Stereotypes of a Black Male Misunderstood — My Entrepreneurial Journey

The First Part: Growing up in LA During the 90’s — Rodney King, Langston Hughes and Being Black in America

This is a the first part of a series describing my journey as an entrepreneur.

I describe my background growing up in Los Angeles during the 90's, and some of the early lessons I learned on what it takes to create your own path.

Terence Latimer is a digital marketer and entrepreneur based in Los Angeles. He’s the founder of 360° platform Food Tribe, a startup that works with restaurants and food brands to develop better relationships with foodies.

Terence has 10+ years working with startups on everything from sales development, digital marketing campaigns, to launching new products.

Follow Terence @kingterentius

If you’re reading this, we might be friends — we might not be. We could be perfect strangers.

As you read my story, you’ll learn about me, my background, and will ultimately make your own choices as to where I’m going.

My name is Terence, I’m a 32 year old man living in Los Angeles.

I love food, my friends and family, and having a good time doing things like diving under water and jumping out of planes.

My passions include joking around, eating really good food, and improving myself.

I’m a small business owner and entrepreneur, and as such, I spend the majority of my time looking to solve problems while questioning social norms.

Entrepreneurs are natural problem solvers: we bring our unique point of views to challenge the status quo.

My point of view has been deeply shaped by my experiences as a black male living in America.

Diversity and inclusion is a theme that Americans have been dealing with for quite some time.

So when it came time to choose my career and decide on a future, I chose to use my talents to work on complex problems like food inequality and perceptions around cannabis use.

I’m a black male in America.

Despite skewed perceptions, I’ve never been arrested, I don’t have any kids, and I’m not a drug dealer.

Far from it.

If you’d ask my closest friends about me — they’d tell you I’m a pretty big nerd.

And like all nerds, I tend to be awkward.

Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Calvin & Hobbes were my best friends growing up.

My parents worked a lot, and as such, my brother and I were responsible for keeping ourselves occupied.

Which for a lot of kids growing up in the inner city, meant cheap and easy distractions meant to keep you preoccupied, but weren’t conducive for personal growth.

Hanging out on the corner wasn’t going to fly in my family.

A leadership style that would make Vladmir Putin blush, my mother made sure to keep my brother and I insulated from a lot of the distractions which would ultimately be the downfall of our peers.

Looking at my circumstances today, I can’t help but credit the universe for blessing me with a life that ultimately, I didn’t deserve.

Which is why I became an entrepreneur.

Outside of the financial freedom I crave, I’ve always wanted to use my skill set to make my community stronger.

I’d like to think that I have an ability to help others better their circumstances, while also pursuing a life that would make me happy.

The path hasn’t been easy.

Developing the skills to get to this point has been a challenge, at all levels.

Whether it meant having to move to a better neighborhood in order to avoid the terrible education my school district said I was entitled to.

Or having to assume an outrageous amount of personal debt in order to complete my higher education and thus, become a more attractive candidate.

Oftentimes, it meant the dealing with the underlying (and sometimes blatant racism) experienced in the workplace.

I consider it a small miracle that I’ve lasted this long.

My community has been displaced.

The descendants of slaves, African-Americans are among the most oppressed and disenfranchised groups in modern history.

If you look at the numbers, the lingering effects of slavery and racism in America has traditionally meant that the odds were stacked against us.

Which is a narrative I’d like to change.

Not just for my community, but for all communities.

My entrepreneurial path has been as a result of wanting to build bridges.

The first part of my life I grew up with my single mom and brother.

We bounced around different neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles: Gardena, to Hollywood, to Mid-Wilshire area.

Usually, we lived in a two bedroom apartment, where my brother and I would share the small room.

We fought. We hooped, we broke stuff.

We had a lot of energy.

A lot of my drive come from those experiences with my brother — we competed with one another.

For food, for space, and for our moms attention.

We also each other’s biggest supporters.

A neighborhood bully, our mom on a rampage, or an awkward situation, we had each other’s backs.

We still argue — but normally, its trash talk on the basketball court.

What we didn’t know at the time, was that our entrepreneurial paths were being forged.

I’d like to think that a lot of the dogfight that comes so natural to both of us- comes from the way we were raised.

To give you some background, our mom Angie worked hard.

Really hard.

Like 3 jobs hard.

Despite the odds, she is fluent in 3 languages and holds two masters.

Angie hustled us out of our 2 bedroom apartment in Hollywood to a 3 bedroom, 2 story condo in affluent suburban neighborhood Brentwood.

We lived behind a golf course.

My brother and I used to cut through the gopher hole infested back 9 — where he would tell tales of underground rattlesnakes on our way to Barrington Park for some pick-up basketball.

On the way back, we’d pick up golf balls and other trinkets, something to keep us occupied for dinner, where Angie could be found whipping up a crazy vegetarian concoction — like lima beans covered in something weird.

When your kids, your family is your universe.

You watch the moves your parents make expectantly, waiting to see how “this job,” or “that move” was going to affect your day to day.

Living in the moment and dreaming about the future as you learn how the world works.

New moments created with open, yet uncomprehending eyes.

New school districts, new friends, and new opportunities.

That’s surface level stuff.

Behind the scenes, you’re not always aware of how of how parents choices are going to either set you up for success or failure.

In our home, there were two rules: get your education and do your best. Anything less than that, was unacceptable.

A lot of Angie’s choices were rooted in those philosophies, and in order to instill those values in us, she had to make a choice to accept them for herself.

