New Male Roles
Speaker: Ronald F. Johnson (click here for biography)
Soap Summit 2

Transcript of the Proceedings
September 7, 1996

SONNY FOX: The next speaker is a gentleman of the streets. He was a New York kid. He ran with gangs when he was young. And the evidence of that is a number of jail terms that he served in his teenage years. But he is now out in California as the head of a foundation, and working with young fathers. I ran into Ron Johnson at a meeting out in L.A. I was so taken with him, and with his extraordinary ability to mix street smarts with hard found wisdom, with oratorical skills, and with a wicked wit, that I knew you would enjoy chatting with him, too. So I present to you now, Ron Johnson. [APPLAUSE]

RON JOHNSON: Thank you, and I'm so very happy to be here. I had a chance to speak briefly with the young men who are fathers, in the hallway And they said so many of the things that the young men that I work with say very often. I'm going to try and take what we usually say and say all of this in about 20 minutes. What got me out of the street was the fact that I, at 16 years old, was facing 25 years to life for kidnapping. And my mother would sit behind me each morning at my trial and cry and lament, that yet another one of her sons was about to be sent to prison. And I decided it was time for me to change my life.

So I went back to school, and I adopted a habit that was role modelled for me by my mother. She read all the time. So, while I was in jail, I read everything I had my hands on. And so when I took the SAT's, I got a 1460, and I was offered all of these scholarships from around the nation to attend school. And I decided I would attend school right here in New York, and so, Columbia, the university, is where I went to school. And it was much an experience for them as it was for me. [LAUGHTER] Upon leaving school, I decided I would work out and teach school. And I would work with young men just like myself. And so we began to look at what are the things that boys learn on the street about what it means to be a man. And it became important, because as I began to work with teen fathers, I discovered very rapidly, it was not my job so much to teach these boys how to fathers, but rather, to teach them what it means to be a man. Because boys can't be fathers.

Boys have to be fathered. And so it became important to find out what is it that boys learn on the street about what it means to be a man. And we found four things. And we found that it matters not if you're black, white, red, brown, or yellow. If you're a male, and you live in America, there are four things that boys learn on the street about what it means to be a man. Number one, boys learn on the street that if you want to be respected, and accepted, and acknowledged as a man, you must have some money. And, in fact, it matters not how you got the money, or from whom you got the money, it just matters that you have some money. And in fact, in America, the more money you have, the more man you are.

And so, that is why little boys who are seven, and eight, and nine years old can tell you the kind of things they want. "I want these jeans, or these sneakers, or this shirt," because they're taught, "The more things I have, the more man I am." And then, of course, boys are taught on the street to be violent. Somebody might say, "Well, gee, Ron, I'm on a soap opera. I'm a writer, I'm a producer. That's not my son." Your son, too. Again, it matters not if the boys are black, white, red, brown, or yellow, rich or poor, if you life in America, and if you're a male, you receive a message that says if you are not violent enough at least to defend yourself, you will not be thought of as a man. And so you go to any schoolyard in America, and if you watch the boys on the schoolyard, if one little boy perceives another schoolboy as a punk or a chump or a mark, he'll shake him down for his loose change, he'll shake him down for his lunch, he'll shake him down for whatever he wants from him, because boys receive this message very early in life, again, that say, "If you are not violent enough at least to defend yourself, you will not be thought of as a man." And that is why when I work with parents, I tell parents all the time, "We can no longer afford to teach children what we were taught." And that is, we were taught, as kids, if somebody hits you, hit them back.

