Where Is Phylicia Barnes?

Seventeen-year-old honor student Phylicia Barnes disappeared December 28th while visiting her sister in Baltimore, Maryland. If you saw her at any point on that day or afterward, please call the number above (toll free). Make the call anonymously, if you must, but make it. Her family is in anguish. You can find more photos of her here.

He's Sorry, Alright

Last Sunday, I wrote about White violence against people of color. This week's news has been full of stories about former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, who offers a stellar example of just what I was writing about.

I don't remember when I first became aware of Burge. It was some time ago. And I was disgusted.

As a Chicago Police Department Detective and Commander in the 1970's and 1980's, Burge, now 63, oversaw the torture of more than 200 Black and Latino "suspects" (one as young as 13-years-old and all of whom "confessed" to the crimes with which they were charged), using techniques that included, but were not limited to the repeated use of a stun gun; hitting the victim in the head with a telephone book; applying electrical current to the victim's anus or genitals using a cattle prod, violet wand or antique crank telephone; putting plastic bags over the victim's head so he couldn't breathe; burning him with cigarettes or hair dryers; and putting a gun in his mouth, all of which are methods of physical and psychological torment that leave few if any scars.

The Real Truth Behind the Murder of MLK

"The issue is injustice...Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness, let us stand with a greater determination, and let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be."

This quote is from a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., to the sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, the day before he was shot and killed by an off-duty Memphis police officer.

You hadn't heard? You find it horrible to imagine? You don't want to believe me? Check out what Dick Gregory and Steve Cokely have to say about it (prepare to be seriously shocked, depressed, disappointed and angry):

Tit for Tat?

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." -- Mahatma Gandhi

It's been a rough week for America. And those of us who write for publication find ourselves in a bit of a bind. Political correctness has taken on a whole new meaning in the aftermath of the shooting spree by a mentally ill young man in Arizona a week ago yesterday. Six people are dead; thirteen more were injured. And even Sarah Palin (ever the clever) was reduced to defending her "don't retreat, re-load" rhetoric as the perfectly reasonable "political debate process" in which all elected officials participate (proving yet again that she believes no one else is paying any more attention to reality than she is).

Fwoan at For Want of a Nail discussed last week how the incident is now being used to suggest that any criticism of the Powers-That-Be may incite to violence -- using a tragedy to further entrench Power and push any fascist agenda. Jack Crow at The Crow's Eye reminds us in the wake of President Obama's oration at the funeral of nine-year-old Christina Green, one of the shooting victims, that the collective Presidency since 9-11 has been responsible for the deaths of many innocent children in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (at least), so Obama's words are disingenuous at best. And, frankly, I think about violence so much -- because we are surrounded by it 24/7 -- I sometimes worry I'm going to succumb to compassion fatigue and be found in a closet somewhere with my thumb in my mouth. Even if I'm not bleeding, I ache for those who do.

Study Malcolm, Garvey, Huey

Five years ago today, I created this blog on the socially-constructed, political notion of race. I've had a few two-month hiatuses during that time and I've seen some of the best come and then go. And I understand. But for whatever reason, I can't seem to walk away.

At five years, it's the longest commitment I've ever had. Longer than any job. Longer than any marriage. And if I don't stop soon, I may not be able to.

Last week, I got a notice of "unusual activity" on my gmail account and was blocked from entering it. They asked me for a phone number in order to send me a "verification code." More than a little wary and basically unwilling anyway, I sent out some questions to a computer savvy young person I know. But before I could get an answer, I discovered that my blogger account was also blocked.

I went into such an instant tailspin that I gave them the phone number without another thought. Hell, I'd have given them my bra size if they'd asked for it. You're my peeps. And the thought of being pushed into never-never land without a chance to say good-bye was more than I could bear.

The day may come, Faithful Readers, but it looks as if they'll have to carry me out of here. Everybody has a niche. And I'm busy on a number of fronts. But this blog is apparently my foxhole. And after five years, I may be chained to this laptop. I hope so.

So I'll go into the next five putting Dead Prez in the spotlight tonight as they tell us why it's important not just to know, but to study the truths handed down by those who went before. Upward and onward. There is nothing to fear but fear itself.

