What Seven Rising 100 Graduates Taught Me About Mentorship, Responsibility, and the Future of Black Boys
By Eric Lawrence Frazier, MBA
America has become accustomed to seeing young Black men after something has gone wrong. In recent days, young Black men have again appeared in the news under tragic circumstances. One widely reported case concerns 18-year-old Nolan Wells, whose body was found after he disappeared during a Fourth of July trip to Horn Island, Mississippi. Authorities have said drowning is suspected, while the investigation remains active and important questions remain unresolved.1 We do not know every fact surrounding that case, and this essay does not attempt to resolve an investigation that remains incomplete. The point is that once again the public is encountering a young Black man through tragedy. We see the photographs. We learn the names. We follow the reporting. For a few days, perhaps a few weeks, the country pays attention. Then the news cycle moves on.
Beyond the Headlines
But there are thousands of other young Black boys and young men whose names will never become national headlines. Some are growing up in foster care. Some are sitting in juvenile detention facilities. Some are living in neighborhoods where violence has become far too familiar. Some are struggling in schools where Black students continue to experience disproportionate rates of exclusionary discipline. Some are growing up without consistent access to the fathers, mentors, teachers, coaches, pastors, business leaders, and other adults who can help a boy understand not only what he must avoid, but what he has the capacity to become. The statistics behind these realities are sobering. Homicide has remained among the leading causes of death for young Black males, and federal research has documented profound racial disparities in exposure to lethal violence.2 Black children also remain disproportionately represented in parts of America’s child-welfare system,3 while federal juvenile-justice data continue to document racial disparities in residential placement and system involvement.4 Longstanding education data have documented substantial disparities in school discipline.5 These are different systems governed by different institutions, and their statistics should never be carelessly collapsed into a single explanation. But taken together, they force us to confront a fundamental question about the environment in which too many Black boys are attempting to become Black men: What happens to a boy when enough things go wrong? I have another question now. What happens when enough people show up before they do?
What Seven Young Men Showed Me
That question has occupied my mind since I had the privilege of interviewing seven graduating young men who participated in the Rising 100 program associated with the 100 Black Men of the Inland Empire. I sat across from these young men and listened. That may sound simple, but listening to young people is becoming a lost discipline among adults. We spend considerable time talking about them. We analyze them. We create policies for them. We criticize their generation, their music, their language, their phones, their attention spans, and sometimes even their clothes. We are remarkably proficient at explaining what is wrong with young people while they are standing close enough for us simply to ask them who they are. So I asked. I asked about their accomplishments, their families, their education, what they wanted to do with their lives, and their ambitions and plans for the future. I wanted to understand not merely where they had been, but where they believed they were going. What I encountered were young Black men preparing to step into adulthood with aspirations, intelligence, talent, ambition, and an awareness that their lives could mean something beyond themselves. I encountered young men thinking about education, careers, entrepreneurship, leadership, family, service, and the communities from which they came. I walked away from those interviews inspired, but I also walked away convicted, because those seven young men caused me to think about all the other young men.
The Boys We See and the Boys We Do Not
There is a dangerous distortion that occurs when the public primarily encounters young Black men through stories about crime, violence, arrest, academic failure, or death. Eventually, tragedy begins to masquerade as identity. It is not. A Black boy is not a social problem waiting to happen. He is a human being becoming. He is potential under construction. He is intelligence still discovering itself, character still being formed, and talent that may not yet have found its arena. He is a future father, husband, entrepreneur, teacher, scientist, artist, tradesman, minister, physician, engineer, public servant, business executive, homeowner, investor, mentor, or community leader who may not yet know the name of the thing he was born to do. That is precisely why the adults surrounding him matter. The seven young men I interviewed did not cause me to ignore the serious conditions confronting Black boys in America. They caused me to think more seriously about what we intend to do about them. It is easy to discuss the problem after a young man has entered the criminal justice system. It is easy to hold a community meeting after someone has been killed. It is easy to organize a candlelight vigil after a family has lost a son. It is easy to ask what went wrong after the consequences have become irreversible. The more difficult work begins years earlier: before the arrest, before the school suspension becomes disengagement, before anger becomes identity, before hopelessness becomes expectation, before a young man decides that nobody expects anything significant from him, and before the world defines him and he begins to accept the definition. This is where mentorship matters.
