Crisis: Black Teen Suicide! Are their actions mirroring our lives and leadership?

Crisis: Black Teen Suicide!

Question: Are their deaths reflecting our lives and our leadership? In response to the Congressional Black Caucus recognizing the crisis of Black youth suicide, my friend Monica Utsey (Sankofa Home School Collective in DC) called for us to get involved! (Black Cacus) Here's my response: Monica, keep tellin' us. Keep reminding us that we are the answer, that meaningfulness comes from our relationships to each other - real relationships. Dr. Amos N. Wilson reminds us that life is most meaningful and powerful when we have stories that create an expanded past and an expanded and meaningful future. He also said that the alienation that leads to such suicide isn't an accident. Two Wilson quotes: "We are alienated so serve aliens," and alienation is the handmaiden of oppression." Our children are reflecting our alienation and our broken stories. Far too many of us show them the empty and meaningless pursuits. They are rejecting them. For life stories to have meaning and power for our youth the stories must extend from the past through the present and extend into the future. Expanded and meaningful pasts and futures are required for a powerful present! Since the future is not here, they will feed off of the stories about the future that we carry and project! We're not a broken people, we just have broken stories. Last chance to sign up for May 11th class! Learn More / Register Short Video Intro: Please share!

We can fix our stories, heal our people and address this crisis. While I applaud the Black Caucus for repeating and amplifying the alarm, if we allow or wait for a governmental (outside-in) intervention, the crisis will intensify or be used to introduce further alienation and misdirection. Some of that is already present in the article. In the 21st century, our mentalities and identity are manipulated neurologically via three strategies. Drug strategies and laser-gene strategies are newest and are cutting edge (more on that another time). However, by far the oldest and most pervasive are the communicative (verbal and nonverbal) strategies that manipulate us and them. Luckily, this is also where we can intervene most. How? By what we model, what we say and the stories that we tell about our people, about the family and about their past, present and the future. Family, don't let this opportunity past. Please don't throw up your hands and beg or even allow others to try to "fix' this. Governmental support can follow us, but not the other way around. In ways too numerous to detail here, this government is responsible for the broken stories and resulting suicides in the first place. Learn More / Register Short Video Intro:

Monica, I love your call for US to be part of the solution. I'll push it further - we ARE the solution. Our children and youth are rejecting the stories we are living and the ones we tell about the past and the future of our people, our family and their roles in it. We need to change those stories. If there was ever a call for us to heal oppression's wounds, this is it. One option is for us to use the ancient Afrikan art of storytelling - intentional, adaptive and powerful. We need storytelling and story-living that heals alienation and replaces those broken stories that tell them that life is not worth living, that the opposition is too much, that we and they are not enough, that failure is imminent and that this precious life is worthless. Unfortunately, telling them that they are good enough and life is worth living, etc. isn't good enough! It hasn't worked.

We'll have to allow the emotion of the story to deliver the moral and the lesson. We'll have to allow the characters of the stories to give them identity and eyes through which they can see a bright future. What's amazing is that these characters will not be Black Panther or Luke Cage (though they have their place). They'll be you and Uncle Hervey, Great Grandma Mary Lee, Aunt Rosie, Granddaddy Simmons, Papa and brother Rashid that you went to high school with. I know. I know. Seems impossible and unlikely. That's part of the problem we don't know how to tell our stories of our lives in ways that are FULL OF MEANING, PURPOSE, DIRECTION. So our youth feed on alien death stories. Want to change this? Come learn how to be a part of the solution and how to take back this ancient tool that we've relinquished. Last chance to sign up for May 11th class! Learn More / Register Short Video Intro: Please share!

Warrior, Healer, Builder, *Wekesa Madzimoyo