The Vanishing Black Male: We Read the Reports. Where Is the Movement?

Years ago I wrote a piece about the vanishing Black family. I said F for Family was one of the most important letters in my alphabet. I still believe that.

But I have to confess something. Even then, I didn’t feel compelled to write about the vanishing Black male.

What Society Taught Me

I had seen it. I had watched men disappear from our neighborhoods, our churches and our dinner tables. Still, society had taught me that the Black woman and the Black mother were the ones who truly mattered. That’s a strange lesson for a man who grew up with a strong Black father in the house every day. I didn’t realize I was being conditioned to believe our community could function without him.

History had already told us otherwise. So had the Bible. Pharaoh knew it when he ordered the Hebrew boys thrown into the Nile. When a people’s boys and men are sacrificed and attacked, the whole people suffers.

We Already Have the Reports

Today I see movements to restore our culture and our community. I don’t see one to rescue the Black man.

Nobody can say we weren’t warned. In 2020, the Brookings Institution laid out the numbers. About a third of white boys raised in low-income homes reach the top 40% of earners as adults. Only 19% of Black boys do. Black men face higher unemployment, and they die years earlier. The researchers called for a “New Deal for Black Men.” For more on what that early death looks like in our community, read our Strong Enough to Live coverage of Black men’s health.

Economists have been counting the cost, too. The Center for Economic and Policy Research found that the official unemployment rate undercounts jobless Black men. It leaves out the men who are locked up and the men who died young. In its latest count, CEPR put the cost of the Black jobs deficit at about $87 billion in lost income in 2025.

Here at home, Dr. Dwight McKenna, now our coroner, commissioned a study years ago that tried to warn New Orleans. We filed it away like all the others.

So why is there no national movement? We understand consequences. Surely we understand prophecy.

Or do we?

A Museum Display

Sometimes I wonder if there is a group of social engineers, and some willing helpers, who believe this country would be better off with the Black man as a museum display. Something you look at behind glass. A reminder of what used to be here.

Could they make those who once owned us angry enough to give up on us? Our women and our children, could they be made disappointed enough to walk away too? And what did we do to earn all that anger?

Survive?

Haven’t they done enough already? They locked us up and put knees on our necks. We’ve been emasculated and stereotyped, and that is not the whole list. Isn’t that enough?

Now, before the critics start dissecting my words, let me be clear. I am not against anybody else. This is not an attack on any other group of people. I just want to know something. If we read the reports, commissioned the studies and know our theology and our history, why haven’t we done anything?

This Is Personal

I buried my oldest son. I want you to understand what I carry when I write these words.

God left me a son and a grandson. There are also countless men and young men I mentor, and many of them I call friends. They are wonderful people. Every day I watch the world target them, push them to the margins and push them out. Any Black parent knows that fear. We wrote about it in how to raise a Black son when the courts won’t protect him.

And I keep asking the same question. When will it stop?

Where Is the Movement?

To be fair, there have been efforts. President Obama launched My Brother’s Keeper in 2014. In 2020, Congress created a Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys. I’m grateful for both.

But a program is not a movement. A commission is not a movement.

To date I have not seen a movement that wrestles with all the history and social forces behind the vanishing Black male. A real movement would have to account for the growth of the prison industrial complex. It would need to reckon with the feminist movement, the Industrial Revolution and the digital age. And it would have to face what comes out of the media and so-called Hollywood. Nobody has tied those threads together. Until somebody does, we’ll keep treating one symptom at a time while the patient keeps getting sicker.

Worth More Than a Museum Display

I believe we’re worth more than a museum display in somebody’s future. We have earned our place in this century and every century to come.

If this country doesn’t figure that out, it won’t be good for our society. It won’t be good for our future.

So let me say it plainly. Please see me. Please see us.

Because we see you.

— Oliver M. Thomas
Former New Orleans City Councilman

Related reading at BSM: The Man Who Saw Me When the World Didn’t, Oliver Thomas on Dr. Norman Francis.

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Sources

• Brookings Institution: The challenges facing Black men – and the case for action (November 2020)
• Center for Economic and Policy Research: The Jobs Crisis for Black Men Is a Lot Worse Than You Think (December 2021)
• Center for Economic and Policy Research: The Black Jobs Deficit Cost Black America $87 Billion in 2025
• Brookings Institution: What should the new Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys propose? (March 2022)