Latest / Rise and Thrive with Dr. J. Nicole Podcast / Black, Male, & Misunderstood: How Society Fails and Fears Black Men with Rasheem Rooke

Transcript

Black, Male, & Misunderstood: How Society Fails and Fears Black Men with Rasheem Rooke · Rise and Thrive with Dr. J. Nicole Podcast

• 0:15
  Good morning, good morning. Welcome to Rise and Thrive with
• 0:18
  Doctor J Nicole, where we are rising in faith and thriving in
• 0:22
  purpose. Today, I am joined by Rasheem
• 0:27
  Brooke, the Assistant Vice President of Program Management
• 0:30
  at UNCF. He overseas more than 400
• 0:34
  scholarship programs that support students across the
• 0:38
  country. With over 20 years of experience
• 0:40
  in higher education and nonprofit leadership, he is
• 0:44
  dedicated to expanding, I think, access and success for
• 0:48
  underrepresented students. He's also an author and a
• 0:51
  creative entrepreneur that's passionate about service,
• 0:55
  mentorship, and storytelling. And some of you may know him
• 0:59
  from Howard University. He spent many years there
• 1:02
  shaping the next generation of scholars.
• 1:05
  And so let's give a warm welcome to Rashim.
• 1:10
  Yes, yes, yeah. So I've known you for almost 20
• 1:17
  years now. Yes.
• 1:20
  Meanwhile, like I said, we looking real good.
• 1:23
  God been good to us. When you got to start, when you
• 1:26
  got to start categorizing friendships in decades, that
• 1:30
  that means you've been around for a while.
• 1:33
  So we got 2 decades under our belt.
• 1:36
  But you know, we both look like we made 30s.
• 1:38
  So you know, we hold in it. Listen, hold it.
• 1:45
  All right. So in today's episode, we're
• 1:48
  going to talk about the emotional burdens, societal
• 1:53
  stereotypes, and generational expectations that have been
• 1:58
  placed upon Black men and continue to be placed upon Black
• 2:01
  men. And Rashim is going to share
• 2:03
  both personal and through a collective lens about how Black
• 2:07
  men are often perceived as threats while silently battling
• 2:11
  mental health challenge, mental isolation, and the pressure to
• 2:16
  perform, and with strength at that, right?
• 2:18
  So we hope that this conversation is going to
• 2:21
  challenge the cultural narratives and bite compassion
• 2:25
  and really censor faith as a path to healing as well as
• 2:29
  liberation. So this is for anyone who wants
• 2:32
  to better understand the lived experiences and reality of Black
• 2:36
  men and how we as a society and as a faith community can stop
• 2:41
  failing them and start seeing them.
• 2:45
  All right, Rasheem, So what inspired your interest to talk
• 2:50
  about Black men and mental health?
• 2:54
  You know, I would like to say that it was some, some, some
• 2:59
  divine experience that opened my eyes and made me just realize
• 3:04
  that this was something that that we needed to discuss.
• 3:08
  But the reality is I was getting into multiple relationships with
• 3:17
  different women at different times, and I started to see a
• 3:23
  pattern in terms of how I was showing up in a negative sense.
• 3:29
  Something, something more than just, oh, you didn't take your
• 3:33
  lady out to dinner or oh, you forgot a special day.
• 3:38
  I'm talking about how there were consistent ways that I was
• 3:44
  addressing or being led by my trauma that started to pop up in
• 3:50
  relationship after relationship, after relationship after
• 3:52
  relationship after relationship. So it became clear to me,
• 3:57
  because now I'm dealing with women who, you know, I get
• 4:00
  older, I'm dealing with older women.
• 4:02
  They're like, no, something, something right here.
• 4:06
  So I was laid into unpacking my own mental Wellness because it
• 4:14
  was in response to the women I were, I was in relationships
• 4:17
  with. And I will say, you know, of
• 4:23
  course, in the beginning, like a lot of men weren't, we're not
• 4:27
  really big on therapy, talking about mental health, about
• 4:32
  mental Wellness. You know, I'm giving lip
• 4:35
  service. Yeah.
