The Destructive Myths of Masculinity.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JANUARY 13, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 011301NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Reaching up for Manhood
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:06

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Geoffrey Canada works with children who have grown up in poverty, surrounded by violence. He thinks it's not just guns and drugs that are killing young men. They're also being killed by their image of what it takes to be a man. They think strength requires violence and they confuse virility with promiscuity.

Canada is the president of the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families in New York City -- a program of schools and community centers providing safe havens for inner-city children. He's written a new book called "Reaching Up For Manhood" about what young men from the inner-city are up against and how adults can help them. He grew up in the South Bronx facing some of the same obstacles faced by the young people he now works with.

Some of his boyhood friends died as teenagers, but he was totally unprepared for the recent bad news when within a two-week period, three of his surviving friends died in their 40s.

GEOFFREY CANADA, AUTHOR, "REACHING UP FOR MANHOOD: TRANSFORMING THE LIVES OF BOYS IN AMERICA," AND "FIST STICK KNIFE GUN," PRESIDENT, THE RHEEDLEN CENTERS FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES: Here I thought those of us who had grown up in the Bronx and managed not to contract AIDS and not to have been killed in the streets and -- I really felt like, you know, now that we were in our 40s, we could relax.

I began to realize a couple of years ago that my friends began to literally start dropping like flies. They were dying from heart attacks. They were dying from cancer. I began to look and see what 20 or 25 years of hard drinking and smoking cigarettes would do to a body. And you know, we -- we really thought that everybody had made an escape.

And that's what really, I think shocked me and had me to begin thinking about these habits that we developed as boys -- sort of surrounding this myth of maleness that we had adopted. That, you know, guys were these hard-drinking, hard-living kind of folks; that those people who did not change those habits, ended up dying relatively young. And I'm sorry to say that it's still going on.

GROSS: So what -- what did you take away from this knowledge that men were dying -- that your friends were dying in their 40s? What did you take away from that that you wanted to apply to the boys that you work with?

CANADA: Well, you know the thing that really struck me was that I thought this was something that they were doing while they were men. And I began to realize when I started thinking back that I was with them when we picked up these bad habits.

GROSS: Like cigarettes and drinking?

CANADA: That I was actually -- that's right, that I was actually there myself when this stuff started, when we were 12 and 13 years old. And it made me begin to re-think a lot of my own thoughts of what it meant to be male. And I began to try and research what it was that was going on in these young boys' lives, and how we all ended up in that place.

And indeed, when -- when I looked at the research, it wasn't just us. It wasn't even boys in the inner-city who were going through this. In general, boys across America were believing the same kind of myths -- were growing up believing that to be a male meant you had to take these risks; that you had to really go out and prove to the world that you could more. If this person could drink two cups, you had to drink three cups of whatever it was.

And this sort of belief really drove a lot of our behavior. And you know, the problem, especially when you begin taking these risks as young boys and you begin to think that that's part of being male -- you know, this whole issue of "are you scared?" Oh, that was the worst thing anyone could say to you, "are you scared?" And then you would say: "no, I'm not scared" and you would do something.

And then once you start down that road, there's no sort of ending point. It becomes "are you scared to smoke a joint;" and "are you scared to try heroin? And you keep sort of trying to live up to this myth about what it means to be male. And it begins to dominate and drive your life into such risky behavior that the end result too often for too many young people is jail and prison and death.

You know, Terry, I was -- I was -- can I just say this one issue? -- I was shocked because I became very aware, I think maybe 10, 12 years ago that people really were focusing on girls growing up in America. And we realized we weren't doing some real critical things with girls. And people began to say, "gee, you know, we need to start raising girls differently."

And it's sort of, I think, made the assumption for many of us that boys were actually doing good. And the problem is that when you look at the pious power structures in America, men are in charge. You look at the Congress, men are in charge. You look at the clergy, men are in charge. You look at the governors and the males -- men are in charge.

And it makes you think, geez, men are doing really terrific. But that is a myth. When you look at men in general, they are doing absolutely horrible. And I think we began to concentrate on girls with the assumption boys were doing good. And we need to really concentrate on girls and boys and how we raise them, so that we can make sure we expand their life opportunities and their life chances.

GROSS: One of the things you've noticed with the young men that you work with is that they don't know how to assess risk; that a really stupid risk and a really potentially productive risk are kind of grouped together, and they'll take the stupid risks really willingly and really quickly, and sometimes get killed as a result.

CANADA: Very often, we have young people who will steal; who will drink; who will smoke cigarettes -- and all of these things they do because it's exciting and sort of the danger of it all. And you know, someone says "wow, look what we're doing." We have kids who do the most dramatically -- they have something called "elevator surfing" in New York, where kids actually get on the top of an elevator and try and jump from one elevator to the other -- totally bizarre. Right? Why would any kid do that?

