Dr. Pierre Johnson, Dr. Max Madhere and Dr. Joe Semien maybe mistaken for thugs by some people but they are board-certified physicians. And the three medical doctors are on a mission to rewrite the narrative surrounding black men and black success.
The men, all graduates of Xavier University of Louisiana, want to change the way the world views black men, especially if they look a certain way, so they are making it their mission to make sure other black men know they can be anything they want to be and they shared their story and also highlighted some of the barriers black men face and how to overcome them in a new book titled Pulse Of Perseverance: Three Black Doctors on Their Journey to Success.
“If we had a dollar for every time someone said ‘you don’t look like a doctor’ we would be billionaires. There is a perception in society that doctors can’t look like us, and we want to destroy that first" They said.
“All of us ‘made it out’ from urban environments because we were naturally driven, but we were still in a transition period in our lives,” they shared of their college years. “The book not only lays out all of our trials and tribulations on this path, but also some of the solutions on what we can do as a community to help change those daunting statistics.”
“We want to empower and inspire all the kids who come from our neighborhoods and who look like us that they have way more realistic options at success. None of those options have to do with what the media glorifies: sports and entertainment,” they said. “Our overall mission is to change the narrative, shift the culture, and redefine the negative portrayal of the black male.”
They went on to say that “the world still views black men in a negative light” and “this is why we can be unarmed and shot like dogs in the street, and a large segment of our society still looks at those situations like we are somehow deserving of that fate.”
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