Haiti Suffers Yet While the World Watches

A year ago today, Haiti -- already being described as a "failed state," where tens of thousands of children were living permanently and unprotected in the street -- was hit with a devastating earthquake. All over the world, people shook their heads in disbelief at Haiti's new "misfortune." A hundred thousand people died. At least a million who formerly had a stable and decent life suddenly had nothing. And those who had nothing to begin with found themselves in even greater misery.

Last night, I watched The Battle for Haiti, the PBS Frontline special on the 5000 prisoners who escaped en mass from the main prison in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake hit. I hadn't heard anything about this previously, though I am more knowledgeable than most in the U.S. about Haiti, in general. And I did, in fact, already know that the criminal justice system in Haiti is beyond broken. As the Frontline special reports, men and even young boys who are accused of something as small as stealing a chicken can sit in literally hellish conditions for five or six years waiting to go to trial, if they don't have the money to navigate through the corruption.

Nevertheless, even the ones who weren't criminals when they were locked up were, I'm sure, "different" when they unexpectedly escaped their horrible bonds. And now they live -- and operate -- in the tent cities with all the other folks who are waiting for something besides more military forces to show up.

Passin' It On

It's been quite some time since I published a list of links to various things on the internet that I think are worthy of considerable note for one reason or another. But as I cleaned up my blog site recently (discovering in the process, by the way, much to my chagrin and disappointment, that some of my favorite bloggers are focusing elsewhere these days), I came across the following I thought you might find interesting, as well:

1) As an appetizer with just the right amount of spice, read what Elle at Elle, PhD, has to say in response to CNN calling "ethnic" beauty the new "It" factor for models.

2) Then, head on over to My Name is JuJuBe, to check out what Joanna, a relative newcomer to the pack I read when I can, writes on the difference between "ignorance" and "bigotry". I liked this one so much, I posted it to my list of Some Basics, which are permanent links always available to bring any new readers up to speed on what I believe to be true.

3) Sister Toldja at The Beautiful Struggler takes on Time Magazine's review of a new book on biracial identity and demonstrates why we're gonna hear more about and from her in the future, both on her blog and more than likely, I predict, on television, as well.

4) And while we're talking about books, I was very impressed with how GrannyStandingforTruth connected New York former Governor David Patterson's commutation of John White to the book Uncle Tom's Children by Richard Wright. Good stuff.

5) Finally, just because I love it so much and because I will miss thefreeslave and his blog (unless someone knows how to connect me to a new site), I am winding up with what was apparently one of thefreeslave's last posts: Black Power. Again, added to my Some Basics list to your right. And forever, loved and appreciated. Wherever you are and whatever you're doing, Free, you da man.

They're Voting Today In Sudan

While I was working toward my Master's Degree at Western Illinois University, I was engaged for a while to a man from Southern Sudan. With two youngsters to raise, a graduate assistantship to fulfill and the rigors of full-time graduate course requirements, I had precious little time to call my own. But what I had, I gave to hanging out with people from other countries, especially from Africa, as about a quarter of the students on that campus were from somewhere other than the U.S. and, as far as I was concerned, this was an opportunity I couldn't pass up. It was very exciting and eventually even gave birth to my thesis, which was on Social Distance Between Africans and Black Americans and the Attitudes of White Americans Toward Both Groups.

I met Martin through a couple from Botswana. He was massively intelligent and exquisitely articulate. And his voice was like velvet, barely above a whisper. Our conversations were beyond seductive to me, so hungry for news of the real world outside our borders, so ravenous for analysis of power relations more in depth than what I was wont to get on average. I often stopped by his apartment for tea on my way home from class in the afternoon. Sometimes he would cook a chicken. We ate with our fingers and, for special occasions, peanut soup with fufu. He told me tales of his homeland, of acres and acres of mahogany; of hundreds of oil wells already dug and capped, waiting for later; and of chunks of gold lying on top of the ground in a region where people didn't value metals as much as family. But most often, he spoke of missing home.