• 4:36
  I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do, what I'm gonna do what I'm gonna
• 4:37
  do. I'm gonna get there.
• 4:38
  I'm gonna get there. I'm gonna get there.
• 4:39
  But really, I was just procrastinating, taking a long
• 4:43
  time. So that's what really kind of
• 4:45
  led me into the space. Then you add on top of that, one
• 4:49
  of the organizations that I LED was a youth development
• 4:53
  organization working specifically with young black
• 4:56
  males and DCPSDC public schools. And this is a program that was
• 5:02
  created in Chicago. And then I expanded it into DCI,
• 5:06
  was hired to expand it into DC, and then add to it college prep
• 5:11
  work. But the core of the program was
• 5:14
  cognitive behavioral therapy. The core of the program was
• 5:17
  social work. The core of the program was
• 5:19
  getting young black men together in high school to to help them
• 5:24
  identify better ways to present themselves when they're being
• 5:29
  triggered. So balancing doing that work
• 5:32
  professionally and at the same time still running from the own
• 5:36
  work, my own work that I had to do.
• 5:38
  Yeah. So that sounds like.
• 5:41
  That actually might have been a divine intervention because you
• 5:44
  didn't go on to the job thinking, oh, we're going to be
• 5:47
  doing CBT with them and it's going to rub off on me.
• 5:53
  Yeah, actually I went into the job fearful that it would rub
• 5:58
  off on me because I'm still running.
• 6:00
  Oh, the self-awareness. But I'm also not surprised.
• 6:04
  Yeah, yeah. I was like, I'm going to be
• 6:06
  doing this work. I'm going to have to address
• 6:08
  these things sooner or later. And and I knew that walking in
• 6:12
  the door because I know what the organization was about and I
• 6:15
  know my history. And there's no way you could,
• 6:18
  people could hear my story and be like, oh, nothing to see
• 6:21
  here. No, there's stuff to see.
• 6:23
  There's stuff we got to work on. So I knew that that it, it, it
• 6:29
  was going to happen. And of course, what supercharged
• 6:32
  it was the fact that I had women consistently in my life saying,
• 6:37
  Yo, you got to unpack these things.
• 6:39
  Yeah, OK, that's interesting. I'm glad you still did it right
• 6:45
  because some people, they just, they wouldn't have gone forward
• 6:48
  with the job if they weren't ready.
• 6:51
  Yeah, but I want, I wanted to be an executive director.
• 6:55
  Which aligned with the man, like when you think about men in like
• 7:00
  climbing the ladder, I don't want to say corporate per SE,
• 7:05
  but like, yeah, the professional ladder and leadership.
• 7:08
  And you've been leading people since I've known you this whole
• 7:11
  20 years, right? Like so, but in some spaces and
• 7:16
  places it is easier to hide than others.
• 7:18
  And I, I resonate with that too because I even say with the work
• 7:21
  that I do, I, I practice what I promote.
• 7:26
  Like I can't sit here and advise people about things on their
• 7:29
  life or even practical strategies, coping things and
• 7:34
  then not apply them. Like it just doesn't feel good.
• 7:37
  It not that it doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel good.
• 7:41
  So there's a misalignment. So there are a lot of times
• 7:43
  where clients, clients have helped me grow.
• 7:47
  In your experience, how are black men conditioned to handle
• 7:51
  emotions while growing up? And I mean, this is the story we
• 7:55
  see in popular culture and hip hop and movies, black movies,
• 8:01
  own experiences that we see regardless of gender times, you
• 8:05
  know, don't cry or I'm gonna give you something to cry about.
• 8:12
  That's. Condition.
• 8:14
  That's condition and you do that as a part of that has been done
• 8:18
  as a part of of rearing children.
• 8:21
  But then more specifically, when it comes the to to young black
• 8:24
  boys that crying is, is is seen as weakness.
