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How To Make Better Black Men

A lot has happened since I last wrote about masculinity for Black Ballad.

I gave birth to my second son, my oldest started primary school, we’ve had a round of okey-kokey lockdowns (‘in, out, in, out, shake it all about’), I shaved my head, recorded a podcast… and all the while, I’ve been thinking and observing the men around me like a scientist (as I told the audience at WOW Festival 2020’s ‘Raising Boys’ panel). But I still don’t have any concrete answers to my many questions about masculinity and boyhood.

No disrespect to the men I know and love, but as much as they can teach my boys, I know there are parts of their being and ways of seeing that have been moulded by the environments they exist within. Much of my inquiry has been wondering what is beyond that. So much of the hope of motherhood is imagining a world and a way of being that you haven’t seen before.