Flipping the script on Black men’s pain
David Grant, master of social work alumnus. Photo credit: Ian Patterson.
Growing up Black in Scarborough, David Grant often heard the term “angry Black man.”
Grant investigated this stereotype through Ryerson’s master of social work program. His major research paper (MRP), “They Don’t Really Care About Us,” examined the lives of previously incarcerated Black men in Scarborough and found that their heightened exposure to racism and violence led to hypermasculinity and displaced anger towards their community and themselves. For his research, Grant received the Faculty of Community Services’ Dean’s Graduate Writing Award.
As an extension of his MRP, Grant delivered a TEDxRyersonU talk entitled “Black Men’s Pain,” in which he connects slavery’s dehumanizing effect on Black people to the all-too-common “school-to-prison pipeline” for Black men.
Currently, Grant is a family service worker with the Toronto Children’s Aid Society (CAS), gaining valuable frontline experience before pursuing his PhD. He plans to become a professor to show the next generation that they too can reject the “angry Black” script and write their own stories instead.
In addition, he is a facilitator at Caring Dads, a group that aims to teach dads who have been the perpetrators of domestic violence, about the impact of the violence on their children and facilitate these groups with dads who are involved with CAS.
Grant was also a panellist in November 2018 at Masc Off, a panel about gender-based violence and toxic masculinity. The event was coordinated by Ryerson’s Consent Comes First office and Student Affairs Storytelling.