• 8:29
  Yeah. And you got to develop into
• 8:32
  being a strong black man. And there is no space for tears.
• 8:36
  There is no space to cry. There is no space to emote.
• 8:42
  So that's a conditioning that that has been leading how we are
• 8:49
  developing and growing young black boys.
• 8:51
  But then there's another piece to it as well.
• 8:53
  A lot of us are growing up in urban environments.
• 8:56
  You think about the masses of black people, they aren't.
• 8:59
  They are in cities. They're in urban pockets.
• 9:02
  They're in, you know, New York, in Atlanta, in Houston, in
• 9:05
  Dallas, you know what I'm saying?
• 9:07
  They're in Chicago. They're they're in areas that
• 9:10
  have been historically and traditionally discriminated
• 9:14
  against marginalized war on drugs, police brutality, St.
• 9:22
  violence in, in you know, I, I, I was talking with a friend of
• 9:26
  mine who's from New York, I'm from Yonkers, NY and, and, and
• 9:30
  someone was like, hey, I think you're the only black man that I
• 9:34
  know out of Yonkers, NY, but I, I can't think of no other black
• 9:38
  man other than Susan. The locks is, you know, outside
• 9:43
  of that they're like I. Don't know anybody but DMX and
• 9:45
  the locks. And and and and.
• 9:49
  Yonkers was hell ridden like it was.
• 9:51
  It was created to destroy us as black people.
• 9:54
  A lot of people roll up in that. Some places are, yeah.
• 9:58
  You grew up in that environment and I got to say y'all, I'm not
• 10:01
  a mental health professional. I'm just someone who has worked
• 10:05
  as an advocate and and has taken full advantage of the resources
• 10:10
  for my own development. But those spaces you cannot grow
• 10:14
  up in and not have PTSD. Yeah.
• 10:17
  You just can't, and sometimes our coping mechanism is to shut
• 10:21
  off emotion because if we emoted through every trauma we went
• 10:25
  through, we probably wouldn't be here.
• 10:29
  What a lost time. So you got you got Mamas and
• 10:34
  aunties and uncles and fathers saying don't you cry?
• 10:37
  And then you also got a kid saying I can't walk through this
• 10:42
  block and and appear to be soft and emotions leave the soft.
• 10:47
  So I'm shutting off emotions. So, you know, we deal with that
• 10:51
  and a whole host of other things, but that that's been a
• 10:53
  part of our conditioning. Yeah, and and it's just saying
• 10:58
  don't. It's not telling you what to do.
• 11:01
  And I think that's the other thing.
• 11:02
  And then what do you see, right? Because then you look around for
• 11:07
  that model of a strong black man, right?
• 11:11
  And what do you think of when you think of strong black man?
• 11:16
  Or when you were a kid, what did that look like in Yonk?
• 11:19
  There were a couple of models that we had in our community.
• 11:24
  They all worked at the Community Center, OK, They, they there
• 11:28
  was, there was for me, my experience.
• 11:31
  They all work at the Community Center.
• 11:33
  I saw I had two friends who had a father daily present in their
• 11:40
  lives, which means that they were they were out and about.
• 11:43
  We could see them two and all my friends on.
• 11:47
  But every other male that was encountered was either a black
• 11:51
  or a Latino male who was working with us in the community.
• 11:54
  And it was full of those. So that's how I was able to get
• 11:59
  some, some image. That's how I was able to have
• 12:02
  conversations and, and get little, little bits of wisdom
• 12:05
  that didn't make sense to me when I was a knucklehead.
• 12:08
  But then grew older. I'm like, I remember when Tony
• 12:10
  said dot dot dot dot dot. Now it makes sense.
• 12:14
  And it, it puts us behind if like those are the only ways
• 12:18
  we're going to be able to get that type of strong black male
• 12:23
  guidance. It it puts its stunts on
• 12:26
  development to a certain extent, because there's about so much
• 12:29
  you could pick up from television shows.
• 12:31
  I mean, Bill Cosby wasn't coming into my house.