Well, the kids get some sense that, you know, of risk taking from that. They do the same things on the trains. They call it "surfing" on the trains. And when the trains run outside, kids stand on the roof and they surf there. And you would say: "who in their right mind would do such a thing?"

When I was growing up, when I was a little boy, boys used to jump on the back of the buses and hold on and ride down the streets for free. You would never see a girl doing this. Never -- I've never in all the time I was growing up saw a girl on the back of a bus holding on. But boys did this -- this was part of the riskiness of it all. It wasn't that you couldn't walk there, but it was part of being a boy to take risks like this.

We see it all the time, and it later leads boys to take the kind of risks driving cars. You know, when you begin to realize for accidents -- the number of our boys who are killed driving cars. And this is why this is not just an issue for poor children. It is nine out of 10 deaths from cars for people under 21 are boys. And it's because they're taking these risks. They're drinking and driving and they're driving too fast, and they think that's so challenging and exciting. And it's really bad risk-taking behavior.

GROSS: But you know, I think attached to that behavior is the "oh so what" attitude if you talk to somebody about consequences. You -- you know, "you might get hurt." "Oh, so what." "Might get killed." "So what." I mean, the, you know, "nothing matters/I can take it."

CANADA: Well you know, this is -- this is one of the areas that I have been very, very concerned about with boys. I think there are a couple of things going on around what you said there, Terry. One is there were a number of boys who are not convinced that they're going to live to be men. So, it doesn't matter. Whatever the risk is, I'm going to whatever I can. I'm going to live life at 100 miles per hour because there's no telling how long I'm gonna live.

And that's sort of one set of boys that I worry about. But there's another set that almost looks like that set of boys -- boys who have basically given up. They say: "you know what? Everything's going to kill you. No matter what you do, you're gonna end up in trouble or not making it. So, I don't care. So, what's the big deal? They say you shouldn't do this, but you know what? I'll do it anyhow."

I'll give you an example of how this happens in boys' lives. We had one of the boys actually write about in this book. Two months after the book was done, the boy was killed. And he was shot for no reason whatsoever. He was just with his brother on a bike and some boys stopped him and they, you know, he asked the boys to move out of the way so they could ride the bike. And the two boys pulled out a gun, one of them pulled the trigger, shot my boy and killed him -- a horrible, senseless death.

And then I have all of the friends of this boy in my office and we're talking about what we can do to grieve. And there's so much pain, but boys aren't taught how to talk about their pain. And they made a decision, these boys did, that you know what -- this was a kid; he was such a good boy. He went to church. He sang in the choir.

And they looked at me and they said: "Geoff, what does it matter? If they can kill him, they can kill David Chen (ph), who's done everything right and who goes to church and sings -- what difference does it matter how I live my life? I could go just as easy. Might as well go ahead and take all the chances in the world, because even if you do everything right, there's still a chance in life you could be killed.

It's right at that moment with boys that you have to say: "it seems that way, but it's not true. The truth of the matter is, you have to continue as much as you can to live a life that avoids these kinds of excessive risk."

And no one's there having that conversation with boys. And you see them at these funerals of their friends all of the time, and no one's going up and saying to them: "how are you doing? What are you feeling? What do you believe about the value of life right now -- in particular, your own life?"

And we're not having that conversation and these boys don't know how to process that information. And many times it leads them to become even more excessive risk-takers, instead of less excessive risk-takers.

GROSS: Well what's the most convincing thing you could tell those boys in your office when they said "what's the point" of being good or of not taking chances when, you know, the guy who was really good gets killed anyways?

CANADA: I think that the important thing is to allow those boys to understand how a man tries to process that kind of pain. You know, unfortunately for boys, when one of their friends gets really hurt or in this case killed, what they're taught from all of the movies, from all of the television, from their peers is you have to go out and get revenge. You have to pay. You have to honor this person's life by doing something really risky and maybe trying to take another life. And they're not taught how to cry. They're not taught how to grieve. They're not taught that this pain is deep. It's something you've never felt before. It hurts you.

And we have to sit here. We have to talk it through. And we begin to talk. And we spend hours talking about this. And we cry together. And at first, they were embarrassed to cry in front of me, but I -- I wasn't embarrassed to cry in front of them. And we began to -- really began to try and heal ourselves.

And it's this issue -- and I talk about it in the book -- of healing that I don't think boys are really taught how to heal themselves. And we don't spend enough time talking with boys about the fact that they need to heal themselves and try and deal with this pain so they don't start acting this pain out on their girl friends and on their siblings and on their teachers -- that suddenly you have these angry, aggressive boys and you wonder "what in the world -- where is that stuff coming from?"

And a lot of it's coming from this deep pain in these boys that they've not been able to express. And they don't know how to heal themselves. So this is a time to really talk to boys to make sure that they get a chance to express themselves in a safe setting that doesn't feel like it threatens their manhood.

And this is the big issue with these boys. If I cry, does that mean I'm less of a man? And who's there to tell me that it's OK to cry and you can still be a man and cry; you can still have this sort of sense of yourself as a male figure, even if you're tender at times and you can cry over a loved one. That's what I think we have to share with boys and get them to understand.

