Are Black men facing a mental health crisis, a patriarchy crisis, or both? | Code Switch

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0:19 Just a heads-up, this episode contains references to violence,

0:23 including domestic violence and sexual assault.

0:27 All right, onto the show.

0:31 [music] Hey everyone, you're listening to Code Switch.

0:32 I'm BA Parker.

0:33 And I'm Gene Demby.

0:35 Gene, I know you and I talk a lot about the ways

0:38 that race and gender interact to shape how people behave in the world.

0:43 And I've been thinking about that a lot these past few weeks

0:46 [music] because of some of the really heavy events that have unfolded.

0:51 So, I know you've heard about the recent tragedy in Shreveport, Louisiana.

0:55 Yeah, Parker, I did.

0:56 So, a man there shot and killed eight [music] children.

1:00 He also shot two women.

1:02 Both of them survived.

1:03 Seven of those kids who were killed, though, were his children,

1:06 and one of the women he shot was his [music] fiance.

1:09 Right, and it's one in a series of startling incidents in the past month.

1:14 Like at the beginning [music] of April, Justin Fairfax,

1:17 the former Lieutenant Governor of Virginia,

1:19 shot [music] and killed his wife and himself.

1:21 Just this week, charges were brought against the popular

1:24 TikTok singer David for the murder of a teenage girl

1:29 as well as continuous abuse of [music] a child

1:32 younger than 14 and the unlawful mutilation of human remains.

1:37 And honestly, the list goes on, but we have to stop here for a lot of reasons.

1:43 It's worth pointing [music] out that all

1:44 the perpetrators in these incidents were black men,

1:47 and they were reportedly dealing with mental health issues.

1:50 And a lot of the media reaction that I followed, that I've seen,

1:52 I don't know if you've seen this, Parker,

1:54 has been about the mental health crisis among men, especially black men.

1:58 That feels too simple or pat for the sort of scope of what's happening.

2:02 True.

2:02 Like especially when recent studies show that black women are

2:06 six times more likely to be killed than their white counterparts.

2:11 So, I wanted to speak to someone who could break

2:13 down a little more of what he thinks is going on.

2:17 We are more mournful of the possibilities that are lost for these men.

2:23 You know, we're more concerned with mourning them [music]

2:26 than we are mourning the victims of the choices that they make.

2:30 That's Mark Anthony Neal.

2:32 He's a friend of the show [music]

2:34 and a professor at Duke University who studies black masculinity.

2:38 Just looking at the full palette of of how black men show up in the world.

2:45 That's just hovering over you all day, all the time?

2:50 [laughter] Yes, I mean, part [music] of it is because I've

2:52 been living in this black male body for for 60 years.

2:56 Yeah.

2:56 Um so, I I feel like I have some insight on what it means.

3:02 That's fair.

3:03 [music] But yes, it it's, you know,

3:05 I I have to frame the world that I'm in not just in terms of who I am,

3:10 in terms of my race, but also in terms of my gender.

3:13 And I wanted to talk to Mark about all of this recent

3:17 tragedy and what it says [music] about black masculinity right now.

3:21 I'm very intrigued.

3:22 Take it away, Parker.

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4:40 Mark Anthony Neal told me that hearing about all this violence over the course

4:44 of the past few weeks had him feeling

4:46 like we need to start a collective conversation.

4:50 A conversation asking What's happening in the world?

4:54 I mean, we ask that question every day.

4:56 Yeah.

4:57 Cuz there's so much craziness going on, but you know,

5:00 this is something that, at least for me, had to bubble up to a priority in terms

5:05 of thinking and processing what this violence against women mean.

5:11 Yeah, okay.

5:12 You talk about that conversation.

5:14 What does that conversation look like?

5:20 I think and I think it's important

5:22 to think about your introduction of Serena Fairfax

5:25 and leading with her that we need to lead with the victims of the violence.

5:30 And you know, there seemed to be this desire

5:32 almost immediately to create a context for the violence.

5:37 You know, whether it was mental illness, did he just lose his mind for a moment?

5:43 We needed to sit, I needed to sit with the idea that in these cases,

5:49 there were children that lost their lives,

5:52 there were wives that lost their lives.

5:55 Whatever choices Mr.