• 12:33
  And now we see Bill Cosby wasn't much to really be glamorizing
• 12:38
  anyway. Well, we're talking about
• 12:40
  Heathcliff, A fictitious character, versus Bill Cosby.
• 12:45
  There is a difference, yeah. But but, you know, I'm from the
• 12:49
  era where before Heathcliff, Bill Cosby was was, was doing
• 12:54
  Fat Albert in the game. Yes, I remember that.
• 12:56
  I thought she was going to go further back, like with Dragnet
• 12:59
  or something. No, no.
• 13:00
  No, no, no, no. That was that was his money.
• 13:04
  But yeah, but he even when he was doing Fat Albert, like he's
• 13:07
  presenting himself and we're latching on his young black kids
• 13:11
  because that's the that's the black man we've seen on
• 13:12
  television before We go to school in the morning.
• 13:14
  Yeah, he's just. Like our black Mr. Rogers?
• 13:18
  So, yeah. So yeah, you're right, the
• 13:19
  characters there's but so much we can get from those
• 13:23
  characters, right. But in terms of real life, just
• 13:26
  a handful, just a. Handful, I mean, because you
• 13:29
  could have also seen it in a different way that someone who
• 13:33
  maybe wasn't a role model, a positive role model, but exhibit
• 13:40
  strength because there are some people who pick up those other
• 13:42
  versions of it and, you know, run with that.
• 13:46
  And I love that in your community, you had that
• 13:48
  leadership in the Community Center.
• 13:50
  You had a place where you, it sounds like what, and I'm saying
• 13:53
  this thinking about the Community Center I would go to,
• 13:55
  right, like you had a place to go where there was programming,
• 13:59
  there was structure, there was curriculum, there was community,
• 14:03
  there was safety. Yeah, the Neppingan Community
• 14:06
  Center, right there on Walburn. Right on Walburn.
• 14:09
  But The thing is, though, they were also other role models.
• 14:13
  That dude who stood on the corner who, who was with a 40 oz
• 14:17
  was a role model. He was teaching something.
• 14:20
  The dude was who was who was selling weed and crack and
• 14:23
  anything else he can get his hand on.
• 14:25
  And he was going in and out of jail.
• 14:27
  He was a role model and he was teaching something because I
• 14:32
  had, you know, people in my my, my immediate circle, family and
• 14:36
  friends who saw that as a rites of passage.
• 14:40
  Like that's how you can get black manhood.
• 14:43
  You stand on that corner. And sometimes even our families
• 14:46
  push us out there. I can't remember plenty people
• 14:48
  like I send you to the store and you come right back.
• 14:51
  Don't you just want to stand out there for a little bit?
• 14:53
  No, I ain't none out there for me.
• 14:54
  I was a kid and I knew that. But there are role models,
• 15:00
  positive and negative, that that be attracting our young men and
• 15:07
  teaching them what they should do and what they shouldn't do
• 15:09
  depending on the situation. Absolutely.
• 15:13
  And then those role models, they're acting out their own
• 15:17
  stuff. Yeah, yeah, because I I don't
• 15:21
  think anyone was just anyone. No one grows up like, yeah, I
• 15:25
  just want to be a drug dealer like at 9 times out of 10 or
• 15:29
  even higher, right. Has to do with the reality.
• 15:33
  Now you do have a few people sometimes who they just want to
• 15:36
  be on, they want the other things, but like that's a whole
• 15:42
  different type of life. A person is signing up for but
• 15:46
  not going to go down there right hoe.
• 15:48
  So you kind of got into this, right, But if you'll go a little
• 15:52
  bit more, talk about how your own relationship with mental
• 15:58
  Wellness, and I like the way you frame that, how that's evolved
• 16:02
  over time. You told us what made you shift.
• 16:05
  But like, yeah, what's that been like from when you think about
• 16:09
  when you first recognize it? The pieces of my background
• 16:16
  weigh really, really heavy in terms of how I present myself.