2011 Role Models #3 & #4: Eduardo da Silva & Leonardo Bento

I thought a while about this one before I decided to post it. One has only to scan the right side of my blog to see that I have a sensitivity to the way police power is all too often used in this country and in the world. When push comes to shove, unless we're talking about serial murderers, my sympathies tend to lie, more often than not, with the underdogs -- and they're usually the ones doing the running rather than the chasing.

Nevertheless, I was moved recently when I saw a New York Times article with the video above about what's been going on the last couple of years in the City of God.

I remembered the location, 15 miles from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, because it was the subject of an award-winning film released in 2002. It was painfully dramatic, but even more dramatic was an hour-long special feature documentary I also watched while I had the DVD. Gripping was not the word for it.

2011 Role Model #2: The Rabbis for Human Rights

Many African-Americans in the United States live in what might as well be called a war zone. Unexpected violence waits around every corner in many, if not most, poverty-stricken communities as some residents are forced to engage in dangerous practices in an effort to pay the rent or alienated souls prey on others because of the demons that torment them or law "enforcement" officers, often twitchy with fear themselves and in advanced stages of White Supremacy sepsis, lash out randomly at unsuspecting "suspects" powerless to protect themselves.

A friend who lives on the border between Texas and Mexico recently told me that her region also has come to look like a war zone of late, with pit-bullish browbeaters wearing various kinds of uniforms attacking people at will and thinking up "explanations" later.

But we know that neither of these situations is precisely what is being experienced in other parts of the world, too often bankrolled by our own hard-earned wages (and I can't begin to tell you how it goads my soul to work a day every week for the U.S. government so that they can spend my money on killing people I don't know and don't want to kill). The war zones this nation's government is not bombing personally (like Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan, just as examples and just at the moment -- it could change in a heartbeat) depend on a continual flow of U.S. dollars and weapons and influence to keep the process escalated and dangerous on both sides and endlessly, infinitely profitable to corporate coffers. There's a reason why we strike terror in the hearts of humans all over the world and terror is not the same as respect.

In any case, since the subject of this blog is the socially-constructed, political notion of "race," I don't write often about other things, no matter how strongly I feel about them. Like the situation in Palestine, where Zionism (a political movement, not a faith) is trying to wipe out the Palestinian people completely -- as in genocide. This week, however, I'm posting about role models -- people who are choosing to demonstrate to the rest of us how one person can make a stand, alone if need be, just because they know it's the right thing to do -- and for 2011 Role Model #2, I've chosen to feature any member of the Rabbis for Human Rights organization. As you'll see from the New York Times op-ed video above, these valiant individuals put themselves boldly in harm's way to make even the tiniest difference in the lives of others to whom it means so much.

2011 Role Model #1: Deonte Bridges

Yesterday I promised I would spend this whole week writing about people who make a difference because they have decided to do what they can wherever they are with whatever they have. I'm calling them "role models" for the rest of us and they represent a range of individuals who are at different places in their lives, but they are all showing us how it's done.
I'm starting off with Deonte Bridges, a young man who graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, Georgia, last May. During the commencement exercises, Deonte gave the address captured in the YouTube video above.
So often, we feel as if the obstacles we face as individuals and as a society are just too massive to overcome. Sometimes we get tired of trying to rise above whatever is pushing us down. Shaking our heads in frustration, we're quick to say "somebody ought to do something," adding "and as soon as I..." (fill in the blank here), "I'm gonna step up and..." (fill in this blank, too).
But that's not how it works. Life happens. And we don't get to wait. We're presented with an evolution of realities on a daily basis. We don't have to kill every dragon. We don't have to win every battle. We don't have to bankroll an army. We just have to do the next right thing as we go along. If we're honest with ourselves, we know in our gut what the next right thing is. And if you're not sure, take a couple of minutes and listen to what Deonte Bridges -- our 2011 Role Model #1 -- has to say.

Speaking Truth to Power

According to the Roman calendar, this is the first day of a new year. A fresh start. A day to shake off the excesses of the night before and the successes or heartbreaks of the previous 365 days to move forward, hopefully upward, in the struggle to survive as individuals and as a human race. It is not a mistake that I am here at the computer at this moment on this morning. It is a commitment to myself. And to you. And to all those deep in the dungeons of the Powers-That-Be. Whether those dungeons be in buildings or camps, in our minds or in shallow mass graves.

