Challenges of Manhood
“One challenge of being a young man today is to not fail. It’s a lot of pressure today especially for black men and the society I live in. Society expects me to fail they expect me to drop out of school, they expect me to not be something in the future. I don’t want to be nothing. I wanna make an impact on everyone’s lives, I wanna change the world.”
~By Deshun S, 16 years old from Oakland, California
“I think one of the challenges that a lot of us men face today is the idea of what it means to be a man and that idea coming from our society. We always have to fight one another as men, we always have to feel superior to one another, we always have to seem cooler, wear the best clothes, have the most girlfriend’s, the best cars. It’s just the idea that we always have to fight one another. I feel like that idea divides us a lot and instead we need to build a brotherhood. Together we stand stronger and the whole idea of what it means to be a man to me now is to speak how I feel and share my emotions. We are supposed to be tough and talk back to people. These ideas from society oppress us especially as young men and women. However young men and women face hard labels like men being the ones that have to work and that the women are the ones who are supposed to be home cleaning. We are being told and taught these things as we grow up so that we become what we’ve been taught. This affects our future and we don’t see it until it happens to us.”
~By Luis B, 18 years old from Oakland, California