• 16:21
  OK so just the stuff that isn't in the three sentence bio.
• 16:27
  Growing up in an impoverished side of Yonkers NY homeless
• 16:34
  shelters at the age of 7. Being homeless three times at
• 16:38
  form 19. Being born with birth defects
• 16:43
  that labeled me the neighborhood cripple.
• 16:47
  I couldn't walk until I was 7. Yeah.
• 16:51
  Fast forward having to leave my mother at 16 at 3:00 in the
• 16:56
  morning and then not even speaking to her again till I was
• 17:00
  32 no 30 and then seeing her two years later 32.
• 17:05
  So at 16 years I didn't even seen her and for for 14 of those
• 17:09
  years I didn't know what the hell she was all of these.
• 17:13
  Pieces. And then things going on in
• 17:16
  between that, you know, I'm just loss and over and skipping over
• 17:20
  who led me to be that grown man who suffered from PTSD And one
• 17:26
  of my coping mechanisms, as I said, when I said it early, I'm
• 17:28
  saying it from personal experience was to shut down
• 17:30
  emotion was just to be like, Nah, I'm, I'm, I'm good.
• 17:35
  It wasn't until in my early no late 30s, maybe early 40s, early
• 17:45
  40s, early 40s, I ended up with a therapist and told me that
• 17:51
  those were coping mechanisms to protect me because the adults
• 17:54
  weren't doing what they were supposed to do to protect me in
• 17:57
  that moment. And.
• 17:59
  Then she punched me. She punched me dead on my
• 18:02
  throat. After that, she said, But you're
• 18:04
  the adult. She's like, you don't got to
• 18:06
  cope like that. You can make whatever you want
• 18:10
  out of this world. I was like, oh, oh, she.
• 18:13
  Goes. And that's what put me on.
• 18:17
  That's what opened my mind to the fact that I could actually
• 18:21
  live a, a, a different life. I didn't really get on.
• 18:25
  I didn't really get serious about therapy until I got into
• 18:27
  my 50s. So it took, it took almost a
• 18:31
  full 10 years, well, more 6 to 8 years before I got serious,
• 18:39
  especially with the therapist I'm with now.
• 18:41
  But that's what opened up my eyes and I was like, yeah, I'm
• 18:44
  sitting on some stuff and it ain't good and it don't have to
• 18:48
  be like this. And I got to put in the work.
• 18:54
  Yeah, that's scary. Yeah, it is scary.
• 18:56
  But living in survival mode is scary.
• 18:58
  It's just that one can become accustomed to it, like you had
• 19:02
  to to survive. Now I realize that I don't have
• 19:06
  to do it this way anymore. And I, I, so I, when you said
• 19:11
  that, what your therapist said, I'm like, I've definitely had
• 19:14
  these conversations with clients before, right?
• 19:16
  To just like the awareness, but to really empower you that like,
• 19:21
  you know, when you were a child, you didn't have a choice.
• 19:23
  Like you didn't choose to live in Yonkers in the conditions
• 19:27
  that you describe, you didn't choose your parents, any of
• 19:30
  those things. So you adapted as best as you
• 19:33
  could. And then it's like you're out of
• 19:35
  Yonkers then out of Yonkers for quite some time, some education,
• 19:40
  a little change in your pocket, You know what I mean?
• 19:43
  Like, you can literally live how you want to, and those things
• 19:47
  are evidence that you're capable.
• 19:49
  But to connect with that, like that clear thought, like, oh, I
• 19:55
  am the adults. And like, I have a client.
• 19:57
  I remind her almost every session.
• 19:59
  You make the rules. And she was like, yeah, I do
• 20:02
  like, the first time. And so she's like, I remind
• 20:04
  myself of that like every day like.
• 20:06
  I make the rules now. I don't have to live in this
• 20:10
  way, but you have to be willing to look at self as well as the
• 20:17
  people in your life who did the best they could and try not to
• 20:21
  judge. And some people don't know how
• 20:23
  to go back and sort through the facts without sprinkling
• 20:27
  judgment in there, right? It doesn't mean that they're a
• 20:30
  fat person, but sometimes we experience awful things.