You can't teach kids that any more, because their friends don't hit back. They stab back. They shoot back. They drive by your house and shoot everybody back. So it becomes very, very important that we become clear on what makes a man. Number three, the boys that I work with, of course, and forget if they're black, brown, red, brown or yellow, it does not matter. If you want to be a man, you gotta be sexually active. This will make your voice deep, put hair on your chest, hair on your lip, I guess hair on your head sometimes. And this is why it is so hard to do research on boys in terms of sex and sexuality, because they lie so much. Because someone has made them think their manhood is steeped in their pants, and not their heart, and in their head. And I happen to work with a boy with, with some boys who are severely at risk, and they believe, as I once did as a young man, that if you are sent to jail and survive that experience, that that will make you a man. Somebody might say, "Ron, absolutely, positively, that is not my son, because he is not on the way to jail." But haven't you seen that all of a sudden, everybody wants to be hard. Everybody wants to be a gangster. Everybody wants to act tough. It's in their music. It's how they think, it's in their arts, and in their heads, as young men. And so I'll speak to you this afternoon the same way that I speak to young men, when I encounter them. And I tell them, "If you think money, and violence, and sex, and jail make you a man, go home and conduct an experiment. Lock yourself in the bathroom, and pretend you're in jail. Take your penis, and two dollars, put in your hand, make a fist, and pretend to be violent. And what you'll find out then, is that these four things won't make you man. They'll make you a fool. Locked in the bathroom with two dollars and a penis in your hand."

Now I really believe that we should not beat up on people in the media, but I think that we need to remind people in the media that you have a wonderful chance to send messages to young people in ways that they would not normally receive them. Because they turn on the set themselves, they sit down themselves, and they basically, assign themselves the time and the space to sit and watch your program. And in the confines of that program, we find that it's very important that you send them an important message.

It is important to understand that manhood is a social function. It is something that you do. It is not based on anatomy And so we teach young men that you were born with a penis, you'll live with your penis, and if you're lucky, you'll die with your penis. But having one will not make you a man. The same thing with girls, that because you have hips and breasts, that's not going to make you a woman. That manhood and womanhood are both social functions. And that which you do as a man is defined by the needs of your people, such that if you don't meet the needs of self, of family, community, and the world, you cannot call yourself a man. It's the same thing for girls. You cannot call yourself a woman, if you don't meet the needs of self, of family, neighborhood, and the world. And so it becomes important to teach young people that manhood is a social function.

It is something that you do, and that which you do as a man is defined by the needs of your people. It also, then, becomes important to teach people that birds teach birds how to fly, and fish teach fish how to swim, and it's men who teach men how to be men. And so it becomes important that we began to understand that we access boys to positive role models who could show them what it means to be a man. And the information that we got downstairs from the Under Secretary was very, very important. I would bet a dollar that the medium age of young black men, young Hispanic men in South Central Los Angeles is about 15 years old. And they don't have skills, they are not schooled, they can't find jobs, and so what do we have in the community? We have chaos that would rival the Middle East. The only thing they don't have is nuclear weapons. That's the only difference. And so the same problems that we're talkin' about in the world, are happening in our own back yard. And I know when I work with young men, and sign them back into school, and support them, and help them stay in school, and when I take a young man, and show him what it means to be a man, and then teach him what it means to be a father, the last thing in the world he wants at 17 years old is another baby. So we had 105 young men in this program, all teen fathers, all between 14 and 19, no repeats in three years. We didn't have the money to follow up on them for the last seven years, but when I see them on the streets of Los Angeles, one of the things I find out is out of the 105 boys that we worked with, none of them who I've met with have had a second child.

In any society, it is the adult that represents the marriage between wisdom and youth. And that marriage is forged through a process called rites, R I T E S, of passage. And so we take boys, and we teach them what it means to be a man. I'm going to share with you this afternoon just the first rite of passage, because it ties in to what we're talking about. It ties in to what the young men told you downstairs. The young men said very clearly, '"Don't make it seem so easy." And this is critically important. Because one of the things that we do when we're younger is that we make life easy. Disneyland, or the Sonny Fox Show. They're lots of fun, and so we want to be a part of that. But when we begin to embrace what it really means to be a man, and embrace real life, the first lesson that you learn, as you become an adult is that life is hard. It's hard for everyone, whether you're black, white, red, brown, or yellow, male or female, it's a struggle from womb to tomb. From the time you start this life, until the time you end this life, it's a struggle. That's why our parents said, "If it ain't one thing, it's another." Because life is hard. For those of you who work with young people around birth control and sexuality, the example that we use for them is this: it comes straight from science.

