From afar, one could hear the cries of the mourners, a clear sign to the curious that death had struck a house in the neighborhood. All one had to do was follow the wailing to arrive at the scene. My mother and my aunts were curled up on the ground. Their traditional dresses had turned into brooms. They stopped from time to time, and started the same ritual again, this time more vigorously when a new member of the family, a relative or a friend arrived to offer their condolences.
My uncles were more composed — men don’t show their emotions in public, our traditions say. They were probably discussing funeral managements with some men of the neighborhood. My cousin Manga had died a few hours earlier. He was almost 15 years old. For the outsiders, we were giving a show of unity in mourning to our beloved one. What they could not suspect was that tensions and divisions had been plaguing our family for a little over two years. Factions had formed internally. Yet on that day, when the body of my cousin Manga lay on a bed, placed in the main room of our house in Fanta Citron, the slum where I grew up in Yaoundé, Cameroon, the scenes of sadness and pain created an illusion of unity. There were no recriminations. No acrimony. The adults were united in grief.
I was amazed. The child in me wondered whether there had been a family conclave of reconciliation that my cousins and I had missed. Usually, we children observed the adults and nothing escaped us. The women surrounded auntie Nfégué, Manga’s mother, with their affection. It was as if they wanted to share a portion of her pain, each taking a part so that the weight of her loss would be less heavy.
The following day, my aunts and uncles had a family meeting, shortly before leaving for the village for the burial. From the bits of information my cousins and I had gathered, uncle Bisseau had demanded family peace. He apparently encountered no opposition. His siblings agreed that they should put their differences behind them. They would move forward as one family. There were tears, hugs and promises that they were starting anew, on new foundations, more united than ever, we overheard.
“Is it true that there are no more differences between you?” I asked my mother as she informed me that I was not going to Manga’s funerals in the village.
“Where did you hear that?” she replied in one of her dialects, before finally confirming that “everything is fine now.”
“You know, when you lose someone, it’s an opportunity given to you to forgive and start over," she added. "It’s a chance to rebuild. We will rebuild ourselves. Sometimes from a bad can come a good. I don’t know if you understand what I mean."
I thought about my mother’s wise words for a long time, trying to understand and analyze their meaning. There were times when I believed that I got them right, only to realize I had missed the mark. Her words came back to me on this October 2, as I watched and listened to members of the 100 Black Men of America, in Charlotte, NC., one of the swing states that will decide the outcome of the November 5 presidential election.
The debate about the lack of enthusiasm among some Black people, and especially young Black people, for Kamala Harris’ candidacy for the White House has provoked a form of collective introspection on the part of Black men.
That night, that introspection revealed a real generational gap that affects the rest of society. Like the death of my cousin Manga, which made my maternal family wonder whether it wasn’t better off united, the Vice President’s candidacy seems to be forcing Black men to stop and think about something that they hadn’t seen until then as a big problem.
“It’s people my age and their parents,” said comedian DS Sanders, 56, a member of a panel of five Black men, which included two young men aged 17 and 21, to discuss how to motivate and get young Black men and some adults to vote. “We’re not teaching our children their civic duty. We are more engaged in making sure we get them to football games, into sports events and that kind of thing.”
Then came the nail to the coffin.
“We put more attention to giving them things than teaching them things.”
There was a loud applause in the half-filled amphitheater of the West Charlotte High School, one of the few schools with Black students during the segregation era. Aside from a few “sisters,” the room was mostly male. There were lawyers, academics, doctors, former professional football players, business owners, elected officials and high school seniors. Basically, the present and future of Charlotte’s elite Black males.
DS Sanders’ words were harsh. They were forcing every adult present to look in the mirror, and to have a silent discussion with oneself. They also shifted the debate to something completely unexpected: collective responsibility.
The goal of the townhall, which marked the Charlotte stop on the 24-city national tour by 100 Black Men, an organization whose mission is to uplift Black youth through mentoring and education among other things, was to mobilize the Black male voter in this election cycle, as most polls show a kind of disengagement from this traditionally Democratic voting bloc.
A survey of 500 Black voters shared that night showed that most Black men, especially young Black men, are disengaged. “These men have grown disillusioned about the electoral process and uncertain that voting will have a positive impact in their lives,” read Dedrick Russell, moderator and community reporter for WBTV in Charlotte.
“It’s unhopeful,” said 17-year-old Bobby Forrest, a West Charlotte High School student, who was a member of the panel, adding that it was “sad.”
The goal was not to demonize those who don’t vote or see the necessity of voting, either because they feel they are not heard or because the political offering is not exciting.
“So, we want to be careful not to demonize Black men, or playing into a narrative that Black men aren’t doing their part,” cautioned Dr. Wes Bellamy. “I can assure you, across the country, I don’t think it’s solely up to the people in our communities to engage themselves in terms of why they need to go out and vote.”