• 20:34
  And so just like separating that, it's can be difficult.
• 20:39
  Yeah, it's, it's twofold. You got to you got to first
• 20:42
  start with understanding that your parent parented the best
• 20:44
  way they knew how. If they if they knew a better
• 20:48
  way, I'm, I'm hopeful that they would have done it better.
• 20:51
  But they did it the best way to move out.
• 20:53
  The other fault to it is that the parents were dealing with
• 20:55
  their own traumas and hoping in a way.
• 20:58
  And that's hard for us to whistle.
• 21:01
  Deep in our own disdain for the people who raised us, we lose
• 21:06
  sight of the fact that somebody raised them too.
• 21:09
  And this thing is really cyclical.
• 21:11
  Yeah, it is. My my my my current therapist
• 21:16
  recommended a book for me adult children of emotionally
• 21:20
  immature. Parents.
• 21:20
  Oh yeah. Lindsay Gibson's book to help me
• 21:26
  see like, look, she she she acted out in certain ways and
• 21:33
  you expected her to be a mature parent and she wasn't.
• 21:37
  But there was a reason behind just like the stuff you putting
• 21:42
  all these women through. There's a reason why you're
• 21:44
  doing that. So if you could have a reason,
• 21:46
  why can't she have a reason? So that twofold piece is, is is
• 21:52
  recognizing both of those things and extending to everyone out,
• 21:57
  everyone who's affecting you, extended it on the same grace
• 22:02
  that you want extended to you. Yeah, you know, because whenever
• 22:05
  we want to be forgiven for everything, but we don't want to
• 22:08
  forgive people for when they do stuff to us.
• 22:11
  That makes no sense to me. It doesn't.
• 22:13
  And then also you're adding to it.
• 22:16
  You're, you're, you're stacking up the trauma.
• 22:18
  You're not allowing yourself to heal others to, you know, give
• 22:23
  you that healing that you need with an apology.
• 22:27
  Like you, you preserve the trauma and offenses happen.
• 22:30
  Nope. Yeah.
• 22:33
  Reconciliation does not mean going back into relationship
• 22:36
  with people, but like people that we can keep rolling with
• 22:40
  their hurt. And then before you know it,
• 22:41
  it's like a trailer or two or three hitched onto the back of
• 22:45
  you. Yeah.
• 22:48
  It's going everywhere. And a lot of times we've got to
• 22:51
  be, we got to be OK with healing without getting the apology.
• 22:58
  People make that the condition, but we do that.
• 23:01
  That's a limitation we place on it because we're saying it's not
• 23:06
  possible without the other person.
• 23:09
  When and if the person dies, they're no longer here or you
• 23:13
  never see them again. That doesn't mean you have to be
• 23:16
  stuck that way, but it's because you have a very limited belief
• 23:20
  about what healing and forgiveness looks like.
• 23:25
  And what you said too about the parents, right?
• 23:29
  Like one that viewpoint you created empathy, you being able
• 23:32
  to see her as a person, right? Like as a woman with limitations
• 23:37
  and with struggles and trauma and from an attachment
• 23:43
  standpoint, right? Like what happens is a child
• 23:47
  will adapt based on what their caregivers did and did not have,
• 23:52
  right? And so that's why some of the
• 23:55
  things they still get trickled down, even if they're
• 23:57
  maladaptive. But that's what they knew.
• 24:00
  That's what they were exposed to.
• 24:02
  And there's another book that I need to read that called It
• 24:06
  Didn't Start With You, because all of these things are
• 24:09
  patterns, their conditionings. What's up?
• 24:13
  That's what you were. Listening to make a note, you
• 24:15
  said. It didn't start with you.
• 24:17
  It didn't start with you because I mean, it doesn't and because
• 24:23
  parents, I think they parent, look, we could probably do a
• 24:26
  whole other episode on just like parenting, right?
