Imagine that, a mental health "professional" presenting to an entire audience on Black male mental health and suggesting that the root cause of Black male suffering is their toxic beliefs...
No structural analysis of the condition of Black men and boys, sexual violation, under/unemployment, incarceration, exposure to violence, lack of access to quality healthcare, criminalization of the range of ways Black males respond to depression, anxiety, etc...
A whole Black man "professional" telling what is probably an audience of non-Black people that the solution to the mental health challenges Black men and boys face is simply to *stop tryna be like de white man* 😒😒😒
Do we not think this kind of framing will further exacerbate the harm and disposability Black men and boys face in society? These pathological constructions literally shape the way individuals and institutions respond to the vulnerabilities of Black men and boys.
How does a mental health "professional" complete an entire lecture on Black male mental with no empirically substantiated evidence? But uses excerpts pulled from texts that also have NO citations to "prove" Black males are their own worst enemy when it comes to mental health...
But it's so much more opportunistic and convenient to blame structurally marginalized populations, in this case Black men and boys, for their own suffering, rather that critically interrogate how the State is foundationally oriented to deteriorate the mental health of BM.
To be clear, yes it is important to have disc. about masculine beliefs. But what we ain't finna do is skip over every damn academic journal article that disc. the relationship btw structural inequality and BM mental health, to reductively assert the issue is "yall wanna be WM"
The painful part is that I see these types of mental health "professionals" that demonstrate they have minimal understanding of structure, and traffic in pathological arguments, be applauded as THE experts on Black men/boys and masculinity.
It very much so gives me religious missionary vibes. I meannn, who better to take away, miseducate, and send back to the "heathens" and "savages" to reinforce deviant, deficit, and pathological constructions of Black men and boys...than another Black man?
I mean damn, no discussion of foster care, physical and sexual abuse within juvenile carceral facilities, bereavement and grief after experiencing the repeated deaths of family and friends? Just slides of vibes...(that rhymes😏). But fr i'm hot.
So you mean to tell me that if Black men and boys *think* diff., journal, yoga, manifest, reject western constructions of masc., & read some gender studies texts w/o empirical evidence, their mental health will drastically improve? FULL STOP! You're outside of the scholarship!
Without a drastic shift in the material conditions of Black men and boys and a reduction in the structurally racialized/gendered exclusion they face, we will continue to see them/us battle high rates of depression, suicide, anxiety, dissociation, complex ptsd, etc.
So it is OUR *responsibility*, yes you and me, to challenge this rhetoric when we see it espoused not just by white ppl and non-black PoC, but ALSO BLACK PEOPLE regardless of their "qualifications," if you are truly invested in the well-being of Black men/boys, communities!
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