What Happens When Black Men Show Up?
I am a member of the 100 Black Men of the Inland Empire, part of the larger movement represented by 100 Black Men of America. The organization’s philosophy is expressed in words that become more significant the longer one considers them: Real Men Giving Real Time®.6 Time means more than money, speeches, photographs at scholarship ceremonies, or appearing when the cameras arrive. There is something profoundly important about an accomplished man sitting across from a young man and communicating, through both words and actions, that he sees him, expects something from him, is willing to invest in him, will share what he knows, will correct him when necessary, will introduce him to possibilities he may not yet know exist, and will still be there after today’s program is over. Mentorship cannot solve every problem confronting Black boys. It cannot substitute for responsible parenting. It cannot by itself eliminate poverty, repair struggling schools, prevent every act of violence, reform every institution, or erase generations of economic inequality. We should make no such exaggerated claim. But we should not make the opposite mistake and underestimate what the sustained presence of responsible adults can mean in the life of a young person.
Sometimes the difference between two young men is not intelligence but exposure. One has seen possibilities the other has never been shown. Sometimes the difference is not ambition but access. One has someone he can call who knows how to enter the room he is trying to reach. Sometimes the difference is not character but correction. One has people around him who love him enough to interrupt destructive behavior before consequences become permanent. Sometimes the difference is simply that somebody showed up consistently enough for a young man to believe that he mattered. That is why I have become increasingly convinced that the future of Black boys cannot be treated exclusively as somebody else’s assignment.
The Mentorship I Wanted
The interviews touched me in ways I did not anticipate because listening to these young men took me back to my own younger years. I thought about the support and mentorship I wanted but did not always receive. I thought about what it means to become a man while still trying to understand what manhood requires. I thought about the questions young men carry that they do not always know how to ask. I thank God for my life today despite what was absent in my early years. I have lived long enough to recognize that some of the lessons I eventually learned might have been learned earlier if someone had been there to teach them. Some mistakes might have been avoided. Some roads might have been shorter. Some understanding might have arrived before experience had to become the teacher. Experience is an effective teacher, but the tuition can be extraordinarily expensive. That realization changes the way I look at mentorship now. At this stage of my life, I cannot go backward and give my younger self what he did not have. But I can turn around and look behind me. There are young men coming. That is the responsibility.
Before Something Goes Wrong
Black men who are actively engaged in their communities do not need an outside study to tell us that many young people are struggling. We have walked the streets of Riverside and San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and communities large and small throughout this nation. We have seen what happens when support is inconsistent, opportunity is distant, and destructive influences are close. Research helps us measure the problem. Statistics help us understand its scale. Policy can address institutional conditions. All of those things matter. But there is something a statistic cannot do. A statistic cannot mentor a boy. A government report cannot attend his graduation. A research paper cannot call him when he makes a mistake. A chart cannot introduce him to a college president, a business owner, a mortgage banker, an attorney, an engineer, or a physician. A policy recommendation cannot look him in the eye and tell him, “I have been where you are, and I know something about the road ahead.” People must do that. Men must do that. Families must do that. Communities must do that. Organizations must create structures that make doing it consistently possible.
This is what I saw differently after interviewing the seven graduates of the Rising 100. I was not looking at seven boys who had somehow escaped a predetermined destiny. I reject that framing because it begins with the assumption that failure is the natural destination of Black boys and success is the exception requiring explanation. I was looking at seven young men with futures. The question is whether we are prepared to help build the conditions in which millions more can see futures for themselves.
The Responsibility of Black Men
If there has ever been a time for Black men to step forward and accept greater responsibility for the Black boys and young men coming behind us, that time is now. Responsibility does not mean accepting blame for every social condition we did not create. It means recognizing the power we possess to influence what happens next. Those are not the same thing. We can debate government policy. We can demand institutional reform. We can challenge discrimination. We can insist that schools educate our children fairly and effectively. We can demand accountability from law enforcement, elected officials, corporations, and every institution exercising power over our communities. We should. But none of those responsibilities eliminates ours.