• 24:29
  And the impact. But like because I think a lot
• 24:32
  of parents, they do it from a place of like authority
• 24:37
  correction and not as much connection or like bringing the
• 24:41
  balance. You think your parents know
• 24:44
  everything. You have this high bar set for
• 24:47
  them because of the bar they set for you.
• 24:49
  And they don't show themselves as human or flawed or they don't
• 24:53
  try to connect. And it's about force, it's about
• 24:56
  authority, it's about power. And that's how, like, you know,
• 25:02
  you, you miss a whole lot and then you, you're figuring it out
• 25:07
  in your 30s and 40s. Absolutely, yeah.
• 25:10
  Absolutely. Yeah, and, and, and I think for
• 25:13
  us as men, it, you know, growing up in communities that are
• 25:16
  largely led by women, then it, it creates this other dynamic
• 25:21
  where now I'm, I'm getting in a relationship with women.
• 25:29
  But it, a boy's first love is going to always be his Mama.
• 25:35
  And if he can't value the relationship he had with his
• 25:39
  Mama, then no woman stands a chance.
• 25:42
  And I was going to say on the other side of that, she could
• 25:45
  also be his first heartbreak. Exactly.
• 25:48
  Yeah, when when she's acting out in these emotionally immature
• 25:54
  patterns or doing things that are just outright destructive to
• 25:58
  that child, she will be first love in first heartbreak.
• 26:02
  Yep. And then?
• 26:03
  Over and over again. It's it, it, it was sick.
• 26:08
  Oh my God, Like I was, I was, I was, I was putting y'all through
• 26:11
  it, Doc. I was putting y'all through
• 26:14
  because I couldn't process and I didn't know I I'm secure enough
• 26:20
  to present a certain way. Because you present it well,
• 26:23
  every time I've known you, I've never heard anything messy,
• 26:27
  never saw anything like messy like that.
• 26:30
  But it but it existed. It existed.
• 26:33
  But the piece that the piece for me though that that really was
• 26:37
  the dis disruptive factor in in the relationship is that you
• 26:41
  talked about attachments. I'm avoiding all the way.
• 26:45
  So I would at some point in time a flip of a switch would happen
• 26:50
  and then I would begin to withdraw.
• 26:52
  You sure that's not disorganized?
• 26:54
  That's because you can do both, I say.
• 26:55
  You sure it's not disorganized? That's when you do avoidant and
• 26:59
  anxious. OK, Just avoidant.
• 27:01
  Yeah, yeah. No, no anxious, full avoiding
• 27:05
  and I would pull away and just be like, is it just yeah, it is
• 27:11
  what it is and that's not outfit, it's not healthy.
• 27:18
  Yeah, for you or others, but it's also it's not safe
• 27:21
  emotionally for you that also will speak to, I think maybe not
• 27:27
  having emotionally safe space. So I'm a shut down for what?
• 27:33
  Like why, why, why say anything. Yeah, Yeah.
• 27:38
  OK. So yeah, I was like, because we
• 27:40
  can, we can really go into that more.
• 27:42
  But today's focus is more so like men and threats.
• 27:45
  But like that relationship with caregivers is key.
• 27:50
  And I haven't heard you mention your father.
• 27:52
  There's been focus on Mom. Yeah, because I didn't live with
• 27:56
  my father. He, he was president in that I
• 28:02
  needed to see him. I could.
• 28:04
  So you had access. I had access, but he was not, he
• 28:10
  wasn't really employed. I mean, he he was an artist that
• 28:15
  that just didn't get out the projects.
• 28:17
  But why did you say artists like that?
• 28:22
  Because you know, I'm dealing with I'm, I'm, I've processed it
• 28:28
  to think that the 60's, the 70s and the early 80s black men who
• 28:32
  had talents that that other communities could have flipped
• 28:38
  into gain in mass. Our communities weren't given
• 28:43
  that space. Absolutely.
