Kwajo Opoku Ware joined Oakland Voices’s Community Journalism Academy in 2024. That same year, he launched The Black Male Journal.
In less than two years, the documentary-style digital platform focused on Black men and boys has grown to more than 14,000 followers across social media.
Each week, Ware creates a “Weekend Briefing.” The series features health, culture, and political updates designed to “keep brothers up on what’s important.”
In a recent video response to singer Akon, who suggested that active fatherhood was a “white man’s thing,” Ware challenged the claim by pointing to examples from African societies where men played active roles in raising children and supporting community life.
“It’s actually the precise opposite,” Ware said. “The reduction of men to ‘providers’ is the real white man’s thing.”
Drawing on history and the anti-colonial thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, Ware argues that industrialization and wage labor narrowed men’s roles to economic providers, or breadwinners, while distancing many people from family, community, and other aspects of their humanity.
Before launching The Black Male Journal, Ware interned with the Commemoration Committee for the Black Panther Party and contributed to The Commemorator, the organization’s newspaper. The experience helped shape his interest in political education, media, and Black history.
Today, Ware publishes profiles and tributes – commemorations – to Black men like MC Hammer and Ryan Coogler while examining issues affecting Black communities through historical research and contemporary reporting.
“I saw failures in how data about our people is collected and reported—particularly the tendency for writers not to disaggregate by gender, effectively flattening the Black experience in a way inconsistent with reality,” Ware said. “The Black Male Journal was founded to address this.”
Ware credits Oakland Voices with strengthening his journalism practice. Through the Academy, he developed skills in news judgment, interviewing, and information curation that continue to inform his work.
The Black Male Journal is accessible on Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
Editor’s note: Views expressed by Oakland Voices alum do not necessarily reflect those of Oakland Voices or the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.
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