I'll spend the rest of this week, I promise, writing about people who make a difference because they have decided to do what they can wherever they are with whatever they have. This is an unapologetic attempt to encourage, to inspire, and to strengthen as we face what lies ahead, I'll admit. God knows, I need it. And if you're reading this blog on a regular basis, I suspect you need it, as well. Not everybody finds what I write edifying.

Still, on Christmas eve, I looked into my bathroom mirror and said to myself out loud (hey, I live alone, I can do this stuff) "I am going to do whatever makes me happy every day for the rest of my life. And that's my Christmas present to me."

Georgia Prisons: Locked Down for Liberty

A few weeks ago, I was asked to write a short piece for a book about an underground newspaper collective I used to belong to back in the early 1970's. The paper was originally called the Penal Digest International and was touted as "the voice of the prisoner." The collective was also the base for the National Prison Center, the National Prisoners' Coalition, and the Church of the New Song, all of which get mentioned here and there on the internet still, but not very correctly and mostly pretty negatively, despite (or maybe because of) the fact that the Church of the New Song managed to win its suit against the prison system all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Anyway, in the process of writing, I was caused to take a walk down memory lane and I'm having trouble finding my way back.

One reason is that, as I point out in the piece I wrote, I never really left the "prison abolition movement" even when I burned to a crisp and walked away from the PDI et al. During that time and ever since, I've written letters to the editor, newspaper columns and articles, and spoken at every opportunity on what prisons are and what they represent in a country that uses them to push a White Supremacist and reactionary political agenda as a capitalist enterprise.

Dr. Ron Walters Passes the Torch

A few days ago, I was informed that, on September 10th of this year, while I was busy, busy, busy and paying little if any attention to the outside world, a preeminent leader and scholar, a lovely and humble man, and a man who affected me greatly in the short, but intense time we spent in each other's company, left me -- and the rest of us -- behind to muddle through without him in the world.
Dr. Ron Walters spent 25 years as a professor and chairman of the political science department at Howard University before going to the University of Maryland, where he directed the African-American Leadership Institute. He also taught at Syracuse and Princeton Universities, was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a former member of the governing council of the American Political Science Association and a member of the Ralph Bunche Institute at City University of New York’s Graduate School and University Center. He played a principle role in both of Jesse Jackson's ground-breaking runs for the Presidency. He wrote a string of books and articles examining with elegant clarity such issues as how a Black Presidential campaign might be victorious (as it was while he was thankfully here to see his ideas successfully implemented). And he socially and intellectually reproduced himself for decades wherever he made an appearance to teach, to speak, to organize or to learn -- because he was always learning.

So, how did someone like me in the wilderness of Louisiana get to spend three-days straight with such a person? I was introduced to Dr. Walters on a poverty tour of the Mississippi Delta organized by Gathering of Hearts founders Antoinette Harrell and Inez Soto-Palmarin in February of 2009. It didn't really make a dent when I was told in passing he was going to be there. In all honesty, I didn't even know who he was and was only introduced when we were already in the SUV on the road.
Antoinette had engineered the five-hour trip north to make sure Dr. Walters, she and I would be riding in the same vehicle. And the more we talked, the more I realized I was in the presence of a truly great intellect, even without reading his bio first (which I most certainly would have done had I fully realized the position I was going to be in). The way it was, I wound up spending most of the next three days studiously nodding in silence, gasping with astonishment at his bold analysis and straight-forward statements, or running my mental legs off trying not to fall flat on my face in comparison -- often on live radio.
We were up late, rose early, went without breakfast, grabbed food as possible, stood interminably in the rain, and proceeded from one planned activity to another without pause or (it seemed at the time) consideration. Yet Dr. Walters, who was years older than me and was, I suspect now, already gravely ill, never complained, never flagged, never missed a cue to be attentive or reach out graciously to those we were "visiting," and never failed to amaze when the mic was live.
Not only did he rise to the occasion himself, but he inspired me to stay strong, focused and effective, as well. His public statements were so blatantly and urgently honest that they forced me to new heights of honesty and urgency myself, which as those of you who know me can attest, is really saying something. Now, knowing that he died of cancer less than two years later and knowing the kind of fighter he surely must have been, I cannot but imagine that he was already very ill, standing there in the rain, which serves to teach me yet another lesson in dignity and purpose even now.

