Best Posts in Thread: Brutally honest and witty, 'A Whole New Irving' gives young Black men room to express themselves

This is very true...I know a dude in ATL from Africa who installs cable television...he makes VERY good money, has his own house & car, travels often and has a very nice body and active gay social life...He may not have a "sexy" job but he's still very "sexy" and a catch (that I don't want for other reasons, but that's besides the point). I don't think he even went to a traditional college but he's doing better than people I know who did.

 

THIS!!!

As a 28 y.o. male, I know good and well how much there is an emphasis on teaching kids to pass exams instead of them actually learning the material. I know how much there is of a lack of emphasis on essential life skills in school. We spend so much time on the pythagorean theorem but we don't know how to balance a checkbook or other essential life skills (and other skills for jobs). I have a brother ten years younger than me and I hope that things go much better for those in his cohort than they did for me when it comes to finding work. Sometimes I feel like telling him to get a trade like HVAC or barbering. Quite a few people who go to trade/vocational schools can make anywhere from $40k-$90k (gross pay) depending on what they do and how much overtime they put in.

 

^^ Besides the degree, the main thing in getting hired in anything mostly is the connections. Who you know, not what you know. Even if you have the skill sets you need to get your foot in the door, which is best done by having someone already inside who knows you or knows of you, open the door for you.

 

I know Gen Xers and Baby Boomers give Millennials alot of shit. Full honesty, I do too sometimes but I do feel sorry for them especially for millennial men and especially millennial black men. They are truly a lost generation. They've been fucked over by the decisions and mistakes of the previous two generations. In broad terms Baby boomers, especially black baby boomers partied and got high from 1960s and 90s and left my generation to clean up the mess. Many gen X people just picked up the stupid behaviors of their parents. Party and get high. The way the American economy is set up you now young people are saddled with at least tens of thousands of dollars in debt when they come out of school it's difficult for many of them to get jobs even of they do get jobs they can't afford to leave home, buy cars etc. Many older people can't afford to retire or are voluntarily decided to work way last retirement age which shrinks opportunity for young people. Opportunities for young men are even worse because many male dominated jobs are going away or have gone away due to globalization or automation. The jobs that are left they gotta compete with women or immigrants employers know they can pay those groups less and exploit them more. Black men are the last to be highered if they're even highered at all. If white America had the unemployment rate that young black men have there would be an armed revolt. If I was coming up in this day and age I'd be really pissed.

 

I debated against giving you a lengthy reply of my opinion about this lol

but here's the thing: until today, I actually didn't know who the heck this Kyle Barker guy is. So, there's that....

You and plenty of folks here know that I seek out black experiences whenever I travel or whatever city I am in. I don't turn away the culture. No sir. Black night clubs, black parties, black restaurants in black neighborhoods, majority black cities. I am there



I am also fancy as hell and bougie asf. Just ask @Champagne_Papi. I love me a nice bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, I am a dweller of gentrifying coffee shops, I live in Seattle, I love Coldplay and Maroon 5, I went to a majority white university and have pretty much went to thanksgiving every year for the past 5 years at a white family's household.

 

Wow stereotype much, Nick and Ock? “Kyle Barker”, DMV? Lol

Id hate to see CA become the black gay equivalent of some thug nigga saying, “Only fags/white people read books...”

If anything it’s sad that most of my intellectual convo with other black gay men, even here at CA, are usually the ones UNDER 40, and a lot of gay black men OVER 40 are stuck in some Peter Pan syndrome shit. To be honest, IRL I’d probably have more in common with @ColumbusGuy and @jpo because most Americans, any race and including black folk over 40, don’t have shit going on between their ears.

I applaud the hell out of all the young bros like @NikR @African King @Infinite_loop @Artistic Arsonist who further their education. This is the 21st Century and we need people who are prepared to deal with America’s secular stagnation (that’s another one of those faggy college book concepts popularized by Obama’s boy Lawrence Summers). I don’t look down on folks without a college degree, but in 2018 and beyond your prospects are gonna be pretty dim when Amazon et al can replace mofos EVEN WITH college degrees with AI.