We cried together, and then we wiped off our tears, straightened up our face, right, and went and put on our male face for the outside world, right, and went out there and dealt with the world again as men. And that's what we have to teach boys that it's OK to do.

GROSS: Did any of these boys try to get revenge after the murder?

CANADA: No. I was so worried because when I had the all there, they were convinced that they knew who had done this. And they didn't know, but they had this strong sense that "we know how this thing happened." And we began to talk about it, and yes, I was -- I was very worried about it because they could barely contain their pain. It was really, really quite a terrible moment for all of us who really loved this guy. He was 21 years old and in college. He was just such a good-hearted person.

But in the end, I think what saved them from doing something like that was the fact that we were able to spend a lot of time together. And I just quite honestly told them: "listen, I want you in my office tomorrow at 3:00 and you're going to spend the afternoon with me."

And we went through this -- and we would just do regular things together, and occasionally we'd talk. And every now and then someone would get sort of real emotional and everybody else would get to feel that. But it was the need to spend time together that I think really helped us heal ourselves.

And you know, and this is not sort of rocket science. Because when you think about how our cultures tend to deal with death, that's what the older folks do. When someone dies, all of the family comes together. People cook. People talk. People begin to share.

But these kids aren't taught to do that and we've never lived in a time where so many young people have experienced death of their own peers. Typically, they're not connected to this 'cause it's an older grandmother and an older aunt who passes away. So, we haven't figured out the cultural customs around young people being killed and how these children learn to grieve and how they learn to heal themselves.

So, I think that that's really what saved my group of young people from going out and seeking revenge was we spent this time talking, being with one another, trying to heal one another. And I'll tell you this: they were healing me as much as I was healing them because I was also really tore up about this.

And it was the ability to share that -- that I myself am really hurt and pretty unable to function. It was very hard for me to go to work at Rheedlen for that -- those three or four days. In fact, I had written my whole staff and said, you know, to the best as possible, please just give me some time. Because I was shook up and I needed to spend that time with my boys so that we could really try and work this thing out together. And I think we healed one another in that case.

GROSS: Did you try to do anything through the justice system? Did you have any faith that the cops would be able to find the kid responsible for the murder? And that justice would be done through the...

CANADA: This was...

GROSS: ... through the authorities, through the system?

CANADA: Yes. And I did, myself, although my young people were very skeptical about the ability of the police to find and do something. You know, and it was one of these crazy times, Terry, because this boy was killed right at the same time that Princess Diana was killed. And all of this attention and all of this was on her.

And here these kids were looking at this good little boy. He was a young black man, and it seemed like nobody cared. It just seemed like, you know, who cares about him? And everybody's sort of focused on this other thing.

So we -- I was trying to deal with this issue that these kids were facing with about the value of their lives themselves, because it again seemed like society didn't value their own lives. And we went to them. We talked with the police about it. And we -- they, I think, were trying to be supportive in a way that -- that was sort of unusual, I think, in terms of the experience a lot of these kids had had.

Unfortunately, they still have not found this boy's killer. So what we originally thought we have a very promising relationship, I think a lot of folks have sort of given up hope right now that the police are going to find this boy's killer, because it's been some number of months now.

So that's kind of sad, because again, it's a sense of these young people -- they have about the value of their lives and whether or not anybody really cares enough about them to do something. So, it's a constant process of trying to work with these boys and keep them centered in doing the right things and struggling with life and moving forward and not giving up and simply throwing up their hands and saying, you know, this is impossible.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Geoffrey Canada and he's the president of the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families in New York City; and author of a new book called Reaching Up for Manhood: Transforming the Lives of Boys in America.

Let's take a short break and then we'll talk some more.

This is FRESH AIR.

Back with Geoffrey Canada. He's the president of the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families in New York City, and author of the new book Reaching Up for Manhood.

Many of the boys you work with have no fathers or have no fathers who have any presence in the boys' lives. You grew up without a father who was present. Your father was an alcoholic. Your mother basically threw him out of the house. He remarried and once when you went to visit him, he couldn't even figure out which of his sons you were.

What did you envy about your friends who actually had fathers at home?

CANADA: You know, for us a boys growing up -- my three brothers and I -- without a father, a father to us was the most wonderful thing in the world. It was a man who could do the kinds of things that we valued. He could protect his family. He could help support the family. We felt so vulnerable knowing that our mother was the sole support of all of us.

And at the same time living in a tough and hard world, we had no male figure out there to protect us if anything happened and it went wrong in her life. And I remember being a boy, and I'd walk down the streets with my mother. And it would be a Sunday and she'd have on her Sunday dress and we'd walk by a group of men and they would make these cat calls.

And oh, was I so furious: "how dare you talk to my mother that way?" And being nine, there was nothing I could do. I used to say: "oh, boy, if I had a father, he'd come and straighten these guys out."