In any case, others who knew him better than me have weighed in here and here and here (and believe me, that's not even the tiniest tip of the iceberg). The YouTube video above tells the story of how and how long ago he started his odyssey to model unflinching commitment to justice. And the YouTube video below demonstrates how elegantly and pointedly he addressed even the thorniest of questions. If after seeing this post, you want more, you may be interested in viewing a longer presentation he made at Florida Atlantic University last year.

Beyond that, I just want to say here that I am proud to have shared a moment in time, a car seat, and a microphone with this brilliant and exemplary man. I could not on my best day hope to hold up by myself the torch he has passed on, but together, you and I and all of us who believe as he did -- that it's not enough to ponder, one must face reality, tell the truth, and act to bring about change -- can do him proud.

Free the Scott Sisters!

A few weeks ago, syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald raised his voice about a case that has been crying for justice from coast to coast the last couple of years. It has to do with a pair of sisters in Mississippi (yes, I know, but that doesn't make it okay) who've already "served" more than fifteen years in prison for supposedly setting up a robbery that injured no one physically and netted a whopping $11 for the five people involved (that's two dollars apiece, folks). He wrote:

"Let’s assume they did it.

"Let’s assume that two days before Christmas in 1993, a 22-year-old black woman named Jamie Scott and her pregnant, 19-year-old sister Gladys set up an armed robbery. Let’s assume these single mothers lured two men to a spot outside the tiny town of Forest, Miss., where three teenage boys, using a shotgun the sisters supplied, relieved the men of $11 and sent them on their way, unharmed.

"Assume all of the above is true, and still you must be shocked at the crude brutality of the Scott sisters’ fate. You see, the sisters, neither of whom had a criminal record before this, are still locked away in state prison, having served 16 years of their double-life sentences.

"It bears repeating. Each sister is doing double life for a robbery in which $11 was taken and nobody was hurt. Somewhere, the late Nina Simone is moaning her signature song: Mississippi Goddam.

"For the record, two of the young men who committed the robbery testified against the sisters as a condition of their plea bargain. All three reportedly received two-year sentences and were long ago released. No shotgun or forensic evidence was produced at trial. The sisters have always maintained their innocence.

"Observers are at a loss to explain their grotesquely disproportionate sentence. Early this year, the Jackson Advocate, a weekly newspaper serving the black community in the state capital, interviewed the sisters’ mother, Evelyn Rasco. She described the sentences as payback for her family’s testimony against a corrupt sheriff. According to her, that sheriff's successor vowed revenge."
Want to know more? The best rundown I've seen to date was written by Richard Prince and published on Black Agenda Report.

Carolina Chocolate Drops

Every once in a while, in the process of everyday life, you can run across a combination so pretty, so beguiling, so talented, sophisticated and smart that all you can do is kick back and grin. The Carolina Chocolate Drops have that effect on me. Even if you don't like "country" music, you really owe it to yourself to open your mind for just long enough to watch this YouTube video. These folks make me glad mine isn't the last generation.

"Tis The Season To Be Jolly

Ho! Ho! Ho! And a Meeeerry Christmas! Maybe the economy is shot to hell, but even the Aryan Brotherhood is in a festive mood this holiday season. Still, I can't help but wonder what kind of human(?) mind wakes up one snowy morning in early December and says, "I think I want to build a snowman that looks like a KKKlansman on his way to a lynching!"

AOL calls it "weird news," but Mark Elieseuson of Hayden, Idaho (near the old Aryan Nations National Headquarters -- why am I not surprised?) was quoted as saying he doesn't get why it was a problem. That was right after the police informed him that he either had to knock it down or be arrested for "creating a public nuisance," which covers things "offensive to the senses."

Flipping the switch is easy on this one. Can you imagine what the cops would have done if a Black man in Detroit put a snowman out in front of his house with a sign reading "Kill Whitey"? Uh-huh. No question about it. That's why jails have basements.

