While researching and preparing for a Warriors-Healers-Builders Black Male Weekend in DC. for next weekend that we call Black Steel, I'm reminded about how the Black male "health" and "self-care" movements are making us soft, self-absorbed, and how they induce us to surrender to white domination under the guise of taking care of ourselves! Hell, Nawh!
Do we need to take care of ourselves? Yes. Are we wounded? Yes. Do we need to love ourselves, be kind and considerate to others? Take care of those in our charge? Support each other as men? Yes, yes, and much more. We also need to be about power an using it. I'm talking much more than "empowerment" for me "to get out of bed" or "to have the courage ask for a raise," I'm talking about power to control our lives and snatching it from the tyrant's mouth.
Many of you know that I've dedicated my life to helping us heal our wounds. I'm also very mindful about how white supremacy falsifies our consciousness, our learned emotional responses, and our best efforts.
When "healing" invites us to ignore that we are healing and building to make us and our families and communities and people better fighters to remove white people and others from power over us, it's collaboration. Stop it!
Yesterday it was Grier and Cobb's "Black Rage;" today it's "Black Pain." Yesterday, it was the pain inflicted by oppression, today, the focus is the pain we inflict on ourselves - as if the two are not connected.
Yesterday they were shouting "anger management" at us. Now, many of us have become unwitting agents promoting pain management, self-actualization, and self-care like - "cross something off your to-do list," "eating breakfast mindfully" - without any aims or "treatment" to prepare us for the necessary revolt against oppression - in business, education, economics, etc.
Too many of the helper (professionals, storytellers, gurus) ask that we accept our socially subordinate position and "make the best out of it." It's warmed over Eurocentric "therapy" directed at Black men - 21st-century "Draptomania." Psychic bondage. Healing our pain can be a slick vehicle for promoting Eurocentric individualism, hedonism, elitism. Here's some self-care advice directed Black men: "Pack a sweet note in your lunch," "say "I love you" in the mirror." The ancestors, the community, the family, our people are subordinate to "self-love" as if you can love yourself outside of that love.
When "healing' teaches us that the *BEST* we can do and all we really need to do is to get out of the bottle, get off the drugs, stop killing ourselves, pull up our pants, be positive, write in a journal, express our emotion, not discount or dominate our women, chant, pray, observe a flower, yadda, yadda, yadda, it collaboration. Stop it! While needed, these are not the best; they are the minimum.
When "healing" teaches us that "success" is going to college, getting a good job, or gaining notoriety in this society, it's collaboration. Stop it. At best, they can be a means to success.
When "healing" teaches us that our previous ills, personal violations, or being born of a poor social condition, etc. will haunt us for the rest of our lives, and the best we can do is to hold on to a ledge of "normality" to keep from falling back into a psychic and social abyss, it's collaboration. Stop it.
When "healing" teaches us to use everyone else's historical and cultural experience and wisdom as the basis for our healing, it's collaboration. Stop it.
When "healing" teaches us that our psycho-social issues are just like everyone else, it's collaboration. Stop it.
We do need to heal in this time of crisis. Some brothers already are, but not in some apolitical environment.
I'll see some of you in DC on Feb 22, 23rd. Interested?
There are only a few slots left. Register here:
http://ayaed.com/bsdc/
There are only a few slots left. Register here:
http://ayaed.com/bsdc/
Comments
Post a Comment