5:57 Fairfax made or or the guy in in Louisiana made,

6:02 we have to sit with the violence against those women and children first.

6:07 And I think too often,

6:09 because he was a prominent black man and we're overly protective,

6:14 I think, as a community, as a culture,

6:17 about what befalls prominent black men, right?

6:21 Because and somehow we think that protecting

6:24 and and creating a context to understand them,

6:26 it it's a more of a benefit to our community, to the race.

6:31 I think in leading with that, we

6:32 miss fundamental issues around violence against women,

6:38 the role of patriarchy and misogyny and sexism in our lives,

6:43 and how violence against black women becomes an afterthought.

6:46 I think about, for instance, in in a separate space,

6:49 when we see young white women who are killed

6:53 by folks who are immigrants and how that bubbles

6:56 up to a national conversation because it's connected

6:58 to this larger disc- course about immigration in the country.

7:02 We rarely see violence against black women

7:05 bubble up to that level of conversation.

7:08 And so, I was happy to see, and happy is probably the wrong word,

7:14 the number of black women scholars and journalists, some of them that I knew,

7:18 who spoke back very forcefully to the framing of the story of these killings.

7:24 Right.

7:25 I mean, you mentioned this, there's a lot of focus

7:29 in these incidents around specifically the mental health of these men.

7:36 Sometimes more than the tragedy itself.

7:38 Mhm.

7:38 You don't find that to be the appropriate

7:39 response to uh the wake of these incidents.

7:43 A man killed his wife, and I'm talking about Fairfax in this context.

7:47 How do we not lead with that conversation?

7:50 Um that a man chose to kill his wife with his children in the home.

7:57 Now, we could have a conversation about whether or not I

8:00 or anybody else believes that patriarchy is is a form of mental illness.

8:06 You know, if if we want to have a conversation about mental illness,

8:09 let's talk about the role that patriarchy plays

8:13 in informing mental illness and and misogyny and sexism.

8:17 You know, we we often talk about the ways in which racism,

8:20 for instance, is a public health crisis, right?

8:23 Anti-black racism is a public health crisis, right?

8:25 When do we talk about violence against women

8:27 and misogyny and patriarchy as a mental health crisis, also?

8:31 And and I'm I'm not necessarily trying to go there, right?

8:34 I'm just saying for those folks who want to say, "Well, you know,

8:37 he snapped." But there also had to be something fundamentally in how he viewed,

8:42 how these men viewed the women

8:43 in their lives and their children and their wives.

8:45 Yeah.

8:46 And this is the point that Britney Cooper made in her great piece, Yeah.

8:49 you know, that that there's a sense of ownership.

8:51 I can do with you what I will.

8:54 And in many ways, the way that story gets reported,

8:58 where we are more mournful of the possibilities that are lost for these men,

9:05 whether it's their own life or incarceration, right?

9:08 You know, we're more concerned with mourning them than we

9:11 are mourning the victims of the choices that they make, right?

9:15 And they were choices, right?

9:16 They made clear-cut choices to kill people who

9:19 are ostensibly are close and special to them.

9:24 Now, can we talk about that for a second?

9:26 The article you're referring to is by Britney Cooper.

9:30 She's a journalist and a professor of Africana

9:32 Studies and Gender Studies at Rutgers University.

9:36 And she wrote a piece for New York

9:38 Magazine about the idea that it was the patriarchy

9:42 and not just mental health issues that was

9:45 responsible for the killing that happened in Shreveport.

9:50 Do you find that fair or unfair to paint these incidents

9:55 with a larger brush and condemn them as part of patriarchy more broadly.

10:01 You know, it's a long difficult conversation in the sense

10:06 that we'd like to believe that the behavior, the misbehavior,

10:11 the bad behavior, the deadly behavior of black men is some

10:16 sort of byproduct of what black men experience in a racist society.

10:21 Mhm.

10:21 Where they are unfairly targeted both because they

10:25 are black but also they are black men.

10:28 And I think we've excused a lot

10:29 of behavior in our community because of that reality.

10:32 And that's not to detract from the ways in which black men catch hell,

10:37 you know, for lack of a better way to describe it.

10:39 Mhm.

