At the Corner of Progress and Peril

For all the diversity within their numbers -- as in this group gathered at Bunker Hill Elementary School in Northeast Washington -- black men in the United States often feel a connection to, and responsibility for, one another. For the stories of the men pictured, see interactive feature. (Michel du Cille and Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)

While the wide-eyed parodies are widely condemned as racist, in their heyday they helped shape society's perception of African Americans. Similarly, some scholars say, popular music -- including hip-hop -- and sports play an outsized role in forming contemporary notions of black men.

"When you look at American popular culture, it is really driven by hip-hop, and young, African American men are the face of hip-hop," says S. Craig Watkins, a University of Texas researcher. "It speaks to the fear-fascination relationship the nation has with black men."

* * *

The nation's most accomplished black men usually have a story to tell about what they overcame, who influenced them, how they survived.

Edward T. Welburn, chief of global design at General Motors Corp., says his interest in cars was stoked by observing his father operate a West Philadelphia auto repair service.

Guidance counselors at John B. Slaughter's high school in Topeka, Kan., laughed aloud, Slaughter said, when he told them he wanted to be an engineer. They had never heard of a black engineer, and they told Slaughter he should pursue a trade. Slaughter ignored them and graduated from Kansas State University in 1956 with a degree in electrical engineering, launching a career that took him to the helms of the National Science Foundation, the University of Maryland and Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Colin L. Powell recalls that he had only a 78 average at Morris High School in the Bronx and was considered a late bloomer at City College of New York, but the Army's robust affirmative-action program accelerated his rise through the ranks.

"It doesn't bother me if people say I made it with affirmative action," says Powell, who joined the Army ROTC in 1954, just six years after President Harry S. Truman ended segregation in the armed forces, and eventually became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "All that matters is what you do afterwards. When I heard complaints, I'd say: 'It doesn't matter if it was affirmative action or not. I got it, you didn't.' "

Powell, who is now active in an array of mentoring programs, offers his own history to young black men who worry about the limitations others may place on them. Your achievements, he tells them, need not be accompanied by apology.

"Of course you're offended," he says. But "you can choke with something in your craw. I've seen too many people grind themselves to death worrying about what other people say about them. Frankly, we don't have time for that."

And yet even among the highest achievers, doubts sometimes intrude.

Curtis Symonds, 50, was one of the youngest African Americans to run a cable TV business in the nation in the early 1980s. He eventually wound up at Black Entertainment Television, where he helped expand the reach of the cable network from 18 million to 70 million homes over 14 years.

He left BET a multimillionaire and became chief operating officer of the Women's National Basketball Association's Washington Mystics. He also dreamed of opening Hoop Magic, a $7 million, 65,000-square-foot gym in Chantilly.

Despite his wealth and business experience, the first five or six banks he talked to did not want to touch his idea -- a reluctance that, rightly or wrongly, Symonds laid to the fact that he is a black man. "A lot of those bankers could not see my dream," he says. "All they could see is this black guy who wanted to borrow X millions of dollars."

Symonds got his financing and opened his gym.

Several years ago, Franklin D. Gilliam Jr., a political scientist at UCLA, set out to understand more deeply the perceptions people have of black men. He chose a provocative topic for his experiment: crime. In his test, he showed groups of viewers a mock newscast, which included a short account of a robbery at an automated teller machine during which the victim was killed.

Gilliam manipulated the image of the "suspect" in the newscast, sometimes depicting him as black, sometimes as white and other times not at all. Afterward, the participants were asked to identify the suspect's race. Most of the viewers accurately recalled whether a black or white face was shown. But 60 percent of those shown no image remembered seeing one, and an overwhelming majority of those said they saw a black face. In fact, they had not seen a face at all. To Gilliam, that meant that when people saw crime, they often expected a black man to be linked to it -- not necessarily because of blind racism but because of the images they had consumed their entire lives.

He sees evidence of that in his own life. As a vice chancellor, he is the highest-ranking black man on UCLA's campus. "Within 200 yards of my office, people genuflect when they see me," he says with a laugh. But a few blocks away on the street in Westwood, his colleagues often walk right by him, particularly when he is dressed casually.

"All they see," he says, "is a black male."

Staff writers Hamil R. Harris and Robert E. Pierre contributed to this report.