In the average emission of sperm from the male body, you have 300 million sperm. But when they land in the vagina, half of them die, because life is hard. The other half, because there are no boats, no trains, no planes, have to swim upstream. And as they swim, they become tired, and homeboy sperm number one turns to homeboy sperm number two, and says, "Hey. I'm gettin' tired." And homeboy sperm number two says, "I understand. I'll see you later. 'Cause life is hard." When the sperm approach the egg, they know, they begin to nudge one another out of the way, because they know innately that it takes but one sperm to form union with the egg for life to begin. When that union is formed, the sperm and the egg come down the fallopian tubes, and nestle in the wall of the uterus, and approximately nine months later from that time comes a child. And we tell the young men in the group if you don't know, check with the mothers of your children. Or check with your own mother. The pain that a woman will endure to bring life into the world has been said that it's akin to the, the pain of death. So from womb to tomb, life is a struggle. The other thing that this does, that is very, very important in America, that has to do with population.

If you don't tell children the truth about life, we are helping to trap them in their mistaken notions about life. I work with poor black boys, and I was one of them who thought that there was something magical that happened with white men, or white males. That there was a special school, or a special meeting where they got special things, because they were in charge, they were all on the Supreme Court when I was a kid. They ran Congress and the Senate. They were the Presidents. So there had to be a place where white men went to get breaks. Okay?

And so, in my program, when I began to work with mixed groups of kids, one of the things I had to do, because they did what kids normally do, the black guys sat over there, my white guys sat over there, my Hispanic guys sat in the middle, and my black guys said, "What are these white guys doin' here? They don't have problems." Because in the mind of a young, poor black man, young white men don't have problems. Because what more could you want to be in America than young, white and male. My young white guys said, "Watch these young black guys, they're probably in gangs. Probably have guns, and knives, and nuclear weapons." Both my young blacks and young whites said, "Watch those young Hispanics, 'cause they'll steal your car. And if you drive a Nissan, they'll turn it into a Chevrolet and put nine people in it, and drive off." And so I had to explain to them that life was hard for everyone. And when you do that for young people, it allows you then to give a specific message to a particular group.

I could turn to my young black men and say, "'Listen. You live in a country that has not resolved the issue of race. And so that will be one of the mountains that you will have to climb in this life." I could turn to my young white men and say that, "You are a group of young men in America that are, are ignored. Because yes, you're young, yes, you're white, yes, you're male, but you're poor. And so you'll never see yourself on 'Nightline,' you know, 'Hi, this is Ted Koppel, with the program about the poor young white guys.' No, because you're ignored in America." So it becomes to establish that life is hard for everybody, and then give a specific message to those who need it. Under the personal rite of passage, once we establish the idea that life is hard for everyone, what we then move to, is to do this. Is to answer the question, "Well, how do you get through a rough life?" Number one, you need a sense of self esteem. And self esteem, of course, if how you feel about yourself. It's the most important factor in performance. But where does it come from? Number one, it comes from your relationship with God. One of the things that we have to do is we have to sit down and say, and say very clearly, that we're not talkin' about religion.

But if you're in this room, and you're an adult, you've gone through an experience in your life where you found yourself at two or three o'clock in the morning, flung out on the couch at your house, asking yourself, "God, what am I supposed to do with my life?" And that if you work with poor people, whether they're black, white, red, brown, or yellow, one of the things that you will find out is that most of them believe in God. We're not talking about religion. I don't care if you're a Catholic, Muslim, or Jew, I don't care if you throw salt over your shoulder and run around the house backwards. I'm talkin' about where you go when there's nowhere to go. And part of our job to work with at risk people is to access them to all of the resources in their lives that will help them make their lives positive and productive.