10:40 But because black men don't actually have access to the same

10:43 kind of patriarchy that their white male peers do

10:47 both because of their whiteness and in some cases because

10:50 of their class patriarchy manifests itself in very localized ways,

10:56 I believe, in black life.

10:59 So, we see violence that emerges in the domestic space.

11:05 Mhm.

11:06 And we often are most acutely attuned

11:10 to the the physical violence within that context.

11:12 But there's also rhetorical violence.

11:15 How do we talk to the women and the children in our lives, right?

11:17 The way that silence,

11:19 for instance not responding to the concerns of your partner, your wife,

11:24 [snorts] the person who's raising your children that in not responding to them

11:28 you're deploying that silence as a weapon to dismiss what their concerns are.

11:34 We have done a bad job, a tragic job, really,

11:40 when we consider the way that we raise boys in this society and black

11:44 boys specifically in this context where we

11:48 don't teach boys how to use their words.

11:51 Mhm.

11:52 They seem as though the only way

11:53 that they can resolve conflict is through violence, right?

11:56 And it has gone awry globally.

11:59 Right?

11:59 In in which the idea of negotiation is thrown out the table for violence, right?

12:04 So, we see this at the highest levels.

12:05 Of course, it's going to bubble down

12:07 to the everyday lives of people who are experiencing this.

12:10 But patriarchy, I think, for black men is something that is really

12:13 appealing because it gives black men this some sense.

12:17 And I will own this for myself at the various times in my life

12:21 where I understood the privilege of patriarchy

12:24 that it gives us some semblance of power.

12:27 Um but it's not a real power, right?

12:29 It's not a real power if ultimately it's

12:31 being used to destroy those in our lives, to destroy our communities.

12:37 How How are you able to reconcile the call for strides and hope for black

12:46 men with mental health conditions while also

12:49 acknowledging the toll on black women and children?

12:53 It it it it can't be an either or.

12:56 We have raised emotionally stunted black men and boys.

13:03 And it's stunted is probably not the right word.

13:07 We give black men and boys only certain outlets for their emotions.

13:14 So, anger is acceptable.

13:16 Mhm.

13:17 Certain forms of frustration are acceptable.

13:22 So many other forms of emotions that come from black men and boys,

13:25 we police to be a black man and to be

13:29 vulnerable is to be questioned about the validity of your masculinity.

13:35 To be a black man who leads with caregiving you know,

13:40 as opposed to the more patriarchal role of controlling and caretaking, right?

13:46 Providing sustenance in family and a housing and food and shelter,

13:52 all those kinds of things that we think of as the responsibility of men.

13:56 We don't give black men many, many diverse outlets to express their emotions.

14:03 And that is both what leads, I would say, in some cases,

14:07 not all cases, obviously, and I'm not a mental health expert.

14:11 Mhm.

14:11 You know, but if you are a human

14:12 being who can't fully express what your emotions are,

14:16 that speaks of some troubling of your of your mental health.

14:20 And, you know, we can't necessarily say to black men, "Well,

14:24 you need to go to therapy." Um I'm thinking about

14:27 my man SiR the Kidd who has this great song, right?

14:30 Do do black men need therapy?

14:32 Yes.

14:33 Mhm.

14:34 But not every black man or black boy is in a position to get therapy.

14:38 And to admit that you're in therapy is

14:40 somehow to admit that there's something wrong with you.

14:45 Um Mhm.

14:45 that there's something at fault with you.

14:48 We need to change the framing so that we think about mental

14:52 health care on any level as something that not only repairs us,

14:58 because that is part of the problem but also

15:01 something that allows us to be the fullest people, human that we can be.

15:06 Very often it's the pastor or the religious

15:10 practice that takes the place of of therapy.

15:13 And spirituality is an important part of our lives,

15:15 but let's not mistake spirituality

15:17 for the expertise that therapy can provide, right?

15:21 So, that's one side of the question.

15:23 Not every black man who is suffering from mental

15:27 health chooses violence against women as an option, right?

15:33 Some of these men are in their full right mind who believe that they're

15:37 within their right to treat women

15:40 and those less powerful than them as they choose.

15:44 And so, I think we have to hold both of these things together, right?

15:47 You know, so much of my work over the years has been working

15:51 at this intersection of understanding the lives

15:54 of black men and what black men face,

15:56 but at the same time holding black men accountable for their behaviors.