Anyway, Bubba...er...Mark knocked the snowman's head off and took the noose back into his garage, I would assume, since you can see the garage walls covered in the photo below with what I must imagine are garish white power flags. Wotta guy! I wish he was MY neighbor. Come to think of it, I live in Louisiana and he -- or somebody very like him -- probably is. Sigh.

In any case, since this guy obviously wants so desperately to be noticed, some would suggest that the best way to handle the situation is to ignore him. I think not. I think he and all the others like him should be taken very, very seriously. They mean harm to the rest of us. So it's important for them to stay clearly identified.

So What If I'm Crazy? by Ruth C. White

At the risk of appearing to poke my nose in other folks' family business, I'm going to post here today a short piece by Ruth C. White, an African-American social worker and professor who has something to say to the Black community that I have thought for years needed to be said. With all the stereotypes African-Americans have to confront on a daily basis, no matter how "well-adjusted" they appear to be, I can only imagine what the fear of outing oneself as having a mental illness on top of everything else must be like. Additionally, White Supremacy encourages African-Americans to see as "crazy" what are, in fact, reasonable concerns about and responses to institutionalized oppression. So it must be very hard to figure out just what is what. Nevertheless, my experience has been that what I won't face WILL smack me in the back of the head at some point. With that in mind, I present:

So What If I'm Crazy?

by Ruth C. White, PhD, MPH, MSW

I am a strong African American woman: The kind that aced two challenging concurrent grad school programs while pregnant, spent years of duty as a single, professional mother thousands of miles from family, backpacked alone through Central America in my 40’s, soloed up 6000+ft mountains, worked as a social worker with challenging populations in Canada, the USA and the UK, rode the rapids of the White Nile in a tiny kayak and on a big rubber raft, got tenure, and started a highly successful maternal and child health project in Africa. I’ve earned a cape and a big ‘S’ on my chest.

I am an African American woman with a brain disorder – aka mental illness (specifically manic depression, also known as bipolar disorder). I have spent time in a mental health treatment facility, will probably need medication for a lifetime, and have spent many hours in a therapist’s office. I’ve got a whole professional team that works with me to keep me sane.

I used to be ashamed and secretive of the reality described in the previous paragraph but proud of the life described in the first. Now it’s an integrated whole. I know that taking off the cape and stripping my chest of the ‘S’ doesn’t make me any less of a strong African American woman. Superhero status is not required. I cannot save the world and sometimes I’m the one that needs saving.

Like many people I once felt that having a mental illness was a sign of personal weakness. As a mental health professional I spent lots of time convincing people otherwise, but when it was my turn I felt that going to the psychiatrist was a sign of failure. I tried running, acupuncture, yoga, Chinese herbs, meditation – anything but get ‘mainstream’ medical attention. I did not want to go to a psychiatrist because,“ Nothing is wrong with me. I’m not crazy!”.

I had no issue with going to the dentist, gynecologist, or orthopedist. Like many African Americans I stigmatized mental illness in a way we do not stigmatize obesity, diabetes, hypertension and so many other chronic and life-threatening illnesses. We will take pills to lose weight or lower our blood pressure but not to get or stay mentally well.

According to the mythology that surrounds the strength of African Americans, ‘falling apart’ is just not something we do. We survived the Middle Passage, slavery, racial oppression and economic deprivation. We know how to “handle our business”, “be a man”, or “be a woman”. We see therapy as the domain of ‘weak’, neurotic people who don’t know what ‘real problems’ are. Instead, to deal with our psychic pain we eat our way into life-threatening obesity, excessively use alcohol and drugs, and act-out violently through word and deed, but we do not go crazy.

Because being ‘crazy’ means you can’t handle life and in our story of who we are, we are survivors who can handle anything,; which means we do what we have to do to survive. But this does not usually include a trip to the mental health professional of our choice. It is time to add this to our survival toolkit.

Is it really better to be a drug addict, obese with high blood pressure and diabetes, or be verbally/physically/emotionally violent to those around us, instead of seeking help for that which troubles us so deeply that we choose to self-destruct - though perhaps not in the stereotypical idea of what suicide looks like to us? I don’t think so.