We need more Black men mentoring, coaching, teaching financial literacy, and explaining how money actually works. We need men introducing boys to careers before those boys are required to choose one. We need entrepreneurs teaching entrepreneurship, homeowners teaching ownership, fathers teaching fatherhood, husbands demonstrating commitment, and professionals opening networks. We need men who have made mistakes being willing to explain those mistakes without glorifying them. We need successful men who remember that somebody helped them, and we need men who were not helped enough to make a decision that the absence they experienced will not become the inheritance of the generation following them. That is what Real Men Giving Real Time® has come to mean to me.
Seven Young Men and a Different Headline
I wish America could have sat with me during those interviews. I wish people who have developed conclusions about young Black men based primarily on news reports could have heard what I heard and seen the intelligence, possibility, discipline, ambition, and hope in the room. More importantly, I wish millions of younger Black boys could see these young men. Representation is not only about seeing someone famous who looks like you. Sometimes representation is seeing someone five years ahead of you, someone close enough to be believable: a high school graduate preparing for college, a young entrepreneur beginning his first business, a student pursuing a profession, or a young man from your own community who can tell you, “I sat where you are sitting.” That may be one of the most important opportunities before the seven young men I interviewed. They have been mentored, and one day they must become mentors. That is how the circle becomes a movement. The objective cannot simply be to help seven young men succeed. The objective must be to help them become the kind of men who eventually turn around and reach for seven more, then fourteen, then twenty-eight, and ultimately generations.
The Power of Being Seen Before the World Notices You
The world often notices young Black men when something has already happened. 100 Black Men and organizations doing similar work are built around a different proposition: see them now. See them before the headline, before the championship, before the degree, before the business succeeds, and before everybody else discovers what was inside them all along. Then invest. That may be the greatest lesson I carried away from interviewing these seven young men. We cannot save every young person from every circumstance. We cannot control every decision another human being will make. We cannot guarantee outcomes merely because mentorship exists. But we can show up. We can teach, listen, correct, encourage, expose young people to possibilities, open doors, make telephone calls, use our networks, tell their stories, and remain available. Sometimes, before we begin talking about changing the entire world, we should remember that changing what one young man believes is possible for his life may change every generation that comes after him.
I began those seven interviews believing that I was there to tell the stories of seven graduating young men. I finished them understanding that they were also telling me something. They were reminding me that our young men are still here, their dreams are still here, their intelligence is still here, their potential is still here, and they are waiting to see whether we will be here too. The question before Black men of my generation is therefore not whether young Black men need us. The question is whether enough of us will make ourselves available to them—not after the tragedy, the arrest, the dropout, or the headline, but now. Because if there is one principle I have spent much of my life teaching, it is that power is not merely something waiting for us somewhere in the future. The Power Is Now.
[POEM]
[REFERENCES]
A Personal Word of Thanks
Thank you to the seven remarkable young men who trusted me with their stories and allowed me to hear something deeper than a list of accomplishments. Thank you to their parents, families, teachers, mentors, and communities for the countless acts of sacrifice, correction, encouragement, prayer, and support that helped bring them to this moment. And thank you to the men of the 100 Black Men of the Inland Empire who continue to demonstrate that mentorship is not an idea we discuss but a responsibility we practice. Every hour invested in a young person is an investment whose full return may not be visible for years, perhaps generations. I am grateful to have witnessed a small part of that investment firsthand, and I am even more grateful for what these seven young men reminded me about my own responsibility to those coming behind me.
Continue the Conversation
Subscribe to The Power Is Now TV Network for real estate news, education, and opportunities to buy, sell, invest, and build wealth. Members receive access to real estate magazines, books, research papers, podcasts, television programs, and educational resources. Membership is affordable. The information is priceless.
For personal advisory services involving money, business, real estate, and major life decisions, visit EricFrazier.com to schedule a consultation with Eric Lawrence Frazier, MBA, Your Trusted Advisor in Business and Wealth.