16:02 Right?

16:02 Both to each other but also to the women and children,

16:06 intimate partners that are in their lives.

16:08 And and and I don't think it's ever an either or.

16:11 It's it's always a both and.

16:13 Yeah.

16:15 I'm thinking about this cuz um I don't know.

16:18 This is So, it could be a bit of like an overshare,

16:20 but like I grew up my mother was

16:22 a social worker for a child protection services.

16:25 And uh my stepmother was the head of a safe house for uh uh abuse survivors.

16:34 And I I've listened to a lot of testimonials from black women um who were trying

16:41 to survive really impossible situations uh and being

16:44 told to kind of take it in stride.

16:48 Uh I think reactions to this violence sometimes seem to fall

16:53 into that dynamic of focusing on the individual man in question

16:58 without looking at the maybe the deeper power imbalances that exist

17:03 and allow so many women and children in these situations.

17:08 Like what's what's your take on that?

17:11 You know, when we see some of the most recent

17:13 expressions of violence against black women it's not brand new.

17:18 Mhm.

17:19 There have always been these incidences.

17:21 We are perhaps just more hyper aware of it because [clears throat] of news

17:26 coverage and the internet and social media and all those kinds of things.

17:30 But I also think there was a regularized

17:33 practice in black communities not to air dirty laundry.

17:40 Yeah.

17:40 And this was particularly important during

17:43 the era of segregation where, you know,

17:45 much of the argument about our demands to be more integrated

17:51 into the mainstream of American life was that saying to white folks,

17:56 "We're just like you." That that we're normal, right?

18:00 Turns out we're more like them than we ever wanted to admit,

18:02 but that's another conversation.

18:04 And so, we didn't want to pay attention

18:08 to aspects of our lives that seemed pathological.

18:11 That in fact if there was intimate partner violence in our homes,

18:15 so because we didn't want it to become

18:18 something that was known outside of our homes,

18:20 outside of our communities it's something

18:22 that we very often remained silent about.

18:25 Right.

18:25 And the people who most often bore the brunt

18:29 of that silence were black women and children.

18:34 Um children because not only were they sometimes subject to violence,

18:37 but they had to witness the violence against their mother,

18:41 their grandmothers, their aunties, their sisters, etc., etc.

18:45 And in this context we're obviously talking about deadly violence,

18:49 but that's also inclusive of of rape

18:51 and and sexual violence within that context, also.

18:55 Mhm.

18:55 And so, I think what we have seen over the last 20 years or so

18:59 is is more of a willingness to have

19:02 conversations about how this is impacting our communities.

19:08 And so, I think the discourse despite the fact it

19:12 occurs under very tragic and sad situations as it has recently,

19:18 it it's an important discourse for us to have collective conversation about what

19:23 does it mean for all of us to be safe in our own homes.

19:28 To be safe around our partners, for our children to be safe within that context.

19:34 So, in in that regard do these killings feel like they're

19:41 one-off incidents or is this a persistent issue to call attention to?

19:47 So, now you're asking the question.

19:51 I think many would like to believe that it's one-off.

19:55 Mhm.

19:56 That it's an aberration.

19:59 But violence against women across the racial

20:01 spectrum suggests that it's not a aberration, that it's that it's normative.

20:08 Mhm.

20:08 And I understand those folks who are cautious

20:11 of demanding too much accountability to men who are accused.

20:18 Whether it's this man in Louisiana who we did not know Mhm.

20:24 or it's a Justin Fairfax or if it's the more famous version

20:29 of this narrative that has played out over the last 20 years,

20:32 the Cosby, the Combs, you know, etc., etc.

20:37 Mhm.

20:37 There is this desire that we don't want

20:40 to make the point that there's something so wrong

20:44 with black men that somehow the violence that they

20:48 enact towards black women makes them an outlier.

20:52 Mhm.

20:53 Doesn't make them an outlier, right?

20:55 It makes them normative [clears throat] in the context

20:57 of how violence is parlayed in American society.

21:02 And I think part of that is the shame that's associated with having

21:07 to acknowledge these incidences when they occur

21:10 because what do they say about black men?

21:12 What do they say about black women?