And it was this sense that we had that there was not a man around to protect us that I think allowed so many of us to think that we had to grow up to be these tough guys to learn how to protect our mothers and ourselves. And had a very unrealistic sense of what it meant to be a man, and to some degree, a father.

GROSS: We should point out your mother did pretty good.

CANADA: Yeah, so you know, it's -- we were -- we were lucky in many respects that our mother really, I think, cared deeply about trying to raise us with the kind of experiences that she was unfamiliar with, but accepting that they were probably good for us.

You know, she didn't like bugs and animals, and we just loved that kind of junk. And we always were bringing something into the house. And I think about it now, I wouldn't even want my own kids to bring some of the stuff into the house that we brought in. And she would just sort of go along with it, saying: "you know, I don't want to teach them to be afraid of these things. It's part of their -- what should be their normal sort of growing up experience."

And so she allowed, I think, us to have a range of experiences that she wasn't comfortable with, but she thought it was important for us to sort of have them growing up. So, I think when I look at sort of how we managed without a father versus how other folks did, that that really helped us an awful lot.

But I'll tell you, I have become convinced that the absolute sort of survival of our country in terms of this being the kind of place where young people are growing up with real solid values around family, around support, and around loving and caring for your fellow man and your fellow woman, really has an awful lot to do with how men play a role in the lives of children. And I am absolutely terrified about the numbers of men who are outside of their homes and are not involved in the daily raising of their children. And this really goes across the board.

GROSS: Did you have other male adults in your life?

CANADA: You know, I had two different kinds of male adults in my life. The first person who taught me how to be a man was my friend Mike, who I wrote about -- I didn't call him "Mike" in my first book -- who actually raised me. And Mike -- Mike did the best he could, but when you're 15 or 16, growing up in the inner-city in the Bronx in the 1950s -- late '50s, early '60s, being a man was "don't cry," "don't take any stuff from anybody," and "never go to your mother for anything."

And if you could do these things, then you were a man. If you could not cry no matter what happened to you, right? And if when someone did something, you were willing to fight. And if you handled all of this without ever telling your mother, you were considered a man. And you can only imagine sort of the twisted view of the world and of maleness you have if that becomes your definition of what it means to be a man.

But that's how we were raised as young people. And Mike, you know -- I was a lot younger than him and I looked up to him like a lot of kids did. And so he was our sort of figure in terms of what it meant to be a man. Luckily for me, I also had my grandfather in my life. And I went to stay with him for a number of years when I was in high school. And he was a caring, deeply religious man who cared deeply and passionately for his family, and was a loving man.

And it was from him that I learned that he could go out in the backyard and work all day, and I would just watch him, say: "oh my goodness, look how strong he is." And yet he could be tender and caring at the same time.

And I think that later in my life, that's the model I used for what I wanted to end up being in terms of a man, versus the model that I was given on the street, which a lot of my friends bought into and are still acting out in terms of their relationship with the rest of the world and them being men.

GROSS: Geoffrey Canada is the president of the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families in New York City. His new book is called Reaching Up for Manhood. He'll be back in the second half of our show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Geoffrey Canada.

We're talking about his experiences working with young men from the inner-city who are growing up in a dangerous world of violence and drugs.

Canada says that one of the greatest dangers they face is their own myths about manhood -- myths that equate strength with violence and virility with promiscuity. Canada is the president of the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Adults in New York City and author of the new book Reaching Up for Manhood.

You're a father figure to a lot of your students, and you also have several children who you've raised. You say you have six sons and three daughters: one son is a genetic son; one a stepson, and four young men are people who you call your sons, who you helped raise since they were boys. You have one genetic daughter and two adopted daughters.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you developed this larger family of children?

CANADA: Well you know, in the work that I do, I come in contact with an awful lot of children. At Rheedlen, we have over 3,500 children that we work with over the course of a week. And I've always thought it was important that no matter what you do in your professional life or in your personal life, you have to make time to really get deeply involved in other children's lives.

And my children were really good. My genetic children -- they were really good about me having this larger, expanded family because often children worry, you know, that -- that if you're going to love another child, does that mean you love them less? And my children have had to share me with this sort of extended family for a long time.

But I realized early on that part of the way we were gonna save children is to do it one child at a time for many years. You know, all of my kids are now older. They're all into their adult years now. And I have a new batch of sort of younger kids that I'm dealing with, and actually have a brand new son who's only two months old. My wife and I -- don't ask me why we decided after all these years we were going to have a child, but we did. So, we have this experience to do all over again.

But my adopted children that I bring into my life are, to me, very -- as much as my own genetic children -- as any child could be. And I just think it's important for us to have time in our lives to spend with other children. There are so many children who don't need a lot. You know, people often think: "oh, it takes so much to save children." I'm amazed at how little it takes. It takes your time. It takes you staying near. And you have to be there over the long haul.

