It seems at least once per week at minimum, I am approached by a member of the community, inquiring as to how I might assist them in creating a minority male mentoring program. I am at once flushed with passionate eagerness to hear some grand plan as to how they will breech the age-old task for the benefit of young men throughout the nation that find themselves in need of a tangible model for success. I am at almost every turn decimated to find that the individual, no matter how full of good will he may be, has not thought seriously about the tremendous responsibility that is called forth, nor the degree and extent of commitment necessary to "mentor".
First and foremost, quite simplistically, a portion of "mentor" is "men" and the first prerequisite. Many of the gentlemen that inquire of me about mentoring have not yet put away childish ways, and barter social maturity for befriending the mentee, opting for election by popularity. Along those same lines, several men from a myriad of disciplines, walks of life and professions should be likely candidates to mentor as a group. Having said this, I find it almost oxymoronic that as men of color we have not yet found a way to work collaboratively without contentiousness and social posturing, yet we believe that we can seriously create dyads with young impressionable boys and teens struggling with bravado and hyper-masculinity.
One other matter that has greatly disheartened me is that mentoring seems to be yet another progression in the long list of "efforts" that follow the funding. I have grimaced and agonized as we have allowed monetary compensation to dictate the ranked importance of the phenomena that ail our communities. We have articulated concerns for prisoner re-entry, then moved to fatherlessness, then to gang interdiction, and now it appears that mentoring is the new "end-all-be-all" that will finally deliver to young boys of color a philosophical model that will cure them of fatalistic nihilism...until the purse-strings call forth a new mandate.
There is and will be no cookie-cutter method that can be applied to young men of color, nor has there ever been. Our circumstances are life-threatening; our issues are too diverse; and the incipience of both the former and the latter are rooted in the elusiveness of a true social identity and is vastly historical. It is not until we define ourselves for ourselves that we can transcend the depictions of self-worth and appraisal given us by American society. I have always been an advocate for actuating ideas as opposed to engaging in useless banter and over-pontificating the problem. At this juncture however, I am more certain of what we don't need more of. We don't need men without ethics and morals; we need upstanding and unflinching men that will not acquiesce. We don't need programs that are here today and gone tomorrow; mentoring is about longevity and relationship. We don't need men who will barter the interests of our youth for mammon. Who among us will mentor when the money disappears?
Akin to Charles Barkley's statement of years past, I am not a mentor, nor will I claim to be one at this point in my existence. Unlike Sir Charles, I'd like to be though. I offer that in order to truly say that you are a mentor, you have to be able to point to at least two to three young men that you have had the good benefit to have shepherded through their formal years of development and witnessed them attain goals that THEY have established with YOUR insight and seen into fruition. I stress the former pronouns because another vital portion of mentoring that is often neglected and violated in error is that of a mentor dictating some nondescript conventional medium for success to the mentee, whether it be his passion or not, and pushing him vigorously to it. A mentee should have the freedom to carve out and scribe their own individual vision, at which time, the mentor should utilize his wisdom, resources and networking to at times encourage, remind, and even "run with" the vision when the mentee experiences fatigue, wavering or doubt, having planned contingently.
Perhaps this monologue will find its way to the heart of a "man" or group of "men" that truly desire(s) to mentor. Even as I pen this, I am narrowing my focus to a few young men that I plan to "work with" over the next few years out of my own resources, wisdom and networking until such time that THEY regard me as their mentor. Lastly, the trek can only have its end and I can only rest when they have zealously committed to doing the same for another generation.
Submitted by: Dr. NKrumah D. Lewis