21:14 To acknowledge these [music] cases is it

21:16 us buying into the very violent stereotypes

21:19 that have long been associated with [music] who black men are in the world.

21:23 Mhm.

21:23 But I think ultimately our concerns about the [music]

21:26 optics of it cannot be as important as [music]

21:31 a as us dealing with the reality of what

21:34 it means to have this violence in our communities.

21:37 And how do we address and diminish that violence in our communities

21:40 [music] so that we can have much more productive lives with each other.

21:48 [music] Coming up, we talk about the realities we have to face

21:51 [music] in order to get to those more productive lives.

21:54 You know, I spent six years in therapy.

21:56 It [music] changed my life.

21:57 But I needed to figure out who I was and what I

22:00 wanted in the world and how I could be a better partner,

22:03 [music] husband, and father to my two daughters.

22:06 And and therapy helped me to do that.

22:10 Stay with us.

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23:22 Parker, [music] just Parker.

23:24 Code Switch.

23:26 We've been talking to the scholar Mark

23:28 Anthony Neal about black masculinity in [music]

23:30 the wake of multiple incidents of black men

23:33 enacting violence against women and children of color,

23:36 especially the ones in their own homes.

23:44 Okay, Mark, I've got to ask [music] cuz you've been

23:48 in this you've been placed in this kind of impossible situation where like

23:54 you're you you've been on our show for it where you're

23:56 asked to synthesize the troubling behavior of black men in the zeitgeist.

24:01 I remember you were on the show for uh Bill Cosby for one.

24:04 [music] But this is also in the context of a country

24:09 where [music] black men are constantly stigmatized and marginalized.

24:14 So how do you do that?

24:17 I think you [music] do so honestly and with integrity

24:24 and with the fullest sense of your humanity that you can draw upon.

24:32 Because black men can be victims and are victims Mhm.

24:39 in a racist society does not give us

24:42 latitude to be victimizers particularly in our own home.

24:49 I mean that is inexcusable.

24:53 You know, there's always I think this dynamic and something

24:57 I I have a book that's coming out in August,

25:00 Save a Seat for Me, Notes on American Fatherhood.

25:03 And one of the things I talk about in the book

25:05 is when you're black men in the domestic space, there are these impulses, right?

25:10 Do Do you stay and fight or do you flee?

25:14 And I'm using fight not in the sense

25:17 of violence in the way that we're talking about it,

25:19 but do you stay and deal with the difficulties

25:23 of being a father or partner where you might be struggling economically or range

25:29 of other things or do you just simply leave?

25:32 Mhm.

25:33 We are very critical of black men who leave.

25:37 Who leave their children without a father, right?

25:40 Who choose not to engage in the responsibility of raising

25:43 these children that they have with the mother of the children.

25:46 There's centuries of stories about black men who choose to leave.

25:50 But at the same time, you know, we also need to have the conversations about

25:53 black men when they absolutely do need to leave.

25:58 When your only choice is violence against someone in your home,

26:03 you should take that as a cue to leave.

26:06 Mhm.

26:07 It It feels so selfish to take your life and then your partner's life also.

26:19 You a grown man, you can choose to do what you want with yourself.

26:24 Right?

26:25 Folks will care about you and will grieve

26:28 your loss because you meant something to somebody.

26:30 But it's so selfish to to take out someone

26:35 who has been on the receiving end of your violence.

26:38 I I mean it's just and there's no comfort zone in that.

26:43 There's no comfort zone in that for me as a thinker, as a scholar,

26:46 looking at this who has daughters who are

26:49 in relationships and as far as I know loving relationships.

26:54 But you know, always hyper aware of that because I'm a girl dad.

26:59 Mhm.

27:00 To have had friends who have lost siblings, right?

27:04 Because of violence against their sister or their daughter or or their mother.

27:10 I mean, for me that's ultimately the bottom line,

27:13 that black men can never excuse the violence

27:19 they enact because of the violence that they're experiencing.

27:23 Right?

27:24 If If you are to be in community, if you are to be in family,

27:30 and even in the most traditional notions

27:32 of black masculinity that have circulated in black communities,

27:36 you know, for centuries,

27:37 your primary responsibility is to the safety and livelihood of that family.

27:43 Mhm.

27:43 Right?