One of my boys who's in college right now, and I write about him in the book -- this boy, he got so mad with me because he wanted to drop out of high school and we fought and carried on and he said "I don't want to deal with you no more." He left for a year. He wouldn't talk to me or anything else.

And you know, that kid came back and we talked and he's now away in college. He's doing terrific. He's at a really good school at Barnard (ph). And I just look at him and I realize the message: you can't give up on kids. Sometimes they get mad and they get frustrated and they drive you nuts. And you think: "oh my God, nothing will ever change this kid."

But hang in there. If you hang in there, that child will come back to you, and what they'll want to know is: "do you still love me? Am I forgiven?" And I talk about this issue of forgiving people. And we need to teach children that they can be forgiven. All of us mess up. It's OK. Someone's going to be there and say: "I know. Forget about that. I still love you. Come on, we can start like it was brand new and continue this relationship."

And if you can be there for children over the long haul, I find that almost all of them right themselves, sort of like a ship in the ocean. They sort of right themselves after the tidal wave has come by and began to sail again as long as we haven't walked away. And so that that is absolutely, to me, a critical piece of saving children -- staying in there for the long haul.

GROSS: Although you work with a lot of children who don't have fathers present in their lives, you also work with a lot of children who have become fathers very early in life. And you write: "we have created a culture for boys that on the one hand makes it too easy for them to become fathers, and on the other hand teaches them nothing about what fatherhood means."

In what ways do you think it's easier now for a boy to become a father than it was when you were growing up?

CANADA: You know, when I was growing up, if you became a father, almost always it meant you became a husband -- that you actually took on the family responsibilities. And not that children weren't having babies, but there were these connections which meant that you actually now had a family for real.

You know, because when I was growing up, you didn't have the kind of casual sex as teenagers that kids have today. Not that kids didn't have sex, but it took much longer to have -- develop a sexual relationship. So you actually began to like the person, to know who they were. And it was much higher chance that you would end up marrying this person, even if you were like 16 or 17, if the girl got pregnant.

Today, children have these sort of cursory relationships that last a month, seven weeks. But almost from week one, there's sex is involved and often someone gets pregnant. Part of what's happened in our country over the last 30 years is that as more and more men have not remained with their families, the ability to model fatherhood has really decreased dramatically.

So we have so many children growing up without a father that they don't even know what it means to be a father. You see these boys and they're strutting around, and maybe they think being a father, they should buy a box of Pampers, right -- and say: "oh yeah, I bought my baby a box of Pampers."

They have no idea of what it means to be with that baby at 2:00 in the morning when they're crying and you're trying to nurture and support that baby. They have no idea what it means to really spend the time of time that all children need in order to develop.

You talk to these boys, they have no sense of the early development of children -- of how you have to talk to them and sing to them and rock them and hold them. They think being a father is sort of, you know, just having produced a child and occasionally buying that child some sort of a Pampers or Infamil or something like that.

So, we have these children who literally can become fathers very easily because sex is so much -- readily available between people who don't have deep relationships with one another, and then have no ability to understand what it means to parent that child.

So, they don't even know they're being lousy fathers. They actually think they're doing a pretty decent job. And when you talk to them, they say "oh yeah, I saw my baby. I was over there on Saturday and I spent two hours with my baby." And they're feeling really good about this.

And you're witting here shaking your head saying: "oh my gosh, son, do you know what it actually takes to raise this child? And how many hours you have to spend sort of being and supporting that child?" And the answer is, the truth is, they don't know. No one spent the time talking with them about this issue.

Let me just say one other thing, and I think this is -- we have caused this to happen to boys. We don't teach boys how to nurture. We don't teach boys that they are responsible for protecting and caring for children.

They don't get opportunities early on in their lives to babysit and do those kind of things, where, you know, if you have a 14-year-old girl or boy and you say "I want someone to leave my baby" -- you almost always pick that girl and not that boy, because we just don't think that's part of what boys do. And that's a mistake.

But even at a higher level, this gets played out. And I'll tell you, when we did this welfare reform in this country, one of the things that really disturbed me was that they made a big issue that women with babies had to go to work. And I'm saying: what about the men who produced these babies? Why aren't we getting them jobs to make sure they're supporting these babies? How does this suddenly become a woman's issue alone when we began to talk about welfare reform, and they act like these babies came from nowhere.

It's this sense we have in this country that fathers are sort of accessories on the one hand to this issue, instead of directly involved in this thing. And I think this gets played out across the board and actually diminishes these boys' understanding of their role as parents and fathers. And we need to reverse that, in my opinion.

GROSS: My guest is Geoffrey Canada. He's the author of the new book Reaching Up for Manhood. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

If you're just joining us, my guest is Geoffrey Canada. He's president of the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families in New York City and author of a new book called Reaching Up for Manhood: Transforming the Lives of Boys in America.

