Balance: Advancing Identity Theory by Engaging the Black Male Adolescent

David Wall Rice has written a fascinating book that adds a new dimension to the scholarship on Black men. Not nearly enough study has been done of Black male success, and Rice's analysis of how Black males cope and thrive is an important contribution. (Kevin Merida, managing editor of The Washington Post and co-author of Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas)

In this engaging and overdue work, David Wall Rice develops a theoretical strategy for achieving more respectful and insightful understandings of the situated dynamics and agendas of identity-constitution and identity-maintenance―'identity statis'―of African American male adolescents. With such understandings should come recognition and appreciation of the positive accomplishments and tremendous potential of this much maligned, often troubled, too frequently at-risk segment of the U.S. American population. (Lucius T. Outlaw Jr., professor of philosophy and director of African American studies program, Vanderbilt University)

Balance signals the presence of a fresh voice in the field of psychology and hip-hop culture. David Wall Rice is an intellectual architect of the emerging post-modern engagement of culture studies and the social sciences as they pertain to the African American male experience and beyond. His work is richly informed and authenticated by his immersion in the Morehouse College milieu and offers important insight to all who read it. This is an important book for our time. (Robert M. Franklin, Jr., president of Morehouse College and author of Crisis in the Village: Restoring Hope in African American Communities)

This book presents a masterful discussion of the cultural and racial identity of young African American males. Rice uses a strengths-based approach to explore the concept of human identity through group sessions with six African American male teenagers. The author listens carefully to the voices of these young men as they struggle for authenticity and balance in their lives as they are consistently confronted by negative stereotypes of themselves. Rice provides a valuable analysis of a group rarely understood by most Americans. (Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president, University of Maryland Baltimore County)

The very survival of the black race in America turns on our ability to address and arrest the metastasizing social crisis of the young black male. David Wall Rice in his fine new book helps us to decode and understand the identity issues that have formed at the core of this dilemma, while having us take seriously the heavy responsibility we must share for the safeguarding of our future. (founder and past president of TransAfrica and author of Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from His Native Land, Randall Robinson, founder and past president of TransAfrica and author of Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from His Native Land)

Identity-talk is hard talk. Rice offers us a provocative way of tackling not only the difficult issues around identity formation, he simultaneously reminds us―in a manner that is bold and unflinching―of the tremendous power and resilience of African American men. A wonderful contribution indeed! (Eddie S. Glaude Jr., professor of religion, Princeton University and author of In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America, author, "Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul";William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African American Studies, Princeton University)