Political Black male: despite all the studies and statistics, it was decades before the plight of Black male children and adults hit the national conscience. That appears to be happening now with rising media and philanthropic interest.

Last summer, the Congressional Black Caucus, among others, endorsed the Millions More Movement. With this ten-year commemoration of the 1995 Million Man March, organizers hoped to "gather the best, brightest and most willing minds to mobilize and organize our people, and to develop short and long range plans and programs to encourage" cultural, economic, educational, political, social, spiritual and moral development among Black men and their communities. To that end, a diverse list of nationally known Black men, from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to entertainment mogul Russell Simmons to reparations activist Conrad Worrill, supported the commemoration.

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But months before the October event, Millions More Movement national director Rev. Willie Wilson gave a controversial sermon at Union Temple Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., where he is the senior pastor. Wilson was widely quoted as using graphic descriptions of same-gender sex acts in his sermon, and adding that such acts "ain't natural," and that gays and lesbians "are destroying us."

After initially refusing to apologize, Wilson later issued a statement apologizing for the language he used in his sermon, and calling gays and lesbians his "brothers and sisters." But Wilson remained steadfast in his belief that same-sex relationships were a threat to the Black family and to young people. He also faulted critics for speaking against his sermon in the national media, with the admonition that such struggles be kept "in the family."

As that controversy raged, a Republican senator from Kansas proposed a program that would provide a "marriage bonus" to low-income District of Columbia residents. Under the proposal by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), D.C. couples who set up savings accounts to buy a home, send a child to college or start a business would receive a matching federal contribution of $3 for every $1 they invested. These couples would receive the funds, up to $9,000, if they marry within three years.

Among the plan's supporters was none other than Democratic D.C. congressional representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, who in 2001 founded D.C.'s Commission on Black Men and Boys. Quoted in the Washington Post, Norton said of the Brownback plan, "The virtual disappearance of marriage among many young African Americans of every income level and the devastating effects on children demand all the help we can get to draw attention to the responsibility all of us must assume."

These situations highlight both the growing support and interest in initiatives for Black men and boys, and the danger of conservative ideals shaping and supporting those initiatives.

"The right has gotten very sophisticated about packaging things that seem to be helping our community but at the same time pushing a range of very conservative ideas," said Greg Hodge, an Oakland school board member and longtime education and youth advocate. "There are so many other issues that are important to folks in African-American communities other than same-sex marriage. There are strings to a lot of this faith-based money that are tied to regressive values. There's definitely a danger in that. And people oughta be careful."

Index of Despair

The statistics driving movements to support and sustain Black men and boys are not new.

In elementary, middle and high school, Black boys are left back or expelled more often than other groups. They are also more likely to be placed in classes for learning disabled or retarded children. And as they struggle with the lower expectations and higher fears of them coming from teachers and administrators, Black boys drop out of school more often than other children do. "Public Education and Black Male Students: A State Report Card," published by the Schott Foundation for Public Education, shows that, on average, 60 percent of U.S. Black male students do not graduate from high school.

Large numbers of Black men also remain under the supervision of the criminal justice system on the state and federal levels. According to the Department of Justice, about 44 percent of state and federal inmates are Black. According to Human Rights Watch, nearly five percent of Black men in the U.S. are incarcerated, compared to 0.6 percent of white men. These numbers are accompanied by state and federal criminal codes that result in the disproportionate incarceration of poor people of color, mostly Black men.

And there is the interconnectedness of these issues: poverty increases the likelihood of incarceration, as do poor reading skills and incomplete education. Incarceration reduces opportunities for employment. Poor and Black men go, often repeatedly, to prison more often.

Statistics like those come from numerous studies, initiated by various think tanks or advocacy groups over the years. Beginning as early as the 1960s, however, activists and Black community leaders were concluding that Black men and boys did not need to be studied, or had been studied to death, and simply began putting together new efforts to reverse the negative trends. This sparked the creation of organizations such as 100 Black Men of America, the National Organization of Concerned Black Men, and the original Million Man March. These organizations work mainly on encouraging higher education, entrepreneurship, disease prevention and fatherhood.

But even as that work began to grow, it was still decades before the plight of Black male children and adults would hit the national conscience. That appears to be happening now with rising media and philanthropic interest.

"If you look at the statistics, and think about that index of despair, you understand why attention needs to be paid to this issue. All of these programs and responses give an indication of how critical this issue is," Hodge said. "But my concern and wariness is that I've seen this cycle before. In the early '90s, African-American boys were being called an endangered species. A lot of books and studies were coming out. But investment in communities has not increased, despite a lot of conversations about this. We've missed another generation of kids."

Conservative Influences

Rev. John Vaughn is the program director for the 21st Century Foundation (21CF), a 34-year-old, New York-based organization that awards grants specifically to Black-run community organizations and strategic campaigns. With its "Black Men and Boys" funding campaign, 21 CF is hoping to help groups focused on the root causes and critical issues facing the Black male.

"The critical mass has been reached," Vaughn said. "Most people have heard that there are more Black men in jail than in college, but the ripple effects are in all communities. Companies, for example, want to respond to the need for recruiting people of color."

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Vaughn adds that the crisis facing Black men is forcing policymakers, funders and activists to look critically at how cultural and social changes come about, and what can happen when some populations are overlooked in the process.

"We've been struggling with what to make of the pros and cons of (racial) integration," he says. "There is a real sense that it didn't work out for everybody, and we are coming to grips with that."