One of the things you want the boys that you work with to do is to prepare to hold jobs. And you know, you've met a lot of young men who get fired from jobs and then they tell you: "well, they fired me 'cause I'm black. They fired me because I'm Latino. They fired me because, well look, they didn't respect me in the first place. They were giving me this, you know, garbage work to do, and they had no respect for me. So, it's just as good I don't have that job anymore."

What do you think a lot of young men now don't quite get about what it means to have a job?

CANADA: You know, it's -- it's so clear to me that these young boys weren't prepared for hard work. And you know, we live in a society that --, really hard work is sort of disappearing for lots of us. And when I was growing up, and many folks my age -- I'm 45 -- when we were growing up, it really took a lot more to survive. We were always involved in working and we had to work to support our families.

And we weren't working for ourselves. We were working to add, just basically for the survival of our families. But also cooking involved a lot of work and there was always stuff. We were made to clean up stuff and do things out in the outdoors. And we had to help the elder people in our families -- our great-grandparents and our grandparents.

So, we always had jobs. I tell people I was so excited when I got my first paying job 'cause I wasn't worked as hard and I actually got money. I worked harder at home for free than I did when I was actually getting paid. I thought work was great.

So many young people have no experience with work at all. They're not made -- and especially for boys. They often make girls do things around the house. Often, girls are told: "well, you have to have these domestic chores." And they think that this is not good for boys. And boys get a free pass.

So I have these boys -- 14, 15 years old -- who have never had to work at all. And then what happens is, they get their first job and somebody tells them, you know: "I want you to do this and I want you to do that." And they're coming back to me: "this guy's ordering me around."

And I'm like: "of course, he's your boss." "Well, he's not treating me with respect." I said: "you're the lowest paid employee there. You are there to do a job. He's not gonna say 'would you please mop that floor?' He's gonna say 'get the mop and mop the floor.' That's the way the world works."

But they have no idea. And for so many of our boys of minority, they interpret that as being racism. They say: "you know what? I'm the one he made mop the floor because I'm black." And they don't see, no, you're the one who they made mop the floor because you are the first hired person -- the last hired person there, and you don't have any experience to do anything else and that's what everybody who starts the job does. And if you would just sort of last through that, you would see that you would move up like everybody else."

They don't get that experience at all. They internalize that as, you know, "they're disrespecting me as a man." And then, oh my goodness, when you get a 15-year-old or 16-year-old who thinks someone's taking advantage of them, they will quit their jobs even when they actually need the money, because they think they're doing it on the principle of their maleness.

This is a huge mistake. And I have found that there are so few opportunities for so many of our children to work. In so many of our communities, the unemployment rate for teenagers is up in the 60 and 70 percent range. These kids can't find jobs and it's too late by the time they're 18 or 19 to try and teach them how to work hard. By that time, these kids have not worked hard at all. You suddenly have to do eight hours standing on your feet. They have no idea what that feels like. There's been no learning curve for them to get there. And they just literally can't do the work.

So then they get these bad attitudes and the people say: "you know, I try to hire them and it didn't work out." These kids need to be taught at home, first, how to work and work hard. We have to quit giving these boys passes. They need to make up those beds and clean up those rooms and have to wash all the floors in the house. And do these things that, you know, people thought: "I had to do that when I was growing up and I don't want my kid to have to work that hard." That's a mistake.

And even for middle class parents who think, you know, "I don't want my children to have to struggle the way I did." And "I had to go out and sell papers and I want them" -- this is a mistake not to teach children to work hard early. Because if they get it early, they will have it later on in life.

And we've found at Rheedlen, if our children have jobs, we can ensure that they go on to college. Just the simple act of working and making sure those children know if you're gonna work here, you're gonna have to pass your classes. Those kids do pass their classes. It becomes one of those incentives that's sort of an unintended consequence of them having a job.

So this issue of work in boys' lives I think is absolutely critical because so many of them are right now not employable because they don't have the work skills, both social as well as academic, to go in and get a job and keep a job.

GROSS: Kids like to blame society, and racism and the government for whatever problems they have. And society, racism, and the government are responsible probably for a good deal of those problems, but probably not for all of them. There's usually some amount of personal responsibility you can take to get your own life in order.

How do you help them try to draw the line between what's like somebody else's fault and when it's time to just like take responsibility for it yourself and do the best that you can in a situation? And also within that, too, to teach them kind of like genuine political, social, economic awareness -- so it's not this kind of like empty conspiracy theory that you're blaming everything on. It's a more intelligent, knowledgeable analysis -- and within that analysis you can actually work for social change -- to improve the condition of your life and other people's lives.

CANADA: Well, I think that the critical piece of really getting at that issue, particularly with boys, but really with all children is what I talk about in my book, having to do with self-worth. So much of what young people believe about themselves is manufactured by a marketing machine right now, which has discovered the buying power of adolescents.

