Research and synthesis
Bringing primary sources, movement history, African American Studies, and research methods into a doctrine readers can inspect and challenge.
Author · Editor of Record · Publisher
Tyler Burns
A Black writer, researcher, educator, and community advocate working at the intersection of African American Studies, psychology, political education, and collective power.
The governing question
The question is not whether Black people possess pride. The question is whether pride can be disciplined into institutions, continuity, and power.
The writer behind the work
Rooted in Black study and public responsibility.
Tyler Burns is a Black writer and researcher from Westchester County, New York. Before the age of ten, he had traveled through most of the United States. That early exposure to different regions, communities, and social conditions helped shape the national perspective he brings to Black life and political education.
He holds degrees in African American Studies and psychology, along with a supplemental African American Studies Skills Certificate. His academic work connects Black history and political thought with psychology and research methods, with a central concern for how knowledge becomes practical capacity.
His service includes work at AHF’s flagship location on Sunset Boulevard, teaching children through the Theodore Young community program, and helping distribute free phones to Black people experiencing homelessness through California’s Affordable Connectivity Program while also working with the Salvation Army. He also helped raise more than $40,000 for Black women refugees in Ethiopia and Sudan.
Tyler has appeared in public debate on prominent YouTube platforms including Jubilee. Through Afro Sparks, he writes about Black love, Blackness, masculinity, culture, political life, and the work of building a people. He created and publishes The Pro-Black Standard as an editorial synthesis of primary sources from Black nationalist, Black Power, Pan-African, and African liberation traditions. The project does not claim that he invented those traditions or that every movement agreed on every rule.
Why I created the Standard
To make pro-Black commitment answerable to practice.
Black people are frequently asked to declare what we believe, but less often given a common structure for testing what those beliefs produce. I built this doctrine to make the question concrete: What conduct strengthens Black life, knowledge, ownership, culture, institutions, continuity, and power?
The forty rules are intended as a demanding starting point for study and accountable practice. Every rule publishes its standard, explanation, example, failure test, evidence classification, and primary-source foundation so readers can examine the reasoning for themselves.
The work
Study must leave something the community can use.
Political education
Turning broad commitments into standards, questions, examples, and failure tests that can support serious individual and collective study.
Youth education
Teaching children through the Theodore Young community program and treating education as a responsibility to build memory, skill, confidence, and continuity.
Public writing
Writing through Afro Sparks about Black love, Blackness, masculinity, culture, political life, and the conditions required for collective power.
Humanitarian action
Helping raise more than $40,000 for Black women refugees in Ethiopia and Sudan, connecting stated values to material support.
Direct community outreach
Working through California’s ACP program to distribute free phones to Black people experiencing homelessness while also serving alongside the Salvation Army.
Editorial responsibility
Authority is named. Evidence remains open to inspection.
Source selection, interpretation, classifications, organization, and the exact wording of this first edition.
The historical claims, principles, programs, arguments, and disagreements preserved in the cited record.
Version 1.0 has not completed independent external review, and no external scholar or organization is represented as endorsing it.
Current status
Internal red-team review is complete. Independent scholarly review and the reader pilot have not yet been completed. Corrections and amendment proposals are governed by the published review architecture.
Read the complete review and amendment process →Continue into the record