A forum in Phila. for black men

A few months before the presidential election, Gregory Walker, a 45-year-old public health advocate, stopped into the Walnut Street ING cafe. He ordered a green tea and logged on to a computer to pay some bills.

At a nearby table, he overheard a professorial African American mentoring an earnest high school student, a young black Republican. The older man, Tony Monteiro, a scholar in African American studies, was explaining why he wasn't wholeheartedly supporting Barack Obama's candidacy.

Walker, a looming 6-foot-5 and 220 pounds, got up and walked over.

"I like your thought process, but I don't agree," he told Monteiro. The three talked at length and, when they bade goodbye, resolved to meet again.

Monteiro and Walker soon started a book club, which over the last year has developed into an organization called the Brothers Network, with more than 200 members.

Once a month, between 20 and 50 of them get together in cafes, museums, bookstores, or the common room of Walker's Center City apartment complex. They may debate political, social, or economic issues or analyze a play they have all attended, but the discussion always ties in to the theme of being black and male in America.

For African American men, it can be lonely near the top.

The chief executive of American Express, Kenneth Chenault, is a black man. The nation's attorney general, Eric Holder, is a black man. And, as if anyone needed to mention it, so is Barack Obama, commander in chief and president of the United States.

Yet even in Philadelphia, where nearly half the population is African American, economically secure and educated black men say they often feel isolated.

"It's tough," says Warren Longmire, a 27-year-old graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. Longmire grew up in North Philadelphia and now works at Children's Hospital, designing computer games for autistic children.

Until recently, he says, he felt he had to choose. Either accept that being black means living a ghetto existence, he thought, or identify as one of the "good blacks" and assimilate into a predominantly white world.

"There's a clear line," Longmire says. "It's such a segregated city."

Thanks to the Brothers Network, men like Longmire now have a larger community where they can be among others who are neither extreme.

In October, the Brothers spent two hours hashing over this question: "Does the election of Obama represent the arrival of a post-racial society in America?" They reasoned and reproached, preached and posited, snickered and laughed, and reached no consensus.

Agreement was neither intended nor possible.

Not in a group of such wide diversity. Young, old, and middle-aged. Gay, straight, and postmodern sexual. Conservative Republicans, moderate Democrats, a former card-carrying Communist, and everything in between. A poet, a former high school principal, a Comcast department head, the director of a charter-school management company, a health-care advocate, a restaurateur, and an information-technology specialist for the Environmental Protection Agency. One wore Top-Siders and argyle socks, one sported dreadlocks and a tight muscle T-shirt, another came in jeans and a baseball cap.

"Black men are not monolithic," says Walker, stating what he says ought to be obvious. While all members of the Brothers Network share the common experience of being black, he says the real joy comes from seeing how nuanced black can be.

For years, Walker says, he yearned for a community of intellectually stimulating African American men.

"I'm an organizer," he says. "So I set out to find other like-minded people. African American men who are historically isolated in art, politics, music, and theater."

All black men are welcome, Walker says, as long as they are interested in serious intellectual exchange. Six months ago, the Brothers received a small grant from the Delaware Valley Legacy Fund to build a Web site and expand the network. Longmire is helping to design the site and get it up and running.

The October meeting on whether Obama's election is the beginning of post-racial America was moderated by Monteiro, who has a day job as distinguished lecturer in African American studies and associate director of the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought at Temple University.

"The operative word is begin," said Sandy Smith, an educator and writer who graduated from Harvard in 1980. "The fact is, we have just started a journey toward the possibility of that happening. . . . I've lived a life that wasn't possible before the civil-rights movement." But in many situations, he says, all people notice is his race. "I'm still a black man."

"African Americans have soared," said another man. "They've busted through the glass ceiling. Become captains of industry. Leading politicians."

"No disrespect," a voice from across the room interrupted. "But Barack Obama wouldn't have been elected if both his parents were black. His white mother legitimizes his personage."

The discussion gained momentum and volume as the group wrestled with questions about race and class.

"It's the problem of poor people," said Longmire. "Why is it framed as the problem of black people?"

One man wearing an Obama baseball cap leaped from his seat and spoke passionately about how black men are still chained to the legacy of slavery. While many shared his emotion and the conviction that a reckoning with history was needed, in the volley of comments that followed, it was hard to tell what that reckoning would yield.

"Obama's election creates a schizophrenia in the black community."

"The new color line is not between black and white. It's really between black and nonwhite. Asians are seen as noble."

"We have PTSD!"

"Being the racial other means less than human, my brother."

The room had been rented for 21/2 hours, but as the deadline approached, the discussion refused to relent. "I don't want to minimize racism . . . but I get so sick of hearing white people this and white people that," said Brett Mapp, the 45-year-old operations director for the Old City Civic Association.

Understood, came one response, but even when African Americans manage to get elected, they have split allegiances and often don't serve the black community.

"Organizations like this have to put up opposition candidates," said Tony Williams, who once ran for council in Washington.

"The party system has failed black people," said Monteiro. "Where do we go now?"

"If we need to look for black leaders, we need to look in the mirror!" said Mapp.

The man who had been leaping from his seat sat down resolutely with a good-natured laugh. "That's the first thing you've said that I agree with!"

The meeting faded to a hum like an improvisational jazz session with a few last dibs notes.

For Longmire, the morning was an unmitigated success.

"It's really great to be able to interact with older black men," he says. "Growing up black in the city, people don't talk about race because it's too painful. It's something that you're just dealing with in silence." His own father, he said, has only just started to "tell his stories."

Raised in a loving, religiously devout home with both his parents, Longmire says, he enjoyed a healthy, happy childhood. Still, he says, the negative stereotypes seeped into his pores. He remembers walking past a mirror when he was about 5 years old and thinking, "Maybe I'm just living a movie. The person living my life must be white, because I'm smart."

"There's a lot of self-hate out there. Unless we get together and talk about why we feel and the things we feel, we're going to to end up turning our backs on ourselves," Longmire says. "Every time I go to Brothers events, I always coming out feeling that there's hope."

The network does not presume to be the only forum where black men can interact, says Walker. But it provides the opportunity for a wider range of opinions to be expressed and respected than in a barbershop or at church. "We're black. We're male. And we all face adversity that we deal with differently," Walker says. Normally, when people of such divergent opinions get going on subjects like politics and race, they wear one another out or get frustrated and angry. What distinguishes the Brothers Network, Walker says, is that the conversation always manages to stay not only civil, but affectionate.

"In 21/2 hours, you don't change your mind. But listening to others who are energetic and excited gets you thinking. Imagine if that bottled-up passion didn't have a place to go?"

The next discussion of the Brothers Network will be at 2 p.m. Saturday at Cafe Mocha, 263 S. 10th St. The topic will be James Baldwin's novel "Giovanni's Room."

For more information, go to www.thebrothersnetwork.org or e-mail Gregory Walker at gregorytwalker@thebrothersnetwork.org.

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