And you've got these huge figures out there. We're selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stuff. You have Tommy Hilfiger and Karl Kani -- and these kids actually believe that that's who they are. When you put on the Nike sneakers and the Karl Kani pants and the Tommy Hilfiger shirt -- you now are somebody. And you feel like you're somebody. And you think you've actually accomplished something, when the truth of the matter is that so many of these boys haven't done anything.

They're not doing well in school. They're not doing anything at home. They're not serving their communities. But yet they feel good about themselves while they have this stuff on. And it's only later, when they get older that they begin to realize: "jeez, I don't fit in anywhere. I don't know who I am. I don't know how to make it out here." And then they begin to despair.

And one of the hidden tragedies of boys is the numbers of them that actually end up killing themselves. You know, boys and girls have the same suicide rates 'til they're about nine. And then, by the time it gets more and more for boys -- by 15 and 19, they're four times more likely to kill themselves; and from 20 to 24, they're six times more likely to kill themselves than girls.

And why are our boys killing themselves? They don't know how to function. They have given up any sense that they're going to make it and they don't have the ability to see that there's an end to the darkness that they're facing. And a lot of this has to do with they don't know who they are themselves.

And so the first thing we really have to teach boys, and then teach all of our children, really, is who they are. And it's OK to work hard. And it's OK to give your best. But you have to know when you're giving your best and you have to be honest with that. The number of boys that I've spoken to who come to me and say: "well you know, Geoff, this is not fair and this is wrong." And I say: "what does that have to do with this 45 you got in English?" You know, and they kind of look sheepish, like: "well, I don't want to really talk about that."

But that has everything what we have to talk about. You have to take a certain amount of responsibility for working hard. And when I get these boys -- "how much homework did you do this week? You know, before you start telling me anything else, I want to know that you did three or four hours worth of homework; that you really worked hard on something."

And then boys begin to understand, well, you know, we have to take some personal responsibility in this stuff ourselves. But this has to start early, and we don't start early with boys, saying to them: "I understand that there are some real issues you face in life. I know that people treat you differently sometimes. I know the police gives you a hard time. I know sometimes people are expecting unrealistic things from you. But the truth of the matter is, you're still not working hard. You yourself aren't living up to your own potential."

And we need to give them that message, that even though the rest of this is often real, we have to separate that from what you can do yourself to work hard and make a difference in life and to make a difference for other people's lives. And the way I've found we can do that the best is getting young people to care about those younger than them.

So I can get a 15-year-old to start working with an 11-year-old and to suddenly understand why it's important to do your homework, to work hard, to get good grades in school, because they're telling this other young person that, and then it doesn't seem quite as distant for themselves.

And I think that's part of what we have to do with our boys, is to make sure we give them opportunities to experience what it means to be a helper, and that helps them understand what they need themselves in terms of some of these values that they need to develop.

GROSS: My guest is Geoffrey Canada, author of the new book Reaching Up for Manhood. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

My guest is Geoffrey Canada. He works with young people from the inner-city. He is the president of the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Adults in New York City.

You know, you mentioned how high the suicide rate is for young men. And one of the boys in your extended family tried to commit suicide, and you write about that a little bit in your new book. There are so many things conspiring to kill young people now, particularly things like drugs and guns.

And so, when somebody's kind of surviving that and then they try to take their own life -- somebody who you love -- that must be just like terribly upsetting.

CANADA: It was to me one of the most painful things that I could have imagined. You know, all of us sometimes, we hate to admit it, but we have our little favorites among our kids. And this young man is just really one of my favorite boys. He is just -- people think he's such a tough kid, right? 'Cause he has this tough exterior. But I know what caused this tough exterior. He was a boy who was left by his father. His mother left him in Haiti when she came to United States, and for years he was living with nobody.

By the time he came over here, he was this little lost boy. And I just looked at him and he was trying to figure out how to make it in America; what it took. And he just thought that, you know, this is the toughest, most hostile place I've ever been. And he began to try and reflect that hostility in his own actions, hoping that it would protect him and give him some immunity from the violence that he saw all around him.

I know him as a deeply sensitive boy who has literally no outlets when it comes to being able to talk about these issues, besides myself. For me being away when this thing happened, I -- there was an awful lot of guilt that I felt, even knowing that probably nothing I could have done, but I wish I would have been there. I thank God that he survived it and he's still fine today.

But you know, it's so close. It was so close for him and so many boys don't have anyone there who can come to them and spend the kind of time with them, convincing them that the world is OK. You know, this is this area again of faith for me that I think we have messed up with so many boys.

You know, I grew up in a very religious household that was really somewhat oppressive. And I couldn't wait to stop going to church. And I just said: "oh, enough of this stuff. I mean, who needs this?" And I have forgotten what it means to have faith. And every young person, in particular in these times, reach times where they honestly believe they're not going to make it; that they have given up; that the world looks dark and hopeless.

And it's at that moment that you have to have faith that if you can just survive, that things will get better, even when the -- the reality; even when it looks like the objective reality suggests it won't get any better -- you say "jeez, I'm never gonna get out of this. I don't have the right education and I can't get away and I can't get to school so my life is over." That's when it calls for faith.

