Barack's presence on Black men

Visit the bedroom of most any African American lad and it wouldn’t be surprising to see posters of some star athlete or favored entertainer adorning his wall. For these adolescent males, their pictures represent either who they aspire to be like or what they potentially seek to become. By dressing the walls with their chosen images these boys set before them a continuous reminder of what their goals look like.

In addition to the pictures projected on bedroom walls, these young impressionable boys too often become infatuated with images embellished by African American males on television as well as those colorful illustrations of black males in their neighborhoods.

Body tats enveloping their bodies, saggin’ jeans decorating their undergarments, menacing stares plastered on their faces and despicable dispositions launched with ferocity are too often the images many young men choose to mimic. These attributes, filled with death – spiritual and physical – too often flood the intellectual databases of these youngsters.

Fortunately over the course of the past 21 months black males, men as well as boys, have been blessed to bear witness to a new image – President-Elect Barack Obama. The blessings of Obama arrived long before Nov. 4 when he, the first African American, was elected as the 44th president of the United States. His daily appearance before the world gave the fraternity of African American men, a new poster to adorn on the walls of our minds; a new portrait in which to draw inspiration from.

In Obama, African American males have an excellent example of how to deal with haters. With grace and dignity Obama has demonstrated how to treat people with respect despite the fact that they have shown nothing but disrespect for him. When one considers that of the 16,400 murders committed in 2005 in American that 8,000 were black males, mostly at the hand of a person of color, Obama’s demonstration of how to be cool in controversial situations is instructional for a nation of men committing murder. Black males now have a blueprint of how to properly define and defend oneself in the midst of everyone else trying to negatively define and offend them.

In Obama, black males have an icon for possibility. We witnessed a man free of the poison of impossibility. In Obama black males saw a rendering of faith in action – “Yes We Can, and Yes He Did.”

In Obama, black males have a portrait of a black man who demonstrates how “real” it is to have a wife; more importantly he exhibits publicly how a man is to love his wife. Michelle and Barack is a beautifully painted portrait of “Black Love.” How needed is that visual rendering when statistics reveal that African Americans represent the lowest percentage of married couples in America as well as holding the pole position in divorce.

In Obama, there is a huge poster hung on the nightly news and in daily news publications of how important it is for a father, no matter how important his career is, to invest in intimate loving moments with his children. A world witnessed in Obama the love he has for Malia and Sasha and how much his daughters love their daddy.

In Obama, black boys have a photo that reveals that being educated isn’t an R.S.V.P for white boys only nor is speaking proper English exclusive to nerds. Black boys have seen in Obama a swagger of intelligence and oratory abilities far superior to today’s top hip-hop artist.

A nation of black boys see in Obama that playing basketball and giving a partner some dap is cool, but speaking with authority and intelligence is as cool.

In Obama, black males have the testimony of the nation’s most powerful man excelling despite the pain of his father’s abandonment as well as the absence of any material affluence, possibility because of his father’s absence.

In Obama, black males can believe that they truly can be anything they desire. And hopefully in Obama black males have learned that his harvest (becoming the first African American president) is the result of seeds he planted; seeds of tithing his time, his talents and sometimes his treasures selflessly for the benefit of others.

Because of the historic achievement of Barack Obama a flood of calendars will be published, tee-shirts manufactured and pictures will become decoration on the walls of many African American households. I pray that these visual images are constant reminders that represent who black men can aspire to be – black men who are “the husband of one wife, having children not accused of dissipation or insubordination . . . a steward of God, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, . . . not violent, not greedy for money, but hospitable, a lover of what is good, sober-minded, just, holy, self controlled, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict,” Titus 1:5-16.