As the lead researcher guiding the 2025 update of We Dream a World titled, Our Dreams Won’t Be Deferred: Reclaiming Progress for Black Men and Boys in an Age of Retreat, I spent months studying 15 years of progress and setbacks that reminded me of something frustrating yet straightforward: you cannot solve what you refuse to count.
Across the report, we document areas of progress for Black men and boys. Over the past 15 years, targeted investments have yielded significant gains, particularly in education. But even as we highlight this progress, the data itself kept raising a deeper question for me: Who becomes invisible when the numbers aren’t disaggregated?
On paper, the outcomes for “Black students” appear to be moving in the right direction. But gender gaps are persistent across racial groups, and data on nonbinary and gender expansive youth is virtually nonexistent. When race and gender aren’t reported together, we end up with partial truths that mask the challenges facing Black boys in particular.
One example from the report still sticks with me. The Department of Education requires states to report high school completion rates, but not by sex. That means the nation has no official graduation rate for Black boys. In the few states that did break the data down, we found a nine percentage point gap between Black boys and Black girls graduating on time. When only race is reported, the higher rates of Black girls obscure the real, ongoing struggles Black boys face.
This isn’t an abstract issue for me.
Years ago, I enrolled my children in a wealthy school district with a 99 percent graduation rate, a seemingly “safe” choice for any parent. Yet that same district repeatedly failed to support my disabled son. When I dug deeper, I learned that the impressive graduation rate didn’t apply equally. At the time, African American students graduated at significantly lower rates than their white peers, and data for Latino students like mine didn’t exist at all. The system looked successful from afar, but the closer you got, the more children you saw slipping through its cracks. My son was nearly one of them.
Behind every percentage point is a child, a family, a community. Data should reveal their realities, not erase them. Without racial, gender, and ability-disaggregated data, and without equity impact analysis, the experiences of Black boys and young men are flattened. Solutions become generic. Systems stay comfortable. Lives remain misunderstood.
Through this process, I came to see these gaps for what they are: not accidents, but choices. Choices about whose lives matter enough to measure. Choices about which children deserve to be seen clearly.
Intersectionality isn’t optional. It’s the only way to tell the truth.
Our dreams won’t be deferred — but our data systems still need to catch up.
