Skip to main content

"Healing," "Self-Care" or Surrender?

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.
Self-love comes first, you say? It's a Eurocentric mind trick. There is no "self" without community. Plus with all this talk of "sweetness" and "love," Black anger has no honored and active place in our healing. If we want to heal, we better make a righteous place for feeling anger, processing it and acting on it.
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/

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

White Images in the Black Mind - The Color of Christ and White Supremacy

Wekesa O. Madzimoyo Take a look at Roland Martin's take on the white Jesus issue. Here "To whom much is given....” This one is for my Christian family and friends who may have slipped back into the "color of Christ doesn't matter" thinking. I don't have this discussion much anymore. Dr. Yosef Ben Jochannan settled it for me 40 + years ago, and I've not looked back since. (Dr. Ben's link at the end of this post.) In fact, I've moved forward. But this post isn't about me or religion, per se, and it's certainly not about getting you to change your faith. It's more about "racial scripting" than scripture. It's about religion as a tool for white supremacy and the domination of our people - African people. It's about our believing that God's loves for us (and God's presence in us) is not dependent on us bowing to or ignoring images of white Jesus/God/angels. It's about us caring about the psycholo

Falsification of African Consciousness - Weekend Academy Special

Web-Conference Weekend  Academy Special! AYA offers many courses designed to prepare adults and youth for advanced historical, social, and psychological analysis and synthesis. Useful for in both the university of life and academic universities, these courses will meet together on the weekends on starting Saturday, Sept. 27th. Register today! Due to popular demand, we'll offer two special courses as a part of our national web-conference-based Weekend Academy so that student who attend other institutions, home school students, and adults who work can partake. The two courses are: Falsification of African Consciousness based on the work of Dr. Amos N. Wilson The course is an introduction to Amos N. Wilson - his mission and his works. The course explores:  How  Eurocentric history-writing rationalizes and justifies European oppression of Afrikan peoples How that process creates a  false Afrikan consciousness - one possessed by an alien consciousness that serves

2020 Community Warrior-Healer-Builder Love Honoree: Mama Nobantu Ankoanda

We are proud to announce the 2020 Black Love Day Community Warrior-Healer-Builder Love Honorees. In this oppressive environment to fight, heal, and build are revolutionary acts. One of the three Community Warrior-Healer-Builder Love honorees is Mama Nobantu Ankoanda Before you can say “lets,” Mama Nobantu is in the van saying, “C’mon, let’s go.” Before you can say, “I need…” Nobantu has opened her house, extended her hand and her heart. She’s a Warrior-Healer-Building Mama! Her children grew up knowing that their mother belonged to our community. Mama Nobantu Ankoanda is an educator, teacher, former principal and founder of Afrikan centered community-based institutions in Palo Alto, California and in the Atlanta, GA Metro area. Mama Ankoanda is also Dr. Mama Nobantu. She holds a doctoral degree in Education, a Master of Arts degrees in Elementary Education and a BA in Social work. She’s earned this Black Community Warrior-Healer-Builder award because she’s been spreading love