Spencer Holland is founder of Project 2000, an education and mentorship program based in Washington, D.C. Project 2000 began in 1988 when the high school class of 2000 was in the first grade. Holland, a teacher and psychologist, started the program by organizing Black men to serve as mentors in schools, and eventually developed after-school study for Black boys and later, girls as well. Holland sees simpler reasons for the new and broader interest in Black men and boys.

"It's going to cost this society much more to put these boys who can't read in jail, than it is to give me money to help them," he says. "I think the government and the funding community are understanding that now."

But while the Black community can applaud the growing attention to and financial support of these focused programs, it must also contend with the influence of conservative ideology. It's the kind of right-wing thinking that could undercut the overall movement to create a society in which Black men can truly survive and flourish.

For one thing, defining some Black male-centered programs, or parts of them, are conservative ideals about traditional notions of malehood and success. Often, along with those ideals comes a belief in merit-based success, a mentality that brings victim blaming along with it, both for the programs themselves and for the young men in them. For example, Project 2000 ejects from its programs students who become parents, or who become involved in the criminal justice system in any way. Indeed, Project 2000's slogan is "Ordinary just won't do."

Holland believes that meeting strict requirements enables Black boys to survive and succeed.

"Bill Cosby is right, okay?" Holland said, referring to the entertainer's widely reported criticism of poor Black parents. "It's the parenting of children that leads them to believe being a thug is better than being in college.

"I am introducing inner-city Black children to the mainstream white world," Holland added. "So, one of the major rules is that you will not father a child and stay in Project 2000. I tell (the students) that white guys are in the library six or seven hours a week, and that that's how [they] graduated from college. I'm a dictator, and if you resist what I have to teach you, you have to get out."

Vaughn finds that way of thinking problematic.

"If you zero in on individualism, you don't see the context," he said. "It presumes that some have the goods to make it, and some don't. It's assumed that the context, the way the rules are set up--is all good."

And when a program is guided by a survival-of-the-fittest philosophy, it does not necessarily focus on opposing the economic, educational and social policies, commonly pushed by conservatives, that make such Black male-centered programs necessary in the first place.

In fact, sometimes the financial and political support for groups working to save Black boys can also be behind political efforts against them.

After 16 years, Project 2000 is operating throughout the Washington, D.C. school system. Holland is helping other cities duplicate the program. Much of this has come with the help of Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. He endorses the program, suggesting that it should be a national model. He has also helped to appropriate congressional funding for the program through Department of Education grants.

Ironically, Specter was also one of the loudest voices in support of the No Child Left Behind Act. With its emphasis on testing, and reduced funding for public schools, this legislation has had a profound effect on the education of children of color, including Black boys.

Meanwhile, with its "Black Men and Boys" initiative, 21 CF is working to move support for Black men and boys away from sexist and heterosexist notions of family and community building and toward organized efforts against racism, sexism and classism in Black communities and in government policy.

"We don't want to remake patriarchy, misogyny and homophobia in what we fund," says Vaughn. "But many programs are ripe for that with conservative funding. It's important for people to organize some money on the moderate to progressive side."

Boys to Men

With that concern in mind, there are innovative programs around the country that work with Black boys and young men without replicating conservative agendas.

The Harlem Children's Zone, one of the most well-known, is a comprehensive, ambitious effort to turn around education achievement levels for poor, mainly Black and immigrant children living in central Harlem. Geoffrey Canada, the project's director, has caught the attention of funders and education reformers around the country with an approach that combines family and community services with school reform.

In Oakland, California, a program called the Mentoring Center focuses on helping young Black men build the social networks that help them succeed in education and job opportunities. The project also works with the California Youth Authority to help exinmates transition into life on the outside--a key part of which includes addressing misogynist language and behavior.

Another Oakland-based program, Leadership Excellence, takes on gender issues by bringing together Black girls and boys for an exercise in role reversal where the boys must walk through a gauntlet hearing the same sexual slurs and comments that girls often face.

"Even boys who don't necessarily behave that way get an understanding and empathy of how that affects somebody, and what can you do in your life to make sure other men and boys don't do it," said Greg Hodge, adding that he believes co-ed programs dealing with gender issues are critical in building a progressive initiative for young Black men.

In Chicago, Omowale Moses directs the Young People's Project, which operates out of Jackson, Mississippi and Boston, as well. The project focuses on creating math literacy for low-income youth of color, with the idea that demonstrating what a quality education could look like is part of raising demand for the right to educational equity.

The project, which trains college students to facilitate and teach math to elementary and middle school kids, also functions as a source of male role models. "We were going in as young men who'd recently graduated from college or were still in college, going into the middle school environment where kids had an attraction to older men coming in who looked like them, talked like them, but who have gone to another level in terms of education and maturity," Moses said.

Though the project is not exclusively Black--in Chicago, it has a large Latino membership, and an African-immigrant one in Boston--Moses sees his work as a way to give back to the people he grew up with, Black boys and men.

"To some degree, I'm uncomfortable with using the language that emphasizes the Black boys or men," Moses said of the rising mainstream and conservative interest in Black male issues. "It's as if the Black man's got an illness, and we need to cure him, fit him into some category and make him functional in society. It makes it seem like there's something wrong with us, and not something wrong with society."

Leah Samuel is a journalist based in Pittsburgh.