At some point we must stop worrying what other people are going to think and get about the business of getting well and moving forward with our lives.

So how do African Americans begin to eliminate the stigma of mental illness so that we can get the help we need sooner rather than later, and support those who need it?

1. Talk about it. Don’t whisper or gossip about it. Talk about it at the BBQ. From the pulpit. On TV. On the radio. With our doctors. With our loved ones. If we can talk about our ‘sugar’ and our ‘pressure’, then we should be willing to talk about our depression.

2. Support each other in getting help. We send friends to the doctor for the nagging back pain so send them to get relief from their mental and emotional pain too. And don’t forget to ask them how they are doing as time passes; they need friends more than you know.

3. Let us not stigmatize the brain. It is attached to the body so mental illness IS a physical illness, especially as chemical imbalances are at the root of their expression. Furthermore, the biochemical impacts of a brain disorder are felt throughout the whole body, not just in the brain.

4. Say, “This person HAS a mental illness”, NOT “This person IS mentally ill”. We do not say, “That person IS cancerous”. Words have power.

5. Acknowledge that those who survive a brain disorder are as much survivors as family and friends who survive life-threatening diseases. Understand that we work just as hard to stay sane as the addict does to stay sober. As cancer or addiction go into remission so too do brain disorders.

6. Support people who share their stories of brain disorders. It is time to show that the faces and lives of African Americans with a mental illness are not just the faces and lives of the homeless person talking to the unseen. It is my face and my life; and the faces and lives of so many other men and women like me.

7. Advocate for accessible and affordable, culturally appropriate mental health services.

“Coming out” requires courage. Like any other consciousness-raising process, a range of role models that represent a variety of experiences with mental illness will change perceptions. As a community we have lists of accomplished African Americans to inspire us in our various endeavors. We need a list of African Americans with mental illness who have survived and thrived.

No doubt due to the stigma, it was difficult to find names of well-known African Americans with a “‘confirmed“‘ history of mental illness – and this is no place for innuendo or rumor-mongering. So I will start this list with me: My name is Ruth White and I have manic depression. I am a mother, poet, researcher, writer, kayaker, hiker, traveler, professor, swimmer, and as sane and happy a person as you would ever want to meet. My brain disorder does not define who I am.
______________________________________________________
NOTE: Ruth C. White, PhD, MPH, MSW is associate professor of social work at Seattle University in Seattle, WA and the co-author of Bipolar 101: A practical guide to identifying triggers, managing medications, coping with symptoms and more (New Harbinger Publications, 2009) Her blog on how to live successfully with mental illness can be found at Bipolar 101.

Damian Jenkins, R.I.P.

A week ago Thursday a little after noon, an eighteen-year-old African-American boy climbed up the football stadium bleachers and over a chain link fence at Franklinton High School here in Louisiana and jumped thirty-five feet to his death. He was always dressed to a t. The starting center on the varsity basketball team. A jokester. The class clown, some said. And described by one of my students (who had classes with him last year before she graduated and came to college) as "just SO nice to everybody all the time." And now Damian Demario Jenkins is dead.

I got an email about it the morning after the event occurred. Questions were being asked. The word was out that Damian had wound up in the Vice Principal's office for cutting in the lunch line. What happened there is, of course, a matter of conjecture. But folks are saying that the Vice Principal told Damian he would never amount to anything, that he was always going to be a nobody. The way it's told, Damian responded, "Well, if that's the way you feel, I might as well just go out and kill myself." And moments later, he did just that, over the objections of a friend who tried to stop him.

Needless to say, the family wants an investigation. They want to know if the school administrator made such a statement. And I don't blame them. Though I've also heard that Damian had problems at home, as well. And if that's true, he might have been especially vulnerable to an authority figure's verbal attack.

Still, the Vice Principal is White. Damian was Black. And Franklinton has had a running dialogue on an internet forum for the last two years under the title, "How racist is the town of Franklinton?" Why am I not surprised?

In any case, the latest addition to the story is that, at a memorial service at the school, a woman who also lost her son called out to him, saying, "If Damian is okay and with you, send a rainbow." And the result is all over the internet. Which makes for a lovely ending. I guess.

