Group Project

I am really excited to be doing a project like this because I believe that through effective communication anything can be done or changed. Our project is the viewing of the film , "A Different Kind of Black Man". We decided our audience would be educated, opinionated , black men who would typically be perceived as straight, stand up men in their community, and discuss masculinity in the black male community and masculinity in the black gay male community. We wanted there to be a visible, non-difference between the two as it pertains to masculinity. Because the basis of the argument would be all men want to be, is men, in their community, in their families , at their jobs and anywhere else in society. Besides showing the video which includes older black men, we also wanted to kind of hit close to home with the gentlemen that we would be speaking with, therefore we invited two open gay black male speakers who are well known around the campus to tell their story and their struggle to portray masculinity and still be comfortable with themselves in their community. One young man is well known, but he is not out to everyone yet. The fact that he wanted to speak on this matter was a shock to me and my group because like I stated he is well known and we wanted to avoid any targeting of one individual or him just being uncomfortable after his discussion. However, he and the other young man was very willing because they stated they had been wanting to have this discussion for some time now and they feel that this would be the best time. A controlled environment, an honest but respectable environment, and an environment that includes many of their friends. Even though, we have had a minor setback with our original group of men, I have a wonderful diligent group to work with so our event will take place next Wednesday and I know we will have a successful discussion. Since we know this is sort of a sensitive topic we came up with ideas to make the conversation fun, interactive and ongoing. So, hopefully we have just as well a turn-out as we would have had from our original group. I am very excited and interested on where this discussion will take us.