A project from New Orleans Saints safety Malcolm Jenkins’ production company Listen Up Media, “Black Boys” premiered Thursday on Peacock.
The documentary is executive produced by Jenkins and written and directed by Sonia Lowman. It features interviews with activist and rapper Vic Mensa, Portland Trailblazers forward Carmelo Anthony, two-time Super Bowl champion Greg Scruggs, NFL Hall of Famer Cris Carter, Super Bowl champion Chris Long, sports journalist Jemele Hill and “celebrates the full humanity of Black men and boys in America.”
“So I started my production company, Listen Up Media about two years ago and this was actually the first project that I was able to come on as the executive producer,” Jenkins said. “And I was really excited about the film because it really explores, kind of, the spectrum of the humanity of black boys and black men.
“Understanding that we're not monolithic and really being able to display kind of the fear, the joy, the pain, the love, the creativity that is oftentimes left out in a narrative when we talk about our black boys.
“We're oftentimes, we commodified the body, but completely ignore the minds of black men. And I think the film does a great job of really putting that on display, but also showing people how, especially in the education system as early as kindergarten, our kids are receiving messages about who they are and specifically black boys.
“And that humanity has been under attack since that, since starting at that early age, all the way through adulthood.“
Jenkins said Listen Up Media has additional projects in the works including “Black Girls”, and “In Search of Little Africa”, a docu-series about the history of the Black wealth gap in America that Jenkins is leading in collaboration with the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History at Harvard University.