Redefining Black Masculinity and Investing in Boys: Jerome Hunter on The Mother’s Justice Show
Jerome Hunter (left) and Omari Salisbury (right) sit in the Hubbard Radio Seattle studio in Bellevue on Monday.
Jerome Hunter, an educator, speaker, thought leader, and Seattle School for Boys co-founder, recently joined guest host Omari Salisbury on The Mother’s Justice Show for a conversation on healthy masculinity, middle school boys, violence prevention, and community care.
Broadcast live from the 1150 KKNW studio in Bellevue, Washington, the discussion moved between data and lived experience, policy and personal narrative, painting a layered picture of what it means to support Black and brown boys in a time of rising youth violence and deepening social disconnection.
Rising Youth Violence and the Urgency of Care
Salisbury grounded the discussion in current conditions in Seattle. Citing recent data released by the Seattle Police Department, he noted a 63% year‑over‑year increase in crimes committed by 13‑ to 17‑year‑olds, visible not only in headline‑grabbing tragedies like the shooting at the Bite of Seattle Festival, but also in the countless incidents that never make the news.
The segment framed Hunter’s work as part of a broader response to this spike in violence: an investment in boys’ social, emotional, and academic development as a form of prevention and community safety, not just personal growth.
Jerome Hunter sits in the 1150 KKNW studio in Bellevue, Washington on Monday.
From the Classroom to a National Platform
Hunter described himself as a teacher at heart, detailing more than a decade in the classroom, primarily in middle school, and the moment when data and daily experience collided. While working in both Federal Way and Seattle Public Schools, he repeatedly saw disparities appear along predictable lines:
Students of color faring worse than their white peers
Disaggregated data revealing Black and brown boys as the group most in need of support
This tension pushed him deeper into mentorship and systemic work. In 2014, Hunter joined the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, mentoring former students and discovering the transformative power of “holding space” for boys:
“I ended up mentoring a lot of the boys that I actually had as students and saw the benefit of holding space for them to be their full selves, talk about how they're feeling, what they were doing, and then how it all related to not only the academic piece but also life,” Hunter said.
Between 2019 and 2023, Hunter founded and operated the Seattle School for Boys, serving sixth through eighth graders and centering healthy boyhood as the foundation for healthy manhood. That work, along with his broader philosophy, led to a TED Talk in 2023 at TED headquarters in New York, where he presented a framework built on communication, confidence, and community.
Rethinking ‘Unhealthy’ Boys: It’s the Soil, Not the Flower
When Salisbury asked Hunter on what “unhealthy” boyhood looks like, Hunter resisted language that pathologizes kids themselves. Instead, he redirected attention to the systems around them.
“When a flower doesn't bloom, you change the soil, not the flower,” he said.
This metaphor captures Hunter’s strength‑based, asset‑based approach. Rather than labeling boys as “broken” or “problems,” he asks what strengths they already possess, and how adults, schools, and communities can cultivate those strengths.
He linked many visible behaviors to neglect, contextualizing it through the lens of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs):
ACEs include being unhoused, experiencing divorce, abuse, or addiction, and other forms of instability.
These experiences cut across all socioeconomic groups.
According to Hunter, neglect, not simply poverty, is often the strongest predictor of how children respond to adversity.
This neglect, he noted, can show up in two seemingly opposite forms: not enough care and overindulgence without real connection.
Salisbury echoed this, pointing to youth who “run the house” with every material advantage yet still end up in the same systems as those who grew up with far less:
“There’s lots of these kids who are cycling through here… where the parents have given them everything… and they are in the same cell with the parent who totally neglected them,” Salisbury said.
Jerome Hunter sits in the 1150 KKNW studio in Bellevue, Washington on Monday.
Social Emotional Learning Is Not a ‘Nice to Have’
Hunter described an educational landscape where the pendulum swings between an intense focus on standardized test scores and renewed attention to social emotional learning (SEL). He argued that this is a false binary.
“Academics and social and emotional learning are inseparable. Schooling is inherently social, and so… you're going to have emotions attached to it,” he said.
In his view, SEL should not be treated as an extracurricular add‑on:
It must be embedded into the curriculum, not tacked on as a one‑off program.
It should be part of the “texture and DNA” of the school day.
Done right, it can mitigate test anxiety and support both well‑being and achievement.
Hunter urged schools to reevaluate their mission statements and measure not only academic outcomes, but also how well they’re meeting their stated values around care, community, and equity.
Middle School as Violence Prevention: ‘Wet Cement’ Years
One of the most urgent themes of the conversation was middle school as a frontline for violence prevention.
Hunter argued that supporting boys early, especially in the middle school years, is a form of violence prevention and community investment. His case rests on three main points:
Resource Gaps in Middle School
Elementary schools often benefit from higher parental involvement and early childhood support.
High schools (9–12) are treated as high‑stakes environments where grades, college, and work dominate.
Middle schools, by contrast, frequently lack consistent resources and intentional support, even as demands on students grow.
Rapid Developmental Change
Neurologically, middle school brains are growing very quickly, comparable to when they were infants.
Physically, students are undergoing major growth spurts.