27:44 If you think that the choice the only

27:46 choice for you is violence against those folks,

27:50 then you need to leave and get the kind of help, right?

27:53 Because, you know, the Justin Fairfax thing, okay, it's like,

27:56 you know, he was in need of mental health care.

28:00 Mhm.

28:01 Well, he should have got that well before it got to that moment.

28:05 Mhm.

28:05 That's a choice he could have made before he got to this moment.

28:08 And for those who really cared about him,

28:11 that needed to be something that they needed to be invested in, too.

28:15 Cuz you can't just tell people you need to go find a therapist, right?

28:19 You know, they they need to be within community.

28:21 I I I hope that one of the byproducts of this besides the obvious, right?

28:27 Bringing more attention to and hopefully

28:29 ultimately curtailing violence against black women,

28:32 hopefully then it would create a context where more black

28:35 men will be open about the fact that they have

28:37 pursued therapy at some point in their life as an intervention

28:42 for choices that they they have could have made.

28:46 Um you know, I spent six years in therapy.

28:48 It changed my life.

28:50 Yeah.

28:50 Right.

28:50 And and I you know, I wasn't someone who

28:52 necessarily leaned into violence in any kind of way,

28:56 but I needed to figure out who I was and what I

28:59 wanted in the world and how I could be a better partner,

29:02 husband, and father to my two daughters.

29:05 And and therapy helped me to do that.

29:07 Now, I'm saying this as a college professor who has access to great health care.

29:13 Is this?

29:14 Cats on the corner ain't necessarily got that.

29:17 That's true.

29:17 You know, which is why which is why they

29:19 very often drawn to the therapy of their favorite

29:21 rapper or or the therapy of the 40 oz or the the therapy of the weed.

29:28 I mean, and we make fun of it, right?

29:30 You know, cuz these are young men, in some cases older men,

29:34 trying to make sense of their lives without having access to the kind of tools

29:39 and resources that could actually dramatically impact

29:42 how they see themselves in the world.

29:45 You wrote a book called new black man just about 20 years ago.

29:50 Yes.

29:51 Yes.

29:51 Who is that new black man?

29:53 Like paint me a picture of him.

29:55 The new black man was always something aspirational for me.

30:02 Mhm.

30:01 I was never the new black man.

30:03 That that was never the point.

30:05 Mhm.

30:06 But I was gesturing towards some sort of aspirational notion

30:13 of black men who first of all were comfortable in their skins.

30:19 Uh you know, being raised as a black boy, as a young black man,

30:23 becoming an adult I always felt as though you know,

30:27 masculinity was like this little small box.

30:31 Mhm.

30:31 And to be a real man you had to figure

30:34 out how to comport yourself to fit into that box.

30:37 And And if you either couldn't fit into that box or chose not

30:41 to be in that box you would be castigated for not being a real man,

30:47 for not being a real black man.

30:49 Mhm.

30:50 A new black man is a black man who's comfortable in the skin that he is

30:54 and in how he shows up as a man regardless of what the large society says.

31:00 A new black man is vulnerable.

31:02 Mhm.

31:02 You know, someone who can admit to pain and fear.

31:08 Um who can acknowledge the ways in which they are worried about who they are

31:15 in the world and are concerned about

31:18 the threats that are directed towards us, right?

31:20 We have this mythology of the strong black man.

31:24 And you know, this vulnerability is important because you know,

31:29 as we get older and there become real health challenges Mhm.

31:33 you know, black men tend to not to like to go to the doctor.

31:37 Let Let me just man up.

31:38 Let Let Let me take the this Tylenol.

31:43 [laughter] Let me take this Robitussin.

31:45 You know, and and go to sleep and I'll feel better.

31:50 You know, that's our body telling us that we're vulnerable, right?

31:53 And there are folks whose job is to help us deal with those vulnerabilities.

31:59 That's also what a new black man is, right?

32:01 A new black man is both a caretaker and a caregiver.

32:06 The most important job I've had in my life

32:08 is as a father of my now two adult daughters.

32:13 And understanding that the role that I played

32:16 in their lives couldn't simply be making sure that they

32:19 had food to eat and the bills were paid

32:21 and there was a car to drive them to school,

32:24 but you know, I had to share in the caregiving aspects of them.

32:28 I had to show up emotionally for them.