What is it about then?
“It’s about finding a way to get Black men, especially young Black men to the polls," said Lenny Springs, founder of Charlotte’s 100 Black Men of America and a member of the panel that night. "It’s about engaging them, convincing them that everything is about politics.”
But how do you do that? How do you reach out to a generation that lives virtually — TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter — when the average age of the attendees tonight is probably 45 to 50?
“I’m 59. I’m not going to follow TikTok,” said Urban Walker, a member of the 100 Black Men. “I’m not going to go on Facebook. I’m old school. That’s who I am. That’s who the majority of the people here are. So, we actually have to go out, because that’s what I’m accustomed to. Talk to young people face to face, go to the barbershops, go to the basketball courts, go to the leagues, go to where they are in numbers.”
He believes that physically interacting in small groups could have “more impact on any brother.”
Listening to Mr. Walter, I couldn’t help noticing a big paradox: how does he and other older Black men hope to get young Black men to vote and be more active in politics, unless they can interact with them in the way that feels more natural to them? Overall, it appears that there’s a major communication gap.
“A lot of times we talk down to them instead of talking to them,” Mr. Springs told me. “We must appeal to them, not patronize them.”
Most of the attendees, whether they were baby boomers, Gen X, or even millennials, appeared lost. They seemed lost by what they considered to be a form of betrayal by young people. For them, the right to vote, won by civil rights activists at a very high price in 1965, must be cherished.
“I have two young people," said DS Sanders. “I have a daughter who is 24 and a son who is 26. I don’t think that either one of them will ever understand what it means to end up being homeless. They are both college graduates. but are not engaged as much in the electoral process as they should be because, I don’t think that our young people realize the consequences of their indifference.”
“I think what you’re saying is they don’t know their history,” chimed in Mr. Springs.
The room nodded “yeah” with their heads. People looked at their neighbors to reinforce Mr. Springs’ point. There was a look of guilt on their faces, the realization that if we’re here, it’s probably because each and every one in the room didn’t do their part. The part being “engagement.”
“Young folks need to see other Black men, older Black men,” attorney Gregory Moss, who was attending the townhall with his 18-year-old son, told me. “We need to engage more in our community. We need to create a sense of community, to talk about our history.”
This means, Mr. Moss said, educating young Black men about the 24th amendment, which eliminated the injustice that prevented Black folks from voting in federal elections, and the fact that Black people secured their voting rights only sixty years ago.
His 18-year-old son said “more in-person events like this one could help my friends understand the importance of voting.”
For Brian Forrester, the 17-year-old on the panel, the vote has to be normalized by adults in the community, making it a part of the do-list in raising a child.
“We need to demystify it and make it more a more normal thing to talk about,” he said. “My mother has taken me to the polls for every election since I was born. I’m sure she took me to the polls in her arms when I was a baby, holding me while voting, using my little baby fingers in the process, as if she indoctrinated me into voting so much that it feels mandatory to me today.”
“I use this analogy. A lot of times people will say: Well, politicians don’t listen to me. And I say: Why? Why should they listen to you? You don’t vote," said Charles Wallace, who is a data scientist at the Federal Reserve Board of Richmond. "Let’s be honest. If I told Mercedes or Hyundai, ‘I will never buy one of your cars, but I want you to make some changes,’ would they listen to me?”
Nevertheless, young and adult Black men agreed that they must find a way to be heard.
“When we shut up, we take what we get," Jeffrey Bell, a member of 100 Black Men, told me. "When we speak up, we get what we need.” For him, the Black community “can stick together and vote for good candidates.”
“They don’t have to be Black candidates, but they need to share our principles. We can’t just keep taking what we get. This goes all the way back to the time of slavery. We would just get scraps and would eat them. Today, we’re eating pig guts because that’s all we have. I’d rather fight for steak,” he said.
As a Black man myself and a father, I must say that listening to the attendees that night, I found myself lost too. I wondered whether the issue is that, in the Black community, we believe our experience is, at least, similar to the experience of other Black folks.
Maybe, if we accept the idea that there are as many Black communities as there are Black experiences, we could speak the language of young Black men. Maybe we also have to accept that the fight that generations before us fought for us to be full citizens with rights and obligations is not the fight that those after us have to fight.
Maybe for Gen Z and some Millennials, what matters is to be acknowledged before they go to war. Maybe that’s just the new civil rights barrier. The one where Black folks can say ‘show us what you have for us and then we will decide if it’s worth doing everything we can to get you elected.’
Maybe it’s about the quality of the candidates in front of us rather than basing our choices on the history of someone or a party. We live in the society of the clicks or the 10 seconds. Younger generations think and act differently. They want to be heard. Why should they be asking for anything less?