Because someone has got to tell at risk kids the truth. "Your parents are people. And people are not perfect. So in some ways, your parents will let you down. Your school is not perfect. The government is not perfect, and in some way, will let you down. But you are linked to a force that most of us call God that won't forsake you, won't let you down, won't let you go, and every step that you take to improve your life, that force will be there with you." It's very, very important. Because wherever you find crazy kids, look for crazy adults. Because kids don't come here crazy. And so it becomes important to access them to the resources to make their lives productive.

Secondly, self esteem comes from your connections. And so we have them examine their connection with mother, and father, and sister, and brother, and their friends. And tell young people the truth. If your friends drink, you're going to drink. If your friends have sex and don't use birth control, you're going to have sex and won't use birth control. If your friends are in gangs, you're going to be in gangs, because in real life, if you run with dogs, you catch fleas. And so it becomes important to look at your friends. And a lot of this stuff is important stuff: that is very easily put into, infused into a story line in a soap opera. Because I'm tellin' you I work with guys who carry guns. I work with guys who sell dope. And those same guys watch "As the World Turns." Those same guys watch, who is this guy Carlos? They all like Carlos from some soap opera. I don't know who he is, but they like him because, he, is he here? One Life to Live. These are guys, I'm tellin' you, these are guys that most people would be afraid of, who are rushing home at 1:00 o'clock. Is it right? It's on at 1:00? 2:00 o'clock. Whatever time it is, I know they're rushing home, 'cause they gotta watch Carlos, 'cause they down with Carlos. One o'clock in L.A. So they're rushing home from school, 'cause they're in school from 9:00 to 12:00, and they rush home. He's a bad guy. But he's cool, I understand. And they rush home to watch him. So if Carlos would use a condom, we would get a lot of mileage out of this. It's very, very important. So this thing about connections is very important, because it's through your connections that you see the consequences of life. It's very, very important.

One of the reasons why I wouldn't shoot heroin, is because I saw heroin destroy my community. And so it becomes very, very, very important that they see real life consequence. In fact, I'm in the process now of arranging a trip to take my young men to jail, to show them, "This is where you're going to come if you stay in this behavior." It's very important.

Self esteem is built through achievement. You've got to show people in stories who work. I work with young men who've never seen anybody work. Or I work with young men who are so middle class that they don't want to work, they want their parents to die and leave them everything. And it's very important to show that when you work hard, you feel good. Achievement is important. And uniqueness. When you know so many people are, are, are distraught and lonely, because they have never found out what is special about them. What are your gifts and talents? And I work with young men who are like that. And once we build self esteem, then we work on the self image. When I was a kid, it was said, "If you're black, stay back. If you're brown, stick around. If you're yellow, you're mellow. And if you're white, you're all right." And this still happens. And so it becomes very, very important to show a wide and diverse group of people in these stories, all of whom look good in some way. Self image is important. Once we work on the self image, then we work on the vision. "What do you really want out of life?" And part of that vision comes in part from what we see on TV. And that's not bad. TV is part of the tools that we use to construct our reality. It feeds us information.

So when they come back to me and say, "I want this car, and I want this house," or, "I saw this house on this soap opera, and I like this house," or, "I like this fireplace," it helps them to construct a vision. "What do you really want out of life?" But most importantly, it's not the things that they see, it's the lifestyles that they see. So not knowing who this guy was, Carlos, I said, ''Well, where is he going to wind up based on what he's doin'?' And they told me, "Well, they killed him once, and he came back as a twin brother," or somethin' else, I don't know what it was. They told me somethin', and I said, ''Well, see, he died. And, and he could come back because he's paid to come back next season. If you die, no one's going to pay you to come back."