And so many of our boys don't have it. That's the moment without faith that you are liable to take your own life. And I worry that so many of our children have nobody who can be there and say: "it is going to be OK. If you can't trust yourself on this, trust me -- that it's going to be OK. I'm going to be there. I'm going to make it OK."

That's the time you have to get into these boys' lives and talk to them about this. I will tell you, this was for me one of the scariest times that I have faced, thinking that I could have lost one of my sons who felt for a moment so alone and so isolated that he would try to kill himself.

GROSS: And was it something specific that had happened? Or was it just a...

CANADA: You know what, it was a -- when I began to try and pull apart the things, there were four or five things that had happened. It was partially over a girl friend. It was partially over a job. It was partially over trying to get into school and not being able to. And when he looked at his future, he really felt that: "you know what? It doesn't matter."

I think he was stunned that -- that I was as hurt about this as I was. You know, it's funny. Kids often know that their parents love them, but it -- they don't really understand the deep or the richness of that love because you don't -- you don't get a chance to really have people sort of climb fences or jump hurdles for you, and you say: "wow, I didn't know you loved me that much," right?

So you say well they love me, but it's not all that much. And that's often what allows children to think: "you know what? No one's really going to miss me that much if I do this. And this is really not going to hurt anybody that much." He was quite startled how both hurt and upset and how much I cared and how much I loved him, even though I think he knew I loved him.

But I had just probably never done anything as dramatic and as clear to him as sort of running out in the middle of this horrible storm and just sort of storming into his house soaking wet, asking him what in the world had happened. And I think he thought to himself: "oh my goodness, Geoff really does love me. I didn't know this. And now maybe if I can't do this for myself, I don't want to hurt him that much." And for -- it gave him enough space, I think, to begin to heal himself in this particularly difficult time for him.

You know what? If I asked him about it today, in fact I was talking to him yesterday 'cause I'd given him the book. And I didn't use his name in the book, but he knew that was him. And I was saying: "you know -- you know, I write about the --" He was like: "no, no, that was OK." And I said: "now, how do you feel about all of that?" And he goes like: "that was silly." And he just felt like that was silly, when I was going to that over -- I mean, well, "how would I do something like that over something so silly?"

It wasn't silly when it happened, right? But later on if they can survive it, they begin to say: "oh, my, that was -- why did I even do that silly thing?" Right? That's what's so tragic in so much of this. If we can just keep those kids alive and give a little time, they often come back to a sense of perspective and they feel so much better about things. Unfortunately, lots of kids don't get that second chance.

GROSS: You've been at the Rheedlen Center since I think it's 1982. So, you've seen a lot of kids come through the center and grow up. And I'm wondering if you feel like you've seen enough kids kind of make it past those danger -- those most dangerous years of adolescence, into adulthood and do OK -- enough to, like, give you hope that the change is possible; that there is some safety out there if you work hard enough at finding it?

CANADA: Terry, I have found -- you know, I have this wonderful thing now that I've got like all of these kids -- there may be 25 of our kids who are in college now, right? And it's just like this wonderful thing to see these kids, and I've been with these kids for all of these years and gone through all of these things with these kids -- and to see them coming home for summer break and spring break and winter break.

And each time they come in, they come up and, you know, they say: "oh, we've got a few minutes. I know you're busy. I hope I can see you." I gives me such hope. I remember so clearly all of the times where I was ready to throw up my hands and say: "you know, I'm gonna keep trying, but I just don't believe this is going to work with this boy or this girl."

The truth of the matter is, if we stay with children and if we keep plugging away, it makes a huge difference from them. And they will make it if we're convinced that they will. And if no matter what they do, all they see from us is a belief and a faith that: "you know what? You've got it in you to make it. Just stay in there."

And even when they lose faith themselves, they'll often gain faith from us and the fact that we're so positive. And it keeps me very hopeful and really charged up with a belief in the future. Which is I have my own little baby. I thought geez, this is really coming out pretty good. Maybe I'll try it again myself.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: Well, congratulations on your new baby.

CANADA: Thank you.

GROSS: And I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

CANADA: Well thank you for having me on, Terry. I really appreciate it.

GROSS: Geoffrey Canada is the president of the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Adults in New York City. His new book is called Reaching Up for Manhood.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Geoffrey Canada
High: Author and advocate for children, Geoffrey Canada. He is president of the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families in New York City. He's written a new book about the crisis among young boys, and the need to redefine their sense of manhood. He writes that "our belief about maleness, the mythology that surrounds being male, has led many boys to ruin. The image of male as strong is mixed with the image of male as violent." Canada's new book is "Reaching Up for Manhood: Transforming the Lives of Boys in America." Canada is also author of the memoir, "Fist Stick Knife Gun."
Spec: Youth; Violence; Culture; Media; Men; Boys; Geoffrey Canada
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Reaching up for Manhood
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.