Except that, according to the Center for Disease Control, suicide is the third largest cause of death for African-American males ages 15 to 24 and the rate has doubled since 1980. Why is that, I wonder? I write much on this blog that paints a very dark picture of the life chances for people of color under the default position of White Supremacy in the U.S. I actually had a Black student write me a note last semester, saying "Lighten up on us. Most Black students know how bad it is out there."

But do most Black students know it's bad out there NOT because they're a "nobody," but because that's the okey-doke, that's the way it's been set up to keep them "in their place"? I've been thinking a lot about this lately because I'm priming up to do an event on our campus in a couple of weeks on retention of minority (read: Black) students. From what I've been told, overall, six out of ten of our Black students never graduate from our institution and only two of ten Black males finish their degrees before leaving.

The fact is, I would argue, that they don't quit school or choose to die because someone else is going to make it hard for them. They quit school or choose to die because they suspect deep in their souls -- in the face of all contrary evidence -- that they really are lacking the most basic kind of worth. They're bombarded from birth, every time they come into contact in any way with the White world that surrounds them on all sides, with the idea that they somehow missed the boat by being born Black. That they are less than. That no matter how hard they try, they do not deserve to succeed because they don't have what it takes. That they are hopeless.

Psychologists call it "stereotype threat," the fear that you will be judged and found wanting because you're perceived to fit the steretypes you've always heard others apply to your ethnic group. This is quintessentially tidy for those with the power to define and their attendant academic lackeys who always seem to find ways to make institutionalized oppression the problem -- and the responsibility -- of the oppressed. It's not that the White Power Structure WANTS him to see himself as incapable, you understand, it's that he erroneously sees himself this way. So you explain to him that the exam is fair or that he can really get the job and he'll do fine. Or not.

On the other hand, I see the problem as the result of infecting Black children (and most especially Black boys) at a very young age with the virus of internalized racism, a vision of oneself as so flawed -- because of the skin tone with which you were born -- that no amount of effort or talent or style or intelligence can ever make it right. The only hope, then, is in telling them the truth: that the locus of the problem is not deep in their souls, but deep in the psyche of those with the power to define White as human and all else, at bottom, an unfortunate failure to be...well...White.

It is a brutal vaccination. But when they get it and it really sinks in, their heads raise, the terrible sorrow leaves their eyes, and a joy I would do anything to see creeps up into their faces. Soon, of course, they find their rage and that is a delicate moment. But they finish school and they don't self-destruct and I, for one, think we have no other choice.

A Narrative About A Narrative

Time is an interesting thing. First of all, of course, it's one more of those social constructions. I mean, it didn't exactly come as part of the life-on-Earth starter kit. There was most certainly, I would imagine, a period early on when humans just lived in the moment. Indigenous people living traditionally still do, from what I understand. But as for us, we wear watches and calibrate gestation and are interminable consumers of calendars which all become obsolete annually. We wear time like spandex, allowing it to constrain us and demand of us lest it leave us, somehow, inexplicably, behind.

The fact is, though, that frustrating as all this often is, it is quite interesting sometimes to consider our and other people's lives in the temporal context, juxtaposing them to see where they meet or influence each other. For example, in 1970, when Angela Davis was arrested in New York City, I was in San Francisco, stretching my wings as a radical and absolutely unaware of her. How could I have been unaware of her?

In any case (unbeknownst to me), she was on the cover of Life magazine that summer and now, a copy of that cover hangs on my home office wall between a photo of the Angola 3 and a painting of a woman Zapatista. She's one of my heroes. And today, I'm reviewing her presentation of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Written by Himself, brought out this year -- forty years after her arrest -- by City Lights, the highly respected San Francisco publishing house. It's a veritable kaleidoscope of magical coincidences, is it not? But I'm not finished yet.

See, this exact date in 1838 was the day Frederick Douglass broke through to freedom, escaping his bonds on his second try, at the age of twenty or so (he couldn't know for certain). Asked what it felt like to be free that day, Douglass wrote to a friend, "I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den of hungry lions. Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil."

And so, I approach this task -- a simple review of the book -- with just such a lack of confidence that I can possibly communicate what I think of a book with so many reference points for me.