She worked 3 jobs so my brother and I to had the chance to live in a good school district.

A good education meant opportunity.

Our end of the bargain meant that we were going to use our talents — whatever they may be — to offer the best of ourselves to the world.

I recently started reading Cornel West’s “Race Matters.”

“West’s subject matter ranges from the crisis in black leadership and the myths surrounding black sexuality to affirmative action, the new black conservatism, and the strained relations between Jews and African Americans. He never hesitates to confront the prejudices of all his readers — — or wavers in his insistence that they share a common destiny.”

In addition to having the academic pedigree of a President, Cornel West is one of the best orators and writers of his generation.

He also happens to be outspoken, pissed, and black.

I empathize: I’m always black, however I’m only sometimes pissed.

In his classic, he writes,

“Afrocentrism, a contemporary species of black nationalism, is a gallant yet misguided attempt to define an African identity in a white society perceived to be hostile. It is gallant because it puts black doings and sufferings, not white anxieties and fears, at the center of the discussion. It is misguided because — out of fear of cultural hybridization and through silence on the issue of class — retrograde views on black women, gay men and lesbians, and a reluctance to link race to the common good — it reinforces the narrow discussions about race.”

Afrocentrisim is a new term for me on paper, however in practice, something I’ve seen in my community during my experience growing up in Los Angeles during the 90's.

The Rodney King beating + Los Angeles riots were indicative of an underlying sense of hopelessness in my community.

In my experience, unspoken rules exist to guide behaviours, relationships and interactions.

“Black Card Revoked” is a show on BET that discusses some of those rules.

The show offers a lighthearted test of knowledge of pop culture, entertainment, historical facts and politics from an black perspective.

The truth of the matter though, is that there ARE unspoken rules in the black community — and if you’re not playing ball, you’re not “black.”

The descendants of American slaves are disenfranchised — at odds with an unfair system which required some rule breaking to navigate.

The rule of thumb being, “white authority figures won’t treat us fairly, so we have to police ourselves.”

That might mean learning to deal with fists rather than getting a teacher involved.

Or it could mean keeping quiet about abuse.

‘Stop snitchin’ is a phrase popularized by Cam’Ron and the Diplomats in the early 2000’s.

When pressed on the issue in a 2007 interview with Anderson Cooper, he was asked point black by Anderson Cooper if he would tell police if a serial killer was living next to him.

His response: “I would probably move,” but he wouldn’t inform the police.

While I disagree with Killa Cam’s response, in my humble opinion, its indicative of feelings of hopelessness common amongst black people in America.

For too long, it’s been: figure out your own solution to the problem, because figures out (white) authority, either don’t care, are unware, or simply won’t do anything in order to address.

Maintaining one’s black identity has sometimes been a form of protest, whether silent or outspoken.

Groups and factions of the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam reflected the best, and worst of these values.

At best, according to West — the best of Afrocentrists puts “black doings and sufferings, not white anxieties and fears, at the center of the discussion.”

Like most kids growing up, I was extremely curious.

“Mom, what’s glass made of?”

“What’s the difference between Central Standard time and Pacific Standard Time?”

As a curious kid, I also wanted to know about my history, so I asked questions.

Questions that didn’t receive a response would continue to get asked.

If answers never came, I sought them out myself.

My entrepreneurial path was literally developing in front of me.

So, as a youth living in Los Angeles’ “inner city” — whatever that means — I wanted to know, why life seemed to be so damn hard.

My black identify stems from my family, observing their experiences versus the ones we saw on ABC’s TGIF every Friday night.

Perfect families going through silly hijinks with a lesson to be learned at the end: Urkel gets the girl or Corey and Topanga finally end up together.

That shit wasn’t my experience at all.

My parents weren’t together, so that nuclear family stuff went out the window.

Lesson to be learned?

“Finish your damn homework before I get home tonight. Ask your brother if you need help.”

Representations of what life should be like, wasn’t a reality for me and my family.

And I wanted to know why.

So I read a lot.

At bedtime, I’d take the book from my mother’s hands and say, “I’m reading to you tonight.”

It started with picking books from her collection.

I read classics by James Baldwin and Alex Haley as early as 9.

A typical latchkey kid, I spent a lot of my free time wandering the rows at our local libraries.

I drank books, with my favorites being greek mythology, comic books, and eventually, cookbooks.

I read novels and everything in between.

Growing up near Oakland in the 70’s my mother was exposed firsthand to the Black Panther movement.

Not the militarized, terrorist group that the media wanted to portray, she witnessed a movement focused on self-love.

She oftentimes tells me stories of the Black Panthers hosting community breakfasts for the kids in the neighborhood to make sure they made the most out of their days before heading to school.

One of the smartest women I know, my mother constantly reminded my brother and I that as black boys, we were going to have to play by a different set of rules.

As black boys, we were going to have to work harder than everyone else.

Standard values like work ethic, competency and self-sufficiency weren’t enough — we had to be excellent if we wanted to get out alive.

So it should come as no surprise that my brother and I grew up fiercely independent — outside of the pure necessity of the matter.

Because she worked so much, that left a lot of time for my brother and I get to get into trouble, which wasn’t going to fly in our household.

So she kept us busy by developing our work ethics.

Riding public buses alone, cooking meals for the family, learning how to do laundry — skills I learned and started developing at the tender age of 8.

That was the first part.

The second part of this series coming soon.

Be sure to follow me on Medium for the next post in this series.

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