7 things expected of black men that we aren't always taught

there’s an incredible amount of pressure put on black men. from society. from our families. and from ourselves. we are often encouraged to not ask for help, even if we need it. and we seem to always be on the verge of both tragedy and triumph. we come from a long line of resilience, which often fuels our will to succeed, even in the worst of circumstances. and even though we’re continuously murdered at the hands of those sworn to protect and serve, we’re often dead long before we ever take our last breath. and in all honesty, it seems as though we’re still playing catching up in a lot of areas. here’s a condensed list of seemingly unrelated things that are often expected of, but not taught to, black men — things i feel we should talk about a bit more. 

7). how to date. 

i think most of us can agree that dating is the process by which you’re purposefully spending time with someone on a regular basis in hopes of finding a committed relationship. but for many black men, no one ever took the time to explain much of anything after that — like how to deal with rejection, how to ask a woman out on a date, and maintaining healthy independence — to name a few. and sure, some of this can be attributed to absentee fathers, but not all of it. and in lieu of someone actually sitting down with us, teaching us and facilitating dialogue with us regarding dating, our outlook on dating is often shaped by not-so-reliable sources as we haphazardly try to figure it our for ourselves. 

6). how to cook. 

and i’m not talking about breakfast. we all should know how to cook breakfast. i’m talking about an actual meal that includes all of the food groups (ya’ll remember those?) without going too deep into it, i do think outdated gendered roles, among other things, have played a large part in why so many [black] men have limited cooking expertise. 

5). how to be financially literate. 

the disparities in black financial literacy in general are just… all over the place, to say the least. and when you consider how much money people who look like us contribute to the economy and the ever increasing lag in financial wellness we experience as a people, it’s just not adding up, ya know? like, black people in general need to be financially literate, yes. but, i feel this is particularly true for black men because of the role we often play in our households. ya’ll remember when lauryn was like, "you can’t win if you ain’t right within.” that’s as much about what’s in your heart as it is about what’s in your wallet. 

4). how to change a tire. 

i can’t remember when i learned how to change a tire or check my oil. all i remember are the moments in which those skills benefited me. there was one day i had to replace my tire on the side of the expressway while in a suit, only for me to get to my destination to find a woman in the parking garage with a flat tire. so, i ended up replacing two tires in one day (the latter of which earned me lunch). as i shared this story with some of the black men in my circle, most of which were the homies, i realized that many of them wouldn’t have helped that woman. not because they didn’t want to, but because they didn’t know how to. and that’s when i realized so many of us never learned how to change a tire, or oil for that matter. a lot of us don’t know what antifreeze is let alone where it should go. but you’d never know because these are the types of transferable skills that often slip through the cracks. this type of stuff doesn’t really come up in conversation, until you need it. it’s just something that most women assume we know how to do. 

3). how to tie a tie. 

you may or may not be surprised at how many of us don’t untie our neckties when we take them off because we wouldn’t know how to tie them again on our own. and bowties are a completely different beast, which is why you often see some of us just wearing them untied around our necks. and for the record, i loathe that. my thing is… if you can’t tie it, you shouldn’t wear it. don’t @ me, either. 

2). how to purchase formalwear. 

for the most part, we know our casual clothing sizes — i.e. small, medium, large or whatever. and aside from that point in life when we were all wearing 4x tees and sized 54 girbauds, some of us have been pretty on point with how we like our clothes to fit. but when it comes to dress clothes, many of us who weren’t taught that our size in jeans won’t necessarily equate to our size in suit pants because casual clothing stretches in places where a suit simply will not, like the waist. a lot of us weren’t taught how to measure our neck size or arm length. some of us don’t even own a suit.

1). how to express themselves. 

as black men, too many of us aren’t really shaking the table on the emotional intelligence front. and contrary to popular belief, i think one of the many reasons behind this is that so many of us lack self awareness. we didn’t talk about our emotions growing up and if we did, our answer didn’t go further than the occasional, “i’m good.” for many of us, emotions were viewed as a form of weakness. we leaned into a more aggressive side, forgoing our emotions altogether as young boys. the result — those boys grew up to be men incapable of understanding their own moods, emotions and drives. 

good news, though. we can always start learning today.