Damon Young wanted to play for the NBA.
A basketball star at Penn Hills High School, he went to college always having been the best player on the court. But at Canisius College, he saw people who were leagues better than him not planning on playing professional basketball. So he had a choice: devote himself entirely to basketball and nothing else, or find a new path.
Mr. Young, now 36 and living in Uptown, took a path that led him to co-create Very Smart Brothas, an award-winning, nationally recognized blog that probes the black experience through analysis of pop culture, current events and personal stories. Balancing his VSB duties with a contributing editor position at Ebony.com since 2012, he has transitioned from an aspiring basketball player into a full-time writer.
After graduating from Canisius with an English degree, he taught high school English and worked on a college prep program at Duquesne University. After that program was shut down in 2008 due to a lack of funding, he decided to exit academia and try instead to make a living through his writing.
He had been writing on a personal blog since 2003 but had long valued the written word. Starting in middle school, he said, his father helped him with essays for school. He instilled in Mr. Young an appreciation for English, using metaphors and figurative language that expanded his idea of what writing could be.
“I thought, ‘Hey, I could have done that,’ ” he said, referring to occasions when his father would come up with a particularly effective phrase. “So I started to actually do it.”
Through his personal blog, he connected with the Washington, D.C.-based Panama Jackson, who also was a prominent blogger. They both took down their blogs at around the same time in 2008, and from there they developed the idea of creating a group blog.
Thus was born Very Smart Brothas. Posts were receiving hundreds of comments in the site’s first week, buoyed by Mr. Young’s and Mr. Jackson’s respective followings from their previous blogs.
"Pittsburgh isn’t a racist city. But there can be an empathy void."
That commenting community has endured, making VSB a relative safe space for discussion in an often-toxic Internet sphere. A sense of community has developed among the people who frequent it, said Mr. Young. Commenters have gone from virtual to real-life friends, and some relationships have been formed based on interactions on the site.
“There are kids that exist today because of Very Smart Brothas,” Mr. Young said.
“VSB” also has engendered a book and a television pilot, which was never expanded into a series. The book,“Your Degrees Won’t Keep You Warm at Night: The Very Smart Brothas Guide to Dating, Mating, and Fighting Crime,” was published in 2011 and is composed of articles first published on the site as well as material written exclusively for the book. Self-publishing it was an arduous process, and Mr. Young credits the Crazy Mocha on Ellsworth Avenue in Shadyside with its existence.
“I spent probably 150 out of 365 days there. Maybe as many as 250,” he said.
At the book’s launch party, Mr. Young and Mr. Jackson met in person for the first time, after three years of co-running the site. They have since reconnected in person at a February panel on black media matters at Harvard University.
Mr. Young tackles issues on VSB with humor and a marked sense of empathy. He writes about marginalized groups such as women and the LGBTQ community with a respect for the truth of their experiences, often drawing analogies between those groups and the black community. Recent pieces include “The Limitlessness of Blackness,” “It’s Tax Day, So If You Believe in Prayer, Say One for Your Favorite Bloggers Today” and “Dear Black People: Can Someone Please Tell Me What the ’Gay Agenda’ Is?”
Having grown up in East Liberty before it was a hipster enclave, he has written about the black experience in Pittsburgh for the Post-Gazette. His opinion articles highlight the way that black citizens of Pittsburgh are often left to sink, even though the city is supposed to be on the rise. Going to other cities, he said, has helped him to realize that Pittsburgh’s relative lack of diversity has an impact on everyday interactions.
“People aren’t intentionally racist,” he said. “Pittsburgh isn’t a racist city. But there can be an empathy void.”
Sometimes that void can provide inspiration for a VSB post. But he appreciates that he is a unique voice in Pittsburgh, whereas in places such as Washington, D.C., and New York City there are many people trying to do the same thing he is doing here.
VSB is growing, having hired more writers this year, and Mr. Young isn’t afraid of further expansion. He admires what Bill Simmons did at Grantland and wouldn’t mind following a similar path. That website was started as a primarily sports-based blog as an offshoot of ESPN.com, but now runs the gamut from long-form journalism to short, snarky pop culture articles.
Even as Mr. Young expands his audience as a writer, he still sometimes gets reminded of his old NBA dreams.
“People who knew me as a basketball player will come up to me and say, ’There’s another Damon Young who’s about your age, and he’s writing,’” he said with a laugh.
Laura Byko: lbyko@post-gazette.com.
First Published: April 29, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
