Essence magazine features Dr. John Rich

The November 2009 issue of Essence magazine features "We Dream a World," a piece in which Essence reaches out to black men, including Spike Lee, Colin Powell, the Center's own John Rich, and others to gather their views on being black and male in the Age of Obama. Dr. Rich's contribution is as follows (see p. 161 of the magazine):

Young Black men want the same thing that the rest of us want: They want to se safe. They want a future. But when you live in an inncer city that's crumbling around you, your sense of what's possible is limited, so you look for any way you can to survive. Sometimes that means you learn how ot fight and you don't let anybody make you a punk. That's what happened with Roy, a brilliant young man from the Jamaica Plain section of Boston whom I have known since he was 21. Now in his thrities, Roy spent time in prison for a gang revenge shooting. I met him at a halfway house between incarceration and release. He now works helping young men struggling with trauma and unemployment as they try to leave the streets behind. But these young men need role models. "It's like with any kid growing up in the ghetto," Roy says. "You don't see a lot of folks going off to work because they leave early in the morning. And think about it, none of those folks interact with young dudes hanging out on the corner, so you almomst don't exist to each other." But now there's a Black man in the White House whose work ethic and achievement are plainly visible to these brothers. More than that, they have a president who understands their needs. The truth is, we're still in the period of wonderment that this could really happen, but we need to keep in sight the realities of these young men's lives: Schools that barely function. Violence and despair in our neighborhoods. Grinding poverty in our cities. Our job is to help the brothers on the corner identify how Obama's achievement can apply to them. It's an inspiration to them that a Black man who faced adversity could accomplish so much and still maintain a connection to this community. That doesn't mean that these young men are now envisioning that they'll be president. But it does mean they can begin to dream.