"well Melise, all i can tell you , when i come into my riches, I will set you up girl"
my long time girlfriend Debbie/
i just had an hour conversation or more with my college girlfriend.
we ended up falling into a deep conversation. about male mental illness and
overcoming. then i asked her questions, if she felt or observed how prevalent the incidences. i gave her examples of trinidad, and the violence against women, among men, the casual use of the language of someone "tripped" and it is those violent eruptions like volcanoes that get to hand and a lot of times death.
men here, women and children, get slapped, regularly, daily, like nothing. like breathing. she felt it was all over. and common. she is in new jersey. we both come out of new york city. and then i asked her about the incidence of the same mental illness among black women, and how come it is not seen as much, her response was that women do not have the same level of pressures as the men, that the men, as black are seen as threats.
but beyond the threat, debbie felt it was all due to our history, slavery and its residue; you know that whole sexy phrase of post traumatic stress syndrome.
but back to black males being threats. Deb admitted she is not as well read on the PTSD due to slavery or other matters linking the whole phenomenon of this conversation...
it all made sense. she says how she sees it at work...the only men hired and working are effeminate men and if not that, very diminutive slight men. she even called/referred to men on cnn. debbie works in media. abc media.
she talked of a colleague who told her how she wants to be liked,. and it hit another resonance for me. i with my very black self am very much of a threat to all and sundry, white people, the white establishment, black males, and females of all stripes and kind. i not trying to be liked. I trying to find survival, health, wholeness and wellbeing. i from young, was always trying to save myself and by extension, people who found themselves as victims. and me always trying to avoid the sand traps and snares..
it was deep and profound. i then asked her cause in my mind it was a direct link if she thought the effeminizational rise of black males was intentional, poisoned, planned. she was not familiar with that preponderance. my question and position is how come we do not see the same level of boy child male effeminization among the white population? i told her forgive me for sounding like a conspiracy theorist.
i linked it all : that threat of the black male, and the big black strapping black male in particular. and how he is curtailed from a child, sent into the prison industrial system..
and i told her my sandra batie story, how it was my girlfriend Masego who used the term "blackballed" to explain my professional story of being removed as the head runner of a national candidacy to head the Agricultural Economics Lobby of the United States.. My office would have been at the Capitol Hill Building. But due to racism, my consciousness; my awareness. I have always been a threat. In all my profession, I have always been about black people. I arrived to do my PhD wanting to research the robbery of black farmers of their land, stock and resources.
She talked about the two way double edged sword, that people like me, who see, are not as trusting of white people, so we dont open up and that leads them, white folk, to not open up to us. But i think of how one cant help but know the beast you are dealing with an act accordingly.
Then she refers me to Sandberg ? FB's Sheryl Sandberg's book Lean In-- written to tell women how to step in and step front, and how in her book, Sandberg recognizes an element and dynamic prevalent for black people as well, but Debbie tells me Sandberg tells us, "to do it, but be careful how" which is itself an erasure. cause white males dont have to be careful how they do, so why us, same khaki pants restrictions and control.. But it was all deep. Cause I have heard that so much since coming to Trinidad: professionally": that i am aggressive, who do i think i am. and that is the point. I always knew who i was. no one was put here to confine and define me which is totally diametrically opposed to the paradigm of slaves and the enslaves being controlled and defined. I lived and sought to construct a life outside of that.
We, Debbie and I , solved my life puzzle. I been catching my ass cause I am a threat to all and sundry; from family to friends to males to men to professional colleagues. even up to last night when they want to protest at the DR's embassy, I was telling them, what they conceive as the approach aint the tact, it calls for far higher risk and protocols. the pansy placard carrying dont match the bodies of children chopped and arms dangling. not in 2015/
wow. i am relieved, and yet too, still, stunned
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