I instantly took a liking to @DreG as a young black dude who could converse about the music of Frank Zappa or the art of Bastiat. “Black shit” is more than video games, comic books, web series, etc. I look down niggas over 40 who can’t intelligently discuss the Harlem Renaissance, the Dow Jones industrial average, or think the beginning and end of black politics is Barack Obama and doesn’t know shit about Barbara Jordan, Richard Hatcher, Coleman Young, Shirley Chisholm or Percy Sutton (and since we got young bruthas here in the sciences, I’ll throw in the names of Georgia Dunston, Ronald McNair and Michael B. Anderson).

Monday morning diva mic drop.

I’m outtie....

 

Hmmm, yeah you def have a very kumbaya view of college...When I was there (many years ago) I saw it not only as a place to network and be exposed to new people and ideas, but mostly a place to learn a skill/trade to make a living. It was a career factory. We had people in the Business school, people in the education school, people in the engingeering school, people in the biology school, people in the communications school, etc...Everyone was learning more in their chosen field to start their careers after graduation (or to continue learning in grad school). Maybe HBCU's are different than traditional State and Ivy League schools. The Black colleges wanted us to get a job, not "learn how to learn," lol.

 

Excellent points. I touched on this before but from my observation a lot millennials, males in particular have been coddled. I blame "helicopter parents" for not teaching their kids the importance of self reliance and the influence of feminism. I see many younger people who can't do basic shit like make a bed, cut grass, change a tire, or tie a tie. Many seem to not want to get their hands dirty or do any physical labor. As far as not having any skills, part of that is the fault of the American education system which no longer teaches skills and trades but only emphasizes book learning and going to college. The school system was like that when I was in school. Many shop classes were being discontinued. Gym classes, art, and music is no longer taught as well in Alot of schools. Many good paying jobs require skills. The path to leaning skills has been severed from formal education. This mainly hurts alot of young black males form poor and working-class backgrounds. Many working-class white males still have access informal networks to learn trades. Young men with no skills are forced to get low paying service sector jobs where they gotta compete with women and recent immigrants. Many these young men end up in the underground economy which often times is criminal in nature which of course leads to contact law enforcement and the prison industrial complex.

 

SO TRUE!!!

As a freelancer, I've never gotten a job through advertising or filling out a job application. All of my work, including the job that got me out here in Los Angeles, was acquired through referrals and/or the relationships that I maintained over the years since college. But those referrals and connections only keep coming because the people see me putting in the quality work, not just sitting back waiting for the opportunities to come as if I were entitled to them.

 

Brutally honest and witty, 'A Whole New Irving' gives young Black men room to express themselves

Millennials have a bad rap. We’ve been called lazy, entitled and so forth – but in reality, I think most of us are exhausted. We’re trying to wade our way through life using rules that rusted over a generation ago, and when we get stuck – which many of us do especially coming right out of college -- things seem hopeless. We get angry, and perhaps we wallow and sink into what we feel is the injustice of it all. After all, it isn’t as if we haven’t done the work.

In his brutally honest and witty debut web series, A Whole New Irving, LA-based producer-director Terry Dawson examines the post-grad struggle from the perspective of a Black young man. Irving (Chase Anthony) is a recent grad who is submerged in debt and barely holding on to his job at a local health food store in Venice Beach. He lives every day trying not to let the bitterness and angst that he feels consume him.



Today more than any other time in history, what we do seems to define who we are. Not having a tangible goal to hold on to as a young, educated person can feel horrible, and those feelings of self-doubt and worthlessness can seep into every aspect of your being. Stretching away from the monotony of Irving's day to day life, A Whole New Irving explores how Irving's present circumstances affect both his mental health and spiritual well being. “Irving was crafted to be a portrait of a young black dude we haven’t seen before–he’s not a rapper, baller, or a thug, but a college educated millennial ‘average joe,'" Dawson explained. "His ‘normalcy’ is what makes him so relatable and realistic, similarly to Issa Rae’s Awkward Black Girl.”

More than anything, A Whole New Irving shows that life can and will come at you fast, and it's OK to be pissed off, but there is also no shame in asking for help -- something Black men haven't been allowed to do historically.

A Whole New Irving premiered June 16th. Four out of the ten episodes slated for Season 1 have already debuted. Fundraising is currently underway to complete production on the final 6 episodes. Watch the first episode below.