32:31 Mhm.

32:32 I had to listen to their stories, right?

32:35 I had to listen to their concerns and not judge.

32:40 And all these things that, you know,

32:41 don't necessarily come in the toolkit of what it means to be a man.

32:45 Mhm.

32:45 Um that means one of the reasons why I'm so thankful

32:47 I was a girl dad because I just see the world differently.

32:50 Because at an early age what they demanded of me,

32:53 and this is not my 4-year-old daughter telling me this, but just seeing

32:57 how they move through the world it demanded I pay attention to the kinds

33:01 of threats that they were going to face in the world simply

33:05 because they were women and more

33:07 importantly simply because they were black women.

33:10 Mhm.

33:11 You know, a new black man is comfortable enough in his sexuality that he

33:17 doesn't feel like he needs to lash out to black men who identify

33:23 as queer or trans men and trans women that they're comfortable enough

33:28 in their sexuality that they don't see

33:30 someone else's sexuality as a threat to theirs.

33:34 Yeah.

33:34 Uh so it it's all those kinds of things

33:36 that I tried to write through in thinking about,

33:38 you know, what a what a new black man is.

33:42 I know that we're we're still in the thick of the tragedy.

33:45 Mhm.

33:46 But from what you've seen of situations

33:48 like this before what could healing look like?

33:52 Healing could look like us having not just public

34:00 conversations about violence in our communities but more intimate ones.

34:08 For black men it's about creating spaces often with other black men

34:15 where we feel vulnerable enough to share with other black men about [snorts]

34:21 what our concerns are.

34:23 What our fears are.

34:25 What the things that we are afraid that we might do.

34:30 You know, to be in community with other black men who had been there before.

34:35 Right?

34:35 Or have known people who have been there before.

34:39 And I think, you know,

34:39 one of the things that's been lost in this moment and you know,

34:44 I love social media, right?

34:46 It has given us a capacity to communicate

34:48 in ways that we had hadn't [clears throat] had before.

34:53 But a broadcast is not a replacement for sitting

34:59 in a room with a dozen men talking about what it

35:05 means to be black men and to be concerned about

35:09 where we are failing and where we hope to go.

35:14 Even folks who are in Alcoholics Anonymous and always love

35:18 AA as a great example to talk about for instance patriarchy.

35:22 Part of the journey is to accept and not only you

35:24 are alcoholic but you're alcoholic always in a mode of recovery.

35:28 Mhm.

35:29 You're never not an alcoholic.

35:31 Right?

35:32 And And once you accept that you understand what the treatment becomes.

35:36 You know we're never not invested in patriarchy.

35:40 We're We're in recovery from patriarchy.

35:43 And there's a way in which we need to be able to own that.

35:46 But you know, you don't go to a podcast

35:50 to figure out how to deal with alcohol addiction.

35:53 Mhm.

35:53 You go to a room with a bunch

35:54 of people who are suffering with alcohol addiction.

35:57 And so we have to get back to the personal

36:01 the intimate conversations to be close with each other,

36:04 to share with each other.

36:06 And we have to do it in a way

36:07 in terms of black community that crosses social barriers.

36:12 So it just can't be a bunch of brothers with PhDs, MDs, and JDs.

36:17 Mhm.

36:18 Right?

36:18 It's got to be those brothers with dudes

36:21 who were just on the corner two days ago.

36:24 Dudes who just got out of prison.

36:27 Dudes who might be going to prison.

36:28 I mean, all of the the the whole

36:30 [music] spectrum in our communities of black men,

36:33 we need to create spaces where we can have [music] intimate

36:36 conversations about what it means to be us in this moment.

36:41 Mark Anthony Neal, thank you so much for talking to me.

36:44 Well, thanks for having me on.

36:46 And you were serious when you said this is going to be a conversation.

36:54 And that's our show.

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37:12 This episode was produced by Christina Cala with help from Xavier Lopez.

37:17 It was edited by Leah Donnella.

37:19 Our engineer was Jimmy Keeley.

37:21 And a big shout out to the rest of the Code Switch massive,

37:24 Jess Kung, Dalia Martada, and Yolanda Sangweni.

37:29 [music] As for me, I'm Gene Demby.

37:29 And B.A.

37:30 Parker.

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