We Are in Here With You: Black Men, Political Agency, and the Power of Being Heard
Why what American politics calls a turnout problem is fundamentally a listening problem, and how real agency begins when Black men define their own terms.
“What happens when you realize we are not just in here with you, but you are in here with us?”
A seasoned contractor once described an old factory where the main boiler broke down in the middle of a brutal subzero winter. The plant owner, frantic about losing millions in frozen pipes and ruined machinery, rushed down to the basement where the maintenance crew was quietly sitting on wooden crates. He began yelling at them, issuing orders, demanding they get the heat back on immediately so he wouldn't go bankrupt.
One of the senior machinists looked up from his mug, wiped grease from his hands, and said something the owner never forgot: "You keep talking like we're trapped in your factory. But if this boiler doesn't run by tonight, you don't have a factory. You're down here in the cold with us."
That story stuck with me because it exposes how easily institutions confuse authority with independence. The owner believed everyone in the building depended entirely on his payroll. He hadn't realized that his entire enterprise was riding on the daily skill and presence of the men sitting in the dark basement.
I think about that contractor's story whenever I watch political strategists talk about Black men on cable news. In this essay, when I say "we," I am referring principally to Black American men. We are not an ideologically uniform bloc, and we certainly don't all think alike. But we share an overlapping history, a distinct set of daily responsibilities, and a set of priorities that deserve to be spoken plainly without someone else translating them for us.
A Listening Problem, Not Just a Turnout Problem
When I watched the premiere episode of Jeff Johnson’s show, No Translation, featuring Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, one observation stopped me in my tracks. Johnson argued that American political institutions don't just have a Black male turnout problem. What they call a turnout problem is also, and perhaps more fundamentally, a listening and relationship problem.
For as long as I can remember, political campaigns have approached Black men as a demographic that needs to be mobilized every two or four years. They send surrogates into barbershops, drop off yard signs, and run last-minute ad campaigns warning us about what will happen if the other side wins. But very few people in power ever stop to ask a simple, human question: What are you trying to build for your family, and what is getting in your way?
Terrance Woodbury and the team at HIT Strategies have spent years tracking this dynamic. Their research shows that when you ask Black men about their top priorities, the answers are remarkably consistent: economic stability, the ability to provide for a household, financial independence, and emotional well-being. Yet, when survey researchers asked young Black men which major political party was actively leading the conversation on those issues, a troubling number answered: neither.
I am not arguing that Black men should walk away from voting or pretend that policy choices don't matter. They do. But what bothers me about the current debate is how quickly consultants reduce us to a column on a spreadsheet. Before a man is a voter, he is a human being. Life encounters him every single morning; politics encounters him right before an election.
Two Pillars of the Same House
We need to talk honestly about how Black men and Black women relate in the political space, and we need to do it without falling into cheap traps. In recent years, party strategists have adopted a convenient line of flattery, calling Black women the "backbone of the community." Black women have carried an extraordinary civic and political load, and their leadership deserves genuine respect. But as I have come to think about it, that political slogan is often used as a wedge. It offers symbolic praise to Black women while treating Black men as secondary or absent.
That trope ignores history. Our community was not built by one sex carrying the other. It was built by Black men and Black women working, suffering, fighting, and building side by side. Black men worked the steel mills, laid the railroad tracks, stood guard on front porches against racial terror, founded fraternities and unions, and raised families under conditions designed to break them. Neither half of our community is a footnote.
I can already hear the objection: "Focusing on Black men's specific needs divides the community." I disagree. Loving someone and sharing a home with them doesn't mean you get to dictate what they think. There is a world of difference between saying, "I love you, so I know what you need," and saying, "I love you, so tell me what you need."
Black women have every right to name their political priorities. Black men have that exact same right. When engagement-optimized social media algorithms reward content that pits Black men and Black women against each other, we have to be mature enough to step back. We aren't competing demographics. We are husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters trying to keep our families intact.
An Agenda Is Not Yet Power
This is why I pay close attention to efforts like Dr. T. Hasan Johnson’s Black Male Political Agenda. You don't have to agree with every single policy proposal in it to recognize why it matters. Its real significance is simple: somebody actually bothered to ask Black men what they wanted.
Through the Onyx Report network, over 30,000 Black men participated in crowdsourcing and prioritizing issues that affect their daily lives. They raised questions about family court equity, vocational education, entrepreneurship, health disparities, capital access, and fatherhood policies. They stopped waiting for a party platform and wrote their own.
Still, we have to be realistic. Naming what you want is essential, but an agenda by itself is not power. An agenda is just a list of wishes until it is backed by organization. Real political leverage appears when an agenda is supported by institutions, representatives authorized to negotiate, voters willing to reward or punish candidates, and clear metrics to check whether a deal was honored. Articulation lets us name our interests; organization determines whether anyone has to listen.
