Man Up: Nobody is Coming to Save Us
by Steve Perry
Book Review by Dan Tres Omi
I don't know why this book did not get into my hands sooner. I remember seeing Steve Perry on FOX News. I rolled my eyes to find another so called conservative person of African descent tooting the same horn as the talking heads on the Faux News network. Before Perry was allowed to speak, his resume was thrown up for the audience to see. Perry is on the front lines when it comes to educating our youth. The author is a principal of The Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut and has developed several programs that has prepared ghetto youth for college. I knew I had to cop his book. For a little over $12, the book is worth every cent.
Perry pulls no punches. The book is not for the faint of heart. He calls out everyone from the dead beat dad to the cheating spouse. Perry holds everyone accountable from the local preacher to academics such as Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson. Perry sets a chapter aside to further evaluate Carter G. Woodson's “The Miseducation of the Negro,” and breaks down how the church actually contributes to our problems. His chapter on Woodson is worth the price of admission.
The book not only calls all of us out it explains how we refuse to further analyze our plight. Yet Perry shines when he asks all the regular brothers to step up. Perry is not asking us to restart another Civil Rights movement. He is not asking us to raise the next Malcolm X. All he is asking us to do is to do our job. To raise our children, pay our bills, invest our money, love our families, do our jobs, and clean up our communities. I enjoyed the fact that he explained that we are not perfect but that it is okay. There is room for improvement. There is room for us to continue to work to become better men. His solution is simple and clear. The lesson is plain as day.
In all honesty, every brother should have two copies of this book. One to keep and one to give away. If you know a brother, father, uncle, cousin, frat brother, co-worker, etc., who is slipping, hand them a copy of this book. I have to commend Mr. Perry for his work ethic and his writing. When one meditates on the book, he is not asking for much.
Labels: black community, Cornel West, Dyson, Man UP, Steve Perry, the Black Church
4 Comments:
Allow me to play Devil’s advocate here…
Now we can number two soothsayers in the popular black celebrity community, Bill Cosby and Steve Perry. Has not the writing been on the walls for years now? Spanish people, Black Americans we been living with folks all around us that set the bar about as high as there knee. The issues we are looking towards addressing have become epidemic in some places. This is not new to anyone that grew up in that sort of environment.
I’m only addressing the troubled community that Perry talks about. The folks that Bill Cosby talks about. It can go without saying that there are hundreds of black and Spanish communities in the United States that breed middle class and upper class folks raising families and making a better life for them selves. That said… Lets look at the issues with the rest of these people…
So where does this funnel lead the Black and Spanish community if we don’t start swimming out? It can only get worse. A total collapse of America’s Black and Spanish society’s is not likely but what will suffer is our quality of life, the living standards of our society, the risk we add to the future of the people we leave behind… like our kids.
It is the choice of the society, in this case Black Americans and Spanish people to sink or swim. That said, we also have to say that the more cultures you put into the equation the more difficult it can become to define every and all the causes, but nonetheless the solution stays the same. [Note when I say “Spanish people I’m including all 1st generation Americans with parents from another country from Mexico, Central South America and the Caribbean.] Specifically, I am talking from and about my generation. I am speaking about those of us born in the late 70s and raised in the 80s and 90s.
There is no rock left unturned there is no statistic that we have not heard at one point or another. There are no shockers there. Deadbeat dads, teen pregnancy, the suicide rate, and incarceration rates, homicide rates, infidelity, drop out rates and, lower statistics of higher education, home owning, pick a category. The statistics go on and on.
No one is out to get us, but us.
This all goes without saying, doesn’t it?
So do you really have to read 3 or 4 hundred pages to get to the bottom of it? Where does the insight come in? In my travels I learned one answer when asking the same questions that Steve Perry is addressing in his book. As far as the issues involved in this country are concerned, the answers lay in the individual, in two parts to solve those problems. The first part is the individual that is willing to help solve problems rather then just point them out or add to them. The second part is the individual that wants to help themselves solve their own issues, address their own problems. If the 1st and 2nd parts are genuine in their motives and their actions, then all the other factors (ie. Past history, money, location) become minuscule.
why are you playing devil's advocate on the book? Perry is saying the same thing you just said. We all need to claim our personal responsibility. in my review i specifically say that Perry is NOT asking anyone to start another "movement" or raise another "Malcolm X" but to just do our jobs.
read the subtitle of the book. it reads that NOBODY is coming to save us. alot of people, the presidential nomination is a clear example of this, look for someone ELSE to fix their problem.
I was playing Devils advocate wit the subject matter. I was trying to expand a bit on the topic of Perry’s book. My point was to take it a step further, touch on the consequences of keeping on the same path. I’m currently reading Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. He covers all these factors contributing to the demise of past and present cultures and it’s an eye opener some of those points are relevant. The Mayans, Vikings, Rwanda, Haiti, Native Americans, the Anasazi, Tribes of the South Pacific Easter Island, the Cambodian Empire, Montana farmers. It’s crazy but all these things have factors that link them together. All these things have factors in common. Collapse along with Jared Diamonds other book Guns, Germs and Steele are on my top 5 references and reading material of all time. Let me make that plug.
Some of that reading material from Collapse was still lingering while I was responding to your review. So I had to climb on my soapbox you know Im a bit of an advocate.
I read some excerpts from Steve Perry’s book. I checked out the website, www.manupbook.com. I was a little disappointed that his name has not made it in to the Wikipedia. What he’s talking about shouldn’t be news to anybody. I would still have to check out the book from cover to cover to see myself, but I get the gist of it. He’s hitting on the same points as Bill Cosby about the Black community. When I hear those guys talking I go so far as to include the Spanish community in the U.S., cause across the board we are suffering from the same thing.
I touched on what I found is working with the whole “two-part individual” rant. After some further thought on the topic and re reading your second post. I think I would have to disagree on one thing. We shouldn’t need a new civil movement but something along the lines of a new “Harlem Renaissance”, we might not need to raise another Malcolm X but how about another MLK?
i read Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel.." awesome book
i have to cop collapse.
i just watched him do a lecture on that book. he is good on stage. alot of heads like him who are brainy don't come off on stage but i was impressed.
i dig Diamond.
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