Psychologically, they are pushing for autonomy without yet having the full skill set to manage it.
“Wet Cement” Metaphor Hunter described middle schoolers as “wet cement”:
The impressions made during these years can shape their worldview and life trajectories.
With intentional care, consistent support, and positive experiences, communities can help set a strong foundation.
Without those, youth may be left to “weird experimentation” that can lead to behaviors communities later scramble to correct.
Salisbury connected this framework to his own observations of youth sports. The Seattle Mariners’ community programs, he noted, specifically target middle school because that’s where they see the biggest drop‑off in engagement with baseball and softball, even when interest is strong in elementary and resurges in high school.
Jerome Hunter (left) and Omari Salisbury (right) sit in the 1150 KKNW studio in Bellevue, Washington on Monday.
The 3C’s: Communication, Confidence, Community
At the heart of Hunter’s work is his 3C’s framework, first widely shared in his 2023 TED Talk, “3 Skills Every Middle School Boy Needs.” On The Mother’s Justice Show, he unpacked the model as both a road map for schools and a toolkit for communities and families.
1. Communication
Hunter describes learning as inherently social, which makes communication a foundational skill, not a bonus. He encourages schools to:
Hold regular circles, daily or weekly, where students learn to speak, listen, and check in with themselves and others.
Normalize talking about feelings, needs, and boundaries, so boys can advocate for themselves, ask for help, and understand how their actions affect others.
This work also pushes back on “alexithymia,” the inability to locate and name emotions, a pattern that research shows is particularly pronounced in boys and men due to socialization.
“If you can name what’s going on, good or bad or neutral, you then now have agency to determine how you want to respond to that,” Hunter said.
2. Confidence
Hunter distinguishes between real confidence and the performative bravado that often passes for it. Many boys, he said, develop a “false sense of confidence based on social approval,” acting a certain way to win attention from peers, even when it doesn’t align with who they want to be.
To build deeper confidence, he advocates for experiential learning, including fieldwork and community projects, guest speakers and real‑world exposure, and opportunities to explore interests beyond stereotypes.
At the Seattle School for Boys, this looked like a culture where a boy could play football and Dungeons & Dragons without crossing social lines or facing ridicule, a direct challenge to narrow stereotypes about Black and brown masculinity, he explained.
3. Community
The third C, community, pushes back on the myth of pure individualism. Hunter sees schools as places that must explicitly teach:
Interdependence, not isolation
Cooperation over constant competition
The reality that success is built with and through community supports: families, peers, educators, faith spaces, teams, and neighborhood institutions.
The framework is not limited to Black boys, but Hunter is clear that it grows out of his direct work with Black and brown youth and the systemic barriers they face.
Growing Up Black in Spokane: Dual Consciousness and Spatial Awareness
Hunter’s commitments are rooted in his own upbringing in Spokane, Washington. The son of a father who migrated west from Shreveport, Louisiana, during the Second Great Migration, and a mother from Idaho, he grew up as an interracial Black child in Spokane in the 1980s and 1990s, a context that forced early awareness.
He recalled moments of warmth and acceptance, but also overt racism, including an incident on Martin Luther King Jr. Day when a truck drove by and hurled racial slurs at him and his younger brother as they played catch in their yard:
“I was probably 12 and just didn’t understand why a grown man would say those things to two Black kids,” he said.
Those experiences pushed him toward W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of “double consciousness,” the tension between how society sees you and how you understand yourself. Hunter said this shaped his self‑awareness, his ability to read a room, and his long‑term focus on education and identity.
Moving to Seattle for the University of Washington and Seattle University, he found a different demographic landscape, with more Black people and a greater sense of cultural familiarity. But racism did not disappear, he noted; it simply took different forms, often more institutional and less overt.
Parents as Experts, Not Afterthoughts
Salisbury asked about the role of parents, especially in communities where families are often blamed when systems fail.
Hunter was clear: parents and caregivers are experts on their own children. He called for:
Authentic partnerships between schools and families
Institutions working with communities, not “for” them
Recognition that families know their contexts, histories, and needs in ways no outside institution can
At the same time, he noted that families also benefit when they understand educators’ expertise, enabling mutual respect instead of one‑sided authority.
Jerome Hunter sits in the Hubbard Radio Seattle studio in Bellevue on Monday.
What’s Next for Jerome Hunter
Hunter closed by sharing what’s on the horizon:
He is currently writing a book titled Boys in the Middle, which expands on the 3C’s framework and offers concrete strategies for schools, communities, and families during the critical middle‑school years.
He continues to teach aspiring educators in the College of Education at Seattle University, helping the next generation of teachers integrate care and equity into their practice.
He is developing resources for schools and families, to be made available through his website, jeromehunter.com
He remains focused on partnering with schools and districts to better support Black and brown boys, and to rethink education in ways that center care, compassion, and humanization.
“How can we rethink how we go about educating our students with a little more care and compassion?” he said.
Listen to Hunter’s full interview on The Mother’s Justice Show here.
Tune in to The Mother’s Justice Show Mondays from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. on 1150 AM KKNW.
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