What This Does Not Prove
I want to address a fair challenge to this argument. Some critics argue that focusing on gender-specific political priorities risks fracturing our broader civil rights coalition. Others point out that family-court rules, business loans, and tax codes are complicated systems that vary by state, and that no single national policy can fix them all overnight.
Those are reasonable points. Listening alone doesn't guarantee that a legislature will pass a bill, and policy promises are broken every day. Furthermore, what some political consultants dismiss as low turnout might sometimes be a quiet refusal to be taken for granted, but other times it's simply the result of long lines, restrictive voting laws, or daily exhaustion. We shouldn't romanticize every non-voter as a strategic genius. But we also shouldn't treat men who feel ignored as if they are simply uneducated about their own interests.
Fatherhood, Work, and the Real Evidence
Consider the persistent stereotype of the absent, indifferent Black father. For decades, politicians on both sides of the aisle have used that trope as a convenient explanation for complex economic problems. But when you look at actual data rather than political talking points, a very different picture emerges.
A landmark study by the National Center for Health Statistics (CDC) tracking fathers aged 15–44 found that Black residential fathers were actively involved in their children's daily lives at rates equal to or higher than fathers of other racial groups. Whether measuring daily meals, helping with homework, bathing, or playing with their kids, Black fathers who live in the home are consistently present.
That doesn't mean our families don't face real difficulties. They do. But it shows that the problem isn't a lack of paternal love or moral character. The pressure on the Black family is deeply connected to economic barriers, stagnant wages, discrimination in hiring, and penal systems that pull men out of households. When a man works sixty hours a week and still struggles to pay rent, or when means-tested benefit programs penalize marriage, that is a structural failure, not a lack of commitment.
Similarly, when we look at business ownership, the U.S. Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey shows over 161,000 Black-owned employer firms generating more than $183 billion in revenue and employing 1.4 million workers nationwide. Black men are actively building, hiring, and investing. But without access to commercial credit, equity capital, and mentorship networks, many of these businesses remain small and fragile. We don't just need job training programs; we need capital channels that allow Black men to build sustainable, wealth-generating enterprises.
The Three-Dimensional Agenda
If we are serious about Black male flourishing, our strategy cannot stop at demanding things from politicians. A mature political approach operates across three distinct levels:
- What we require from government: Equal protection under the law, fair access to public contracts, sensible credit policy, reform of penal and family-court systems, and investment in public infrastructure.
- What we require from institutions: Capital access from banks, real mentorship from professional networks, fair hiring practices, and accountability from philanthropy and civic organizations.
- What we require from ourselves: Stronger personal discipline, commitment to our wives and children, mentorship for younger boys, financial literacy, and the courage to hold one another accountable.
If fatherhood matters to us, public policy matters, but so does what we demand of ourselves as fathers. If emotional health matters, access to healthcare matters, but so does building real friendships where a man can admit he is struggling without losing his dignity. If economic security matters, government policy matters, but so does building our own businesses, managing our household balance sheets, and supporting Black-owned firms.
Reflections on Legacy and Dependency
When I think about the men in my own family, men who worked hard, kept their word, provided for their households, and never asked for a handout, I realize that this issue is much bigger than party politics. They didn't view themselves as victims waiting for a campaign promise. They viewed themselves as the foundation of their homes.
I think about the family I am responsible for today, and the world my children will inherit. That perspective changes how I hear that contractor's line about the factory basement. I no longer hear "you are in here with us" as a threat. I hear it as a realization of mutual dependency.
The political parties need Black male voters. Businesses need Black male labor and leadership. Families need engaged fathers, husbands, and brothers. Communities need strong, stable men. And critically, Black men need one another.
A community becomes politically mature when it stops asking where it belongs in someone else's coalition and starts asking what the relationship actually produces. We become powerful when we realize that our ultimate strength doesn't come from the promises of outsiders, but from what we build, govern, and protect together.
“What happens when you realize we are not just in here with you, but you are in here with us?”
Sources and Verified Documentation
- No Translation Premiere Episode: Jeff Johnson & Dr. Marc Lamont Hill broadcast, available at YouTube.com/live/kGf3orxC_LU.
- Black Male Political Agenda (BMPA): Dr. T. Hasan Johnson, crowdsourced agenda initiatives and Onyx network research, thasanjohnson.com/bmpa.
- CDC Paternal Care Survey: Jo Jones, Ph.D., and William D. Mosher, Ph.D., "Fathers' Involvement With Their Children: United States, 2006–2010," National Health Statistics Reports, No. 71, CDC/NCHS, cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr071.pdf.
- AP VoteCast 2024 Exit Survey: Associated Press national voter survey metrics on Black male electorate vote distribution.
- U.S. Census Bureau Annual Business Survey (ABS): 2022 Employer Firm Statistics, census.gov/programs-surveys/abs.html.
- Author Platform & Official Publications: www.germarreed.com.