Eric Lawrence Frazier, MBA
Your trusted advisor in business and wealth
www.ericfrazier.com | www.thepowerisnow.com
NMLS #451807 | CA DRE #01143484
Schedule a consultation: https://calendly.com/ericfrazier/real-estate-mortgage-consultation-clients
Before the Headline
What Seven Rising 100 Graduates Taught Me About Mentorship, Responsibility, and the Future of Black Boys
By Eric Lawrence Frazier, MBA
America has become accustomed to seeing young Black men after something has gone wrong. In recent days, young Black men have again appeared in the news under tragic circumstances. One widely reported case concerns 18-year-old Nolan Wells, whose body was found after he disappeared during a Fourth of July trip to Horn Island, Mississippi. Authorities have said drowning is suspected, while the investigation remains active and important questions remain unresolved.1 We do not know every fact surrounding that case, and this essay does not attempt to resolve an investigation that remains incomplete. The point is that once again the public is encountering a young Black man through tragedy. We see the photographs. We learn the names. We follow the reporting. For a few days, perhaps a few weeks, the country pays attention. Then the news cycle moves on.
Beyond the Headlines
But there are thousands of other young Black boys and young men whose names will never become national headlines. Some are growing up in foster care. Some are sitting in juvenile detention facilities. Some are living in neighborhoods where violence has become far too familiar. Some are struggling in schools where Black students continue to experience disproportionate rates of exclusionary discipline. Some are growing up without consistent access to the fathers, mentors, teachers, coaches, pastors, business leaders, and other adults who can help a boy understand not only what he must avoid, but what he has the capacity to become. The statistics behind these realities are sobering. Homicide has remained among the leading causes of death for young Black males, and federal research has documented profound racial disparities in exposure to lethal violence.2 Black children also remain disproportionately represented in parts of America’s child-welfare system,3 while federal juvenile-justice data continue to document racial disparities in residential placement and system involvement.4 Longstanding education data have documented substantial disparities in school discipline.5 These are different systems governed by different institutions, and their statistics should never be carelessly collapsed into a single explanation. But taken together, they force us to confront a fundamental question about the environment in which too many Black boys are attempting to become Black men: What happens to a boy when enough things go wrong? I have another question now. What happens when enough people show up before they do?
What Seven Young Men Showed Me
That question has occupied my mind since I had the privilege of interviewing seven graduating young men who participated in the Rising 100 program associated with the 100 Black Men of the Inland Empire. I sat across from these young men and listened. That may sound simple, but listening to young people is becoming a lost discipline among adults. We spend considerable time talking about them. We analyze them. We create policies for them. We criticize their generation, their music, their language, their phones, their attention spans, and sometimes even their clothes. We are remarkably proficient at explaining what is wrong with young people while they are standing close enough for us simply to ask them who they are. So I asked. I asked about their accomplishments, their families, their education, what they wanted to do with their lives, and their ambitions and plans for the future. I wanted to understand not merely where they had been, but where they believed they were going. What I encountered were young Black men preparing to step into adulthood with aspirations, intelligence, talent, ambition, and an awareness that their lives could mean something beyond themselves. I encountered young men thinking about education, careers, entrepreneurship, leadership, family, service, and the communities from which they came. I walked away from those interviews inspired, but I also walked away convicted, because those seven young men caused me to think about all the other young men.
The Boys We See and the Boys We Do Not
There is a dangerous distortion that occurs when the public primarily encounters young Black men through stories about crime, violence, arrest, academic failure, or death. Eventually, tragedy begins to masquerade as identity. It is not. A Black boy is not a social problem waiting to happen. He is a human being becoming. He is potential under construction. He is intelligence still discovering itself, character still being formed, and talent that may not yet have found its arena. He is a future father, husband, entrepreneur, teacher, scientist, artist, tradesman, minister, physician, engineer, public servant, business executive, homeowner, investor, mentor, or community leader who may not yet know the name of the thing he was born to do. That is precisely why the adults surrounding him matter. The seven young men I interviewed did not cause me to ignore the serious conditions confronting Black boys in America. They caused me to think more seriously about what we intend to do about them. It is easy to discuss the problem after a young man has entered the criminal justice system. It is easy to hold a community meeting after someone has been killed. It is easy to organize a candlelight vigil after a family has lost a son. It is easy to ask what went wrong after the consequences have become irreversible. The more difficult work begins years earlier: before the arrest, before the school suspension becomes disengagement, before anger becomes identity, before hopelessness becomes expectation, before a young man decides that nobody expects anything significant from him, and before the world defines him and he begins to accept the definition. This is where mentorship matters.