And so, again, not knowing the character, I asked this very important question: is he at peace with himself in the world? They said, "No, this guy's too dirty. He does too much dirt. He can't sleep well at night." And I say to them, "It's the most important thing in life, is decide, what kind of lifestyle do you want? Do you want to go back and forth to jail? Do you want to die early? Do you want to be hooked on drugs, alcohol or tobacco? Or do you want a lifestyle of peace, joy, happiness, and achievement?" And there must be someone in those soaps who's an honest guy. ''Well, the honest guy finished last." "Keep watchin' the soap. He's going to rise to the top. Because no matter how you shake the bottle, the cream always rises to the top." "Ah, that's not true." "Yes, it is. It's true in soap operas, it's true in real life, because this, the, the guy that's good rises slowly to keep you watchin'.

In the end, somebody shot J.R. In the end, the good guy wins. In the end, in real life, if you stick around long enough, part of winning, is just being in the game." And what I have to teach a lot of the young men that I work with is just to be in the game. That you don't have a chance on the sideline. And once we work on the vision, then we work on the plan. What is the plan to actualize what you conceptualized? You gotta have a plan. And once you have a plan, then you need a discipline. And, and that requires four things. Number one, accept responsibility. Stop complaining, stop whining, stop making excuses. It's on you. Accept responsibility. Two, forestall immediate self satisfaction. You can't always have what you want right now. And not having much of a chance to watch the soap opera, I'm, I'm able to tell them, "I know this guy who's the bad guy doesn't win overnight. He's gotta hatch a plan for you to follow Wednesday and Thursday, and next Tuesday and Friday. He has to have a plan. And you need to have a plan also, which requires that you accept responsibility, that you forestall immediate self satisfaction, and that three, you live in reality." Live in reality. And what does that mean? That means out of 500 young men in my program, all of them tell me they're going to play in the NBA. Every single last one of them. And I have to tell them all the time, "There are only 500 people in the NBA." And I have to tell 'em, "And you, you're four foot eleven, blind in one eye, one of your legs are shorter than the other, how are you going to play in the NBA? Live in reality. You may own the team, but you're not going to be on the team." And so this becomes very, very important. And then, four, one of the important things that we have to have, not only in the, in the media, but wherever young people go and wherever adults go, is the concept of balance. Balance.

To teach young people that you can't play all the time and expect results. That we need balance in life. And that is the personal rite of passage. I leave you with one more thing to share with you that I share with them, that in some way will help you see the impact of your world. Because these young people are part of the 40 million people that watch the soaps. In one part of my program I have students who are in foster care, permanent placement, which means they're never going home to live with their parents. They will turn 18 years old, and they will be emancipated, and have to live on their own. We started out with maybe 100 of them, and this year, we'll service 500 of these young people.

My average student in that program is six to nine years behind in reading. They're between 16 and 18 years old, and many of them read on a second and third grade level. And in the program, because the work that we do started in the churches, now it's all non-profit, we would use the Bible, again, not to proselytize, but rather there's some really good stories in the Bible. And my students would say, "Ron, the Bible. He, they, shalt, unto. Who could read that? And it's boring. Nobody wants to read that." So I say to my students, and I say to you, "Let me provide you with the hip hop translation of the Bible." Because one of the things our students are going to need, that young people will need any place in the world, is courage. Is courage. And this story's about courage.

