, to be afraid — that temptation was necessarily strong. And yet, here, under the tutelage of men like Dr. Mays, young MLK learned to be unafraid.

This collective history should give you hope.

In addition, our collective future should give you pause for the challenges that should come ahead. In the end, be unafraid because you have courage and most importantly, you have faith. Become the hero of your story.

That does not mean we do not have work –

There is more to life than stunting for the gram or chasing likes.

There are troubled neighborhoods all across this country — where jobs are still too scarce and wages are still too low; where schools are underfunded and violence is pervasive; where too many of our men spend their youth not behind a desk in a classroom, but hanging out on the streets or brooding behind a jail cell.

There is more to love than fleeting drunken moments at brunch and way more homes to build right in your own community.

Along with collective responsibilities, we have individual responsibilities. There are some things, as black men; we can only do for ourselves. Read the Brookings Institute’s report on The Sequence of Personal Responsibility and find out why it’s so important to put it in order.

Ask yourself, what is your purpose?

Maybe you feel like you escaped and now you can take your degree and get that fancy job and the nice house and the nice car — and never look back. No one expects you to take a vow of poverty. I will say it betrays a poverty of ambition if all you think about is what goods you can buy instead of what good you can do.

There are multiple jobs, multiple pursuits to wealth, and too few to mentor and teach. By definition, there is a lack of shared purpose and a need for a lifetime call to action.

For as long as you have breath in your body, you cannot forsake 400 years of sacrifices that allowed you to be here. The moment that teaches taught you to expect more of yourselves, inspires those who look up to you to expect more of themselves.

There is no longer any room for excuses.

Not because Racism and Discrimination no longer exist

“Excuses are tools of the incompetent used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness.”

We are running out of time for excuses. 2020 has forced a Great Reset on the Black community. Unemployment pushed over 30%. For each out-of-work black man, that is a five to eight-year delay for building and constructing families.

There is no time to debate the bitter legacy of slavery and segregation. Even if we discussed it for another week, the past would not vanish entirely. We cannot spend more time on past, more so than we focus on planning and instructing our future.

It’s just that in today’s hyper connected, hypercompetitive world, with millions of young people from China and India and Brazil — many of whom started with a whole lot less than all of you did — all of them entering the global workforce alongside you, nobody is going to give you anything that you have not earned.

The Spirit of Excellence

Nobody cares how tough your upbringing was. Nobody cares if you suffered some discrimination. Moreover, you have to remember that whatever you have gone through, it pales in comparison to the hardships previous generations endured — and they overcame them. If they overcame them, you can overcome them, too.

We hail from the legacy of immeasurably strong men – Toussaint L’Ouverture, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Langston Hughes, George Washington Carver, Ralph Abernathy, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, Thurgood Marshall, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Colin Powell, Thomas Sowell, Chadwick Boseman, and many more.

President Mays stated it best “Whatever you do, strive to do it so well that no man living and no man dead, and no man yet to be born can do it any better.”

What was needed in Dr. Mays’s time, that spirit of excellence, hard work, dedication, and no excuses is needed now more than ever. Stay hungry. Keep hustling. Keep on your grind and get other folks to do the same — nobody can stop you.

The Imperfect lifelong task

Hard work demands your constant attention and frequent sacrifice.

I (Barack Obama) promise you, “Michelle will tell you I’m not perfect. She’s got a long list of my imperfections.”

Even now, I am still practicing, I am still learning, still being corrected in terms of how to be a fine husband and a good father. Nevertheless, I will tell you this: Everything else is unfulfilled if we fail at family if we fail at that responsibility.

One day, you will look back at your accomplishments. The dollars will not matter. The pathways that you have laid behind you, will count more than the commas in your Bank account.

Be a better role model. You do not need to be perfect. You just need to try. We have to teach even when others are not around to take lessons. Drop knowledge in a caption, a repost, or a retweet.

Be a friend, a husband, a father, and a brother; shelter them for they crave your protection and your support. They are looking to you to be unyielding, to be a role model, when all seems lost and all their fears boil to the surface, and to step up to the plate.

If you have not, commit yourself to be that man to somebody else.

The Story of Leland Shelton

“When Leland Shelton was four years old, social services took him away from his mama and put him in the care of his grandparents.

By age 14, he was in the foster care system. Three years after that, Leland enrolled in Morehouse. Today he is graduating Phi Beta Kappa on his way to Harvard Law School.

As a member of the National Foster Care Youth and Alumni Policy Council, he plans to use his law degree to make sure kids like him do not fall through the cracks. It will not matter whether they are black kids, brown kids, white kids, or Native American kids because he will understand what they are going through. He will be fighting for them. He will be in their corner.”

Rise to the Occasion

In the end, we must recognize the burdens we carry. We must resist the temptation to use them as excuses and to reach for the easy and convenient. Avoid shrinking into spaces that yield no challenges.

We need to transform and re-imagine the way we think about manhood, and set higher standards for ourselves and for others. We are called to be successful, and beyond that, we are called to sacrifice for generations to come.

There are men who refuse to be afraid. Men who push boundaries and through courage achieve the unachievable. We are that legacy. We harbor this unique opportunity.

What will you do with it?

Success may not come quickly or easily. However, if you strive to do what is right, if you work harder and dream bigger if you set an example in your own lives and do your part to help meet the challenges of our time, then I am confident that, together, we will continue the never-ending task of perfecting our union.

To be the bad Black Man

In the end, “what remains are your words and how you made others feel.”

Let yours be the story of the Bad Black Man, who saved the world from itself.

Seek to be an educated man. Push the envelope of creativity. Find the tool kit. Be excellent and not made heavy by greed and laziness. Find freedom in the pursuit of yourself. Love without fear. Mary the one that matters and fathers children that you can support emotionally and financially. And finally, become the storyteller that tells tales that might be a bit embellished or just beyond belief enough to be true.

With that said, God bless the United States of America.

(Applause)