What Happens When Black Men Show Up?
I am a member of the 100 Black Men of the Inland Empire, part of the larger movement represented by 100 Black Men of America. The organization’s philosophy is expressed in words that become more significant the longer one considers them: Real Men Giving Real Time®.6 Time means more than money, speeches, photographs at scholarship ceremonies, or appearing when the cameras arrive. There is something profoundly important about an accomplished man sitting across from a young man and communicating, through both words and actions, that he sees him, expects something from him, is willing to invest in him, will share what he knows, will correct him when necessary, will introduce him to possibilities he may not yet know exist, and will still be there after today’s program is over. Mentorship cannot solve every problem confronting Black boys. It cannot substitute for responsible parenting. It cannot by itself eliminate poverty, repair struggling schools, prevent every act of violence, reform every institution, or erase generations of economic inequality. We should make no such exaggerated claim. But we should not make the opposite mistake and underestimate what the sustained presence of responsible adults can mean in the life of a young person.
Sometimes the difference between two young men is not intelligence but exposure. One has seen possibilities the other has never been shown. Sometimes the difference is not ambition but access. One has someone he can call who knows how to enter the room he is trying to reach. Sometimes the difference is not character but correction. One has people around him who love him enough to interrupt destructive behavior before consequences become permanent. Sometimes the difference is simply that somebody showed up consistently enough for a young man to believe that he mattered. That is why I have become increasingly convinced that the future of Black boys cannot be treated exclusively as somebody else’s assignment.
The Mentorship I Wanted
The interviews touched me in ways I did not anticipate because listening to these young men took me back to my own younger years. I thought about the support and mentorship I wanted but did not always receive. I thought about what it means to become a man while still trying to understand what manhood requires. I thought about the questions young men carry that they do not always know how to ask. I thank God for my life today despite what was absent in my early years. I have lived long enough to recognize that some of the lessons I eventually learned might have been learned earlier if someone had been there to teach them. Some mistakes might have been avoided. Some roads might have been shorter. Some understanding might have arrived before experience had to become the teacher. Experience is an effective teacher, but the tuition can be extraordinarily expensive. That realization changes the way I look at mentorship now. At this stage of my life, I cannot go backward and give my younger self what he did not have. But I can turn around and look behind me. There are young men coming. That is the responsibility.
Before Something Goes Wrong
Black men who are actively engaged in their communities do not need an outside study to tell us that many young people are struggling. We have walked the streets of Riverside and San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and communities large and small throughout this nation. We have seen what happens when support is inconsistent, opportunity is distant, and destructive influences are close. Research helps us measure the problem. Statistics help us understand its scale. Policy can address institutional conditions. All of those things matter. But there is something a statistic cannot do. A statistic cannot mentor a boy. A government report cannot attend his graduation. A research paper cannot call him when he makes a mistake. A chart cannot introduce him to a college president, a business owner, a mortgage banker, an attorney, an engineer, or a physician. A policy recommendation cannot look him in the eye and tell him, “I have been where you are, and I know something about the road ahead.” People must do that. Men must do that. Families must do that. Communities must do that. Organizations must create structures that make doing it consistently possible.
This is what I saw differently after interviewing the seven graduates of the Rising 100. I was not looking at seven boys who had somehow escaped a predetermined destiny. I reject that framing because it begins with the assumption that failure is the natural destination of Black boys and success is the exception requiring explanation. I was looking at seven young men with futures. The question is whether we are prepared to help build the conditions in which millions more can see futures for themselves.
The Responsibility of Black Men
If there has ever been a time for Black men to step forward and accept greater responsibility for the Black boys and young men coming behind us, that time is now. Responsibility does not mean accepting blame for every social condition we did not create. It means recognizing the power we possess to influence what happens next. Those are not the same thing. We can debate government policy. We can demand institutional reform. We can challenge discrimination. We can insist that schools educate our children fairly and effectively. We can demand accountability from law enforcement, elected officials, corporations, and every institution exercising power over our communities. We should. But none of those responsibilities eliminates ours.
