After centuries of hurt, humiliation, dehumanization and demonization, African-American peoples, in general, and African-American men, in particular, continue in pain, shame, fear and confusion. Though much is discussed in the abstract about this continuing hurt, there is little said or done about African-American men working to heal themselves of this lingering pain. African-American women over the last decade, especially, have been actively engaged in efforts to heal themselves and eliminate a lot of the hurting that has grown from our captivity and its aftermath. With retreats, study groups, spas, counseling, rituals, meditation, support groups, sistahs have made considerable progress in taking the initiative to find ways to discover the source of their hurt and developing ways to eliminate it. Iyanla Vanzant, Susan Taylor, Barbara King, Gwendolyn Grant, even Oprah Winfrey and LaFrances Rodgers Rose (to name just a few) have worked to build strong spiritually based systems to help sistahs regain faith in themselves, in their people and in their God. As a result, the biggest remaining pain that most sistahs endure, as we end this century, are their hurting and unhealed African men.
The Barriers to Healing
A major initiative needs to be undertaken by us and for us to engage in
the kind of self-healing activity that our African women have so successfully
created for themselves. (We don’t want to suggest for a minute that
African-American women stand fully healed from the 400 year assault on our
humanity, but they have at least, begun some of the beginning steps towards
looking for health.) The major obstacle that stands as a barrier to the
healing of African-American men is our failure/fear to recognize that we are
hurting. We are so often blamed for being victims and attacked for the
symptoms that reflect our inner hurt that we have learned to deny our hurt
even to ourselves. Instead we continue to destroy ourselves by self-medication
on drugs, alcohol and other chemicals which dull the pain. We rapidly retreat
from relationships that threaten to reveal our vulnerability, dependency and
need to be loved and respected. We violently attack each other and even our
women as a drama to protest the real weakness and fear that we feel. We
preoccupy ourselves with trivial and superficial issues like what team is
winning, how much horse power is under the engine and play at being playahs
and mack daddies rather than to think deeply and take some responsibility for
taking control of our lives. We embrace the image and the behavior of dogs
willing to be the sex symbol of the society because it is easier to relate
with our smaller “head” rather than our big head. We prefer to be sperm
donors and boast about the offspring we have produced rather than engaging in
that scary and difficult job of being a father to a young boy or a young girl.
Outside Threats
These acts of denial are reinforced by the media stereotypes, the schools,
even our own parents, the encouragement of those unhealed African -American
women and certainly our equally immature brothas and mentors. The idea of an
African man with serious purpose, self-discipline, commitment to building an
“entire village to raise the children,” ruler over his life and honest
about his fears and weaknesses is almost an oxymoron. This kind of man is so
unusual in our communities that we don’t even find fictional accounts of him
unless he is cast as a “nerd,” a “punk,” a “buffoon” or trying to
pass for white. The consequence is that we have only a very few role models of
African-American men who admit that they hurt and are willing to get together
with some other brothas to find out how to stop our very special hurt.
Brothers, Heal Thyself
As African-American men, we need to break away from our routines of
superficial and materialistic merry-making trying to impress each other and
the women who we think may be watching. We are willing to accept anybody’s
definition of what we are because we are so frightened of taking a position,
making a decision and defining ourselves. We need to go into the woods and sit
down with some brothas and learn how to cry and be consoled by each other. We
need to learn how to disagree without being so insecure that we have to become
violently disagreeable. We need to learn to show our hearts to ourselves and
to each other and then we can really reveal our hearts to our women. We need
to cut the “Bs” and acknowledge how frightened we are that we will not be
accepted by the boyz and that the women really will compare us with another
brotha who we fear may be a better lover. We need to take a mirror and meet
the scared little boy looking back at us who fears that he may not be man
enough to defend himself, win a woman’s respect or carve out a space for
himself and his children in this world.