In 2022, former NFL player Channing Crowder made a comment on the Pivot podcast that ignited a full-scale conversation on social media about Black male identity. He called Russell Wilson a "square" — and the context was a comparison between Russell and rapper Future in relation to Ciara's romantic history.
The comment was brief. The fallout was enormous. And I think the reason it hit so hard is because it touched something much deeper than football or celebrity relationships.
It touched the question of who gets to define what a Black man is supposed to look like.
The taxonomy of Black manhood:
The word "square" in Black cultural vernacular has historically meant someone who is overly conventional. Someone who does not break rules, who is not street-savvy, who does not embody a particular kind of toughness or edge that some communities associate with authentic Blackness. To call a Black man a square is to suggest, implicitly, that he is not Black enough — or at least not Black in the right way.
That is a deeply problematic framework. And it is one that I think Black men deserve to interrogate honestly.
The idea that there is a single, legitimate mode of Black male expression — and that it tends to cluster around toughness, detachment, and a certain kind of street credibility — is a construction. It is not intrinsic to Blackness. It is the result of a particular set of historical and cultural conditions that have been romanticized in ways that ultimately harm the men they claim to represent.
What Russell Wilson represents:
I want to be thoughtful here because I am not interested in simply flipping the hierarchy — in saying that men like Russell Wilson are better than men like Future. That is not the point.
The point is that Black men should be free to be the full range of who they are without having their authenticity challenged based on which version of manhood they embody. A Black man who prays publicly, who is expressive in his faith, who dresses a certain way and speaks a certain way and builds his life around particular values — that man is no less Black. No less real. No less worthy of respect.
When we narrow the acceptable range of Black male expression, we harm every man who falls outside the narrow version. We tell the young man who loves classical music that he has to choose between his art and his community. We tell the Black professional who speaks standard English at work that he is a sellout. We create impossible choices between identity and belonging.
That is not freedom. That is a different kind of cage.
The version of Black manhood I am building:
I am a man who leads with faith. Who is unashamed of his education, his emotion, or his conviction. Who believes that vulnerability is strength, not weakness. Who moves in spaces from African villages to corporate boardrooms and does not feel the need to code-switch out of his core self in any of them.
Some people might call that being square. I call it being free.
And I believe that the work of #BlackBoyFly is, in part, the work of expanding the imagination of what Black male life can look like — so that every Black boy growing up right now sees multiple models, multiple possibilities, and knows that his particular version of manhood is valid and valued.
You do not have to fit anyone's box to fly.
Define yourself. Fly your way. — Dr. Isaac Yao Addae