And it's the story of Moses. And the story goes like this. Again, it's the hip hop translation. God said, "Yo, Moses, come here, man. I want to talk to you." And Moses say, "Yo, what's up?" And God said, "Moses, this is holy ground. Take off those Nikes." Takes off his Nikes, and Moses says, "I see the bush, it's on fire, I feel the heat, but it's not being consumed. Who are you, dude?" And God says, "Yo, check it out. I am that I am." And Moses says, "Well, that's cool with me, homeboy, what do you want with me?" And God says, "Moses, come here, brother. I want you to check this out. I want you to go down in the valley, and tell the Pharaoh that we're not going' for this, we're going to break camp, we're gettin' out of here, we're not going' for this no more, to let my people go." The Bible is real clear. Moses was a punk, a chump, and a coward. He told God, he said, "Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. I know you're God, and all that. You know, you got this bush on fire, but, you know, Pharaoh owns all the lands in the valleys, built pyramids, I can't tell Pharaoh what to do, but I'll tell you what I'm gonna do? Why don't we send Aaron? Aaron has a high top, and a faded pair of stone washed jeans. Why don't we send Aaron?" And God says, "No, Moses. This is my world. Take this rod, and go tell Pharaoh what I said." Now because of his new found relationship with God, Moses had the heart to walk into Pharaoh's house and say, "Hey. Check it out. My name be Moses. And God told me to tell you that we're breaking camp, we're gettin' outta here, we're not going' for this no more, to let my people go. And if you don't let me go, I got a rod from God that'll turn into a serpent, confound your magicians, you better let me go. See what I'm sayin'?"

And I share that with my students to remind them that in real life, there are no commercials, there are no time outs, there are no breaks. You are going to need courage. And it's not gonna come from a beer bottle. It's not gonna come from a cigarette. It's not come from a joint. It's not gonna come from anything that you snort, shoot, puff or sniff. It's gonna come from your relationship to what you deem as most important in your life. And my students look at me and say, "Ron, that story is not in the Bible." And I tell them, "Yes it is in the very beginning of the Bible." And the reason why they're able to understand it, is because I put it in their language. And one of the things that you do every day is you put concepts in their language. I didn't know it before, but I know it now. They watch your programs like some people attend church.

They want to know what's going on with that woman, or that man. I don't know who the characters are. I'm usually at work. But they tell me when I speak to them, and, and how I found out, is I thought they were talkin' about some of my other students. "Oh, you know what he did, he did so and so, and so and so," I'm, like, "What did this guy do?" And they ran down to me what he did. "Who is this dude? Where is he on the rolodex?" "Oh, no, Mr. Johnson, we're talkin' about a guy, Carlos, in One Life to Live. That's how I found out. I found out who was sleepin' with who, who was going' with who. I thought these were girls in my program. And they were very involved, not only with the characters in the story line, but they were involved with the concepts, the lifestyles, the philosophies and the ideas that were behind the stories. And that's why I know that you have tremendous impact on what they do. So, in line with the message that you received this morning from the young men, they said, "Don't make it seem so easy,"

I urge you to look in the context and confines of your own life, and just tell the truth. That life is hard. That for every decision, there's a consequence that we're gonna pay now, or we're gonna pay later. If it's population, if it's birth control, if it's whatever it is that we do, we'll either pay now, or we'll pay later. And if we get that message across to them, that one simple message, that there are consequences for every behavior, we'll have a tremendous impact on them. And I can tell you this in the end. The place that you go to get the wisdom that you use to guide your life is the place that you'll return to.

And so if you're concerned about viewers, if you teach them something, and entertain them at the same time, you'll never lose them. Because they will know where they got the information to change their lives. And I learned that from working with young people, not in my achievements, in what l once thought were my losses. I worked with a young man when he was 17 years old, he'll be 30 years old on September 16. He went back and forth to jail for the first eight or nine years since I knew him. I lost track of him when he got a five year sentence. The minute he got out of jail, I was one of the first persons that he called. And he called me, he said, "Because you were the one that never gave up. You were the one that taught me many of the things that I needed to learn, even when I didn't want to listen." There are young people that are watching your shows, and there are families that are watching your shows, because they don't go home and watch them in a vacuum. This may be one of the few things they do with their parents, actively. And if there's something in that story line that can teach them, that can inform them, that can inspire them to adopt new attitudes, to change behaviors, then we've done more than just entertain them. We've helped them to grow up. And if that can be done, we can all, when the day is through, say that we've done our best. Thank you for your time. [APPLAUSE]