We need more Black men mentoring, coaching, teaching financial literacy, and explaining how money actually works. We need men introducing boys to careers before those boys are required to choose one. We need entrepreneurs teaching entrepreneurship, homeowners teaching ownership, fathers teaching fatherhood, husbands demonstrating commitment, and professionals opening networks. We need men who have made mistakes being willing to explain those mistakes without glorifying them. We need successful men who remember that somebody helped them, and we need men who were not helped enough to make a decision that the absence they experienced will not become the inheritance of the generation following them. That is what Real Men Giving Real Time® has come to mean to me.
Seven Young Men and a Different Headline
I wish America could have sat with me during those interviews. I wish people who have developed conclusions about young Black men based primarily on news reports could have heard what I heard and seen the intelligence, possibility, discipline, ambition, and hope in the room. More importantly, I wish millions of younger Black boys could see these young men. Representation is not only about seeing someone famous who looks like you. Sometimes representation is seeing someone five years ahead of you, someone close enough to be believable: a high school graduate preparing for college, a young entrepreneur beginning his first business, a student pursuing a profession, or a young man from your own community who can tell you, “I sat where you are sitting.” That may be one of the most important opportunities before the seven young men I interviewed. They have been mentored, and one day they must become mentors. That is how the circle becomes a movement. The objective cannot simply be to help seven young men succeed. The objective must be to help them become the kind of men who eventually turn around and reach for seven more, then fourteen, then twenty-eight, and ultimately generations.
The Power of Being Seen Before the World Notices You
The world often notices young Black men when something has already happened. 100 Black Men and organizations doing similar work are built around a different proposition: see them now. See them before the headline, before the championship, before the degree, before the business succeeds, and before everybody else discovers what was inside them all along. Then invest. That may be the greatest lesson I carried away from interviewing these seven young men. We cannot save every young person from every circumstance. We cannot control every decision another human being will make. We cannot guarantee outcomes merely because mentorship exists. But we can show up. We can teach, listen, correct, encourage, expose young people to possibilities, open doors, make telephone calls, use our networks, tell their stories, and remain available. Sometimes, before we begin talking about changing the entire world, we should remember that changing what one young man believes is possible for his life may change every generation that comes after him.
I began those seven interviews believing that I was there to tell the stories of seven graduating young men. I finished them understanding that they were also telling me something. They were reminding me that our young men are still here, their dreams are still here, their intelligence is still here, their potential is still here, and they are waiting to see whether we will be here too. The question before Black men of my generation is therefore not whether young Black men need us. The question is whether enough of us will make ourselves available to them—not after the tragedy, the arrest, the dropout, or the headline, but now. Because if there is one principle I have spent much of my life teaching, it is that power is not merely something waiting for us somewhere in the future. The Power Is Now.
[POEM]
[REFERENCES]
A Personal Word of Thanks
Thank you to the seven remarkable young men who trusted me with their stories and allowed me to hear something deeper than a list of accomplishments. Thank you to their parents, families, teachers, mentors, and communities for the countless acts of sacrifice, correction, encouragement, prayer, and support that helped bring them to this moment. And thank you to the men of the 100 Black Men of the Inland Empire who continue to demonstrate that mentorship is not an idea we discuss but a responsibility we practice. Every hour invested in a young person is an investment whose full return may not be visible for years, perhaps generations. I am grateful to have witnessed a small part of that investment firsthand, and I am even more grateful for what these seven young men reminded me about my own responsibility to those coming behind me.
Continue the Conversation
Subscribe to The Power Is Now TV Network for real estate news, education, and opportunities to buy, sell, invest, and build wealth. Members receive access to real estate magazines, books, research papers, podcasts, television programs, and educational resources. Membership is affordable. The information is priceless.
For personal advisory services involving money, business, real estate, and major life decisions, visit EricFrazier.com to schedule a consultation with Eric Lawrence Frazier, MBA, Your Trusted Advisor in Business and Wealth.
Eric Lawrence Frazier, MBA
Your trusted advisor in business and wealth
www.ericfrazier.com | www.thepowerisnow.com
NMLS #451807 | CA DRE #01143484
Schedule a consultation: https://calendly.com/ericfrazier/real-estate-mortgage-consultation-clients