Beyond the Statistics
January 13, 2026 | By Josh Nixon
Resolved: On why mentorship and voice matter more than ever for young men of color
Pick up almost any book about young men in America today and you’ll find a flood of sobering statistics: falling achievement, social withdrawal, and difficulty adapting to the demands of modern life. From being on the front lines, I can confirm that much of this tracks with what we see and feel in schools. These statistics, however, go from sobering to downright depressing when we narrow the scope and focus primarily on populations of young men of color.
If you work in education, none of this is surprising. In fact, scanning the room as my colleague Ranner Faugas began speaking, I could tell many of the men at our Resolved gathering had heard the familiar “boys are in crisis” monologue before. The challenge isn’t exposure to information—it’s understanding what that information really implies.
As an opening exercise, Ranner offered the room a bet and asked people to raise their hands if they heard a proposition they’d take.
“Imagine I put 100 names in a hat—each one the name of a valedictorian from the class of 2025. You draw one at random. If the valedictorian is a boy, I’ll pay you $200. If it’s a girl, you pay me $100. Would you take that bet?”
A few hands went up. Ranner upped the ante.
“Okay. Same deal, but now if it’s a boy, I’ll pay you $220.”
More hands. More confident this time. More losses. It turns out, for it to be fair—truly even odds—Ranner would need to offer about $233 on “boy” to balance the $100 penalty on “girl.”
Then came the real unbelievable set up.
“What if we made it even more specific? What if the bet wasn’t just ‘boy’—but a black boy? What do you think the fair payout would have to be then?”
People guessed numbers that sounded reasonable—$500, $850, $1,250. Sensible guesses. But not close.
Given how rare that outcome is in the data we do have, you’re no longer talking about hundreds. You’re talking about thousands. A fair bet would likely require a payout in the several-thousand-dollar range.
That opening mattered because what we often lack today isn’t information—it’s true understanding. And the goal of our gathering wasn’t simply to inform, but to do the collective work of making concrete the challenge we’re really up against.
We had funders, educators, consultants, alumni, board members, and more in the room—people coming at the same challenge from different angles. And the most powerful part of the night was what came next: hearing who shaped us.
We asked a simple question: Who had a positive influence on you growing up?
One by one, every person named a man who left an indelible mark—someone who modeled steadiness, care, discipline, or belief at the exact moment it was needed. In those stories, a theme emerged: the unique role that mentors and role models, especially male role models, play in helping young men of color find their footing.
We left knowing each other a little better, and understanding more clearly the forces we’re trying to counter. And from that shared point of departure, maybe, just maybe, we can harness the power of the collective to help our young men beat odds that are far more brutal than they feel at first glance.