• 28:45
  Unless there was a, a token one pulled out of our community that
• 28:50
  the gatekeeper allowed in. And then they could like see it
• 28:53
  could be done. But in mass, the, the artists,
• 28:57
  the dancers, the people who could too could snatch stuff out
• 29:02
  of thin air. They couldn't really find their
• 29:06
  lane. Yeah.
• 29:08
  And if you're coming up in, in, in, in the projects that are in
• 29:11
  the hood, then I'm going to tell you education is not a valued
• 29:14
  commodity. So it's not like you're on top
• 29:17
  of that learning a trade that you could then exchange.
• 29:20
  So when he died on his obituary, obituary, it said self-employed
• 29:28
  handyman. I was like, oh, they're being so
• 29:30
  kind. I ain't never seen my father
• 29:31
  pick up a hammer once. Maybe he came through and
• 29:36
  screwed somebody's doorknob on. I don't know.
• 29:39
  Yeah, but so would you. Well, why not?
• 29:43
  Good in. Artist though, and I and I get
• 29:46
  what you're saying, I said. And why not Artists like, you
• 29:48
  know, they say starving artists for a reason.
• 29:51
  He hadn't done anything with his art like this is and this is a
• 29:54
  whole other story, OK? I think my my father was a a
• 29:58
  phenomenal artist. My mother was in school, she was
• 30:04
  living in a nice little neighborhood.
• 30:05
  He was living in the in the hood.
• 30:07
  So a hood in the hills came together.
• 30:09
  Hood in the Hills. They came together, got married,
• 30:14
  had my brother, year and half later had me, and then three
• 30:19
  years after that my father had a girl with someone else.
• 30:25
  And I think that was the tailspin.
• 30:27
  I don't know, because the adults don't really talk about they
• 30:29
  don't. But you can put that.
• 30:30
  That's easy math, yeah. That's the tailspin.
• 30:34
  Because my mother, she never liked that man ever since until
• 30:39
  he died. Until he died.
• 30:42
  And then she wanted to try about how much she missed.
• 30:45
  I was like, oh, ma, it's too late.
• 30:48
  It's too late. Every time I'm with him, he's
• 30:49
  asking about you. Yeah, So what I heard there,
• 30:53
  your mom also shut down. And then we turned it into anger
• 30:56
  to bitterness instead of dealing with the thing, processing and
• 31:01
  letting it go. So she held it for however many
• 31:05
  decades or whatever. And then now she miss them.
• 31:09
  Girl, you could have let that go a long time ago.
• 31:13
  Just just deal with it. But she didn't have that skill
• 31:17
  of how how do you deal with it? How do you how do you still love
• 31:21
  someone even though they've done this awful thing, right?
• 31:24
  This betrayal essentially because they were married and
• 31:27
  then you popped up with a sister.
• 31:28
  So, yeah, OK, I'm just, listen, that's a that's a thing.
• 31:34
  It was stuff going on back in the day.
• 31:37
  It was, it was, I mean, it's still stuff going on today.
• 31:42
  Let's be honest. I know a few people that got
• 31:44
  some stories to tell, but we're going to stay on topic.
• 31:49
  Or what are some of the most in your opinion, what are some of
• 31:53
  the most damaging stereotypes you believe that society places
• 31:57
  upon black men? That that that we are dangerous
• 32:04
  and to be feared. That we are intellectually
• 32:12
  subpar. That we are only good at
• 32:18
  athletics and music. Don't forget comedy.
• 32:22
  Combination of those. Oh, comedy, what I see, and I
• 32:29
  see most of that when we're grown, what I have seen in in
• 32:34
  the school system, especially elementary, middle, high school,
• 32:39
  that these boys are feared. They are, they are irrationally
• 32:46
  feared. So, and you see that with the
• 32:49
  disproportionate suspensions and, and, and discipline that's
• 32:54
  doled out to little black boys, we're doing the same thing that
• 32:57
  every other student is doing in that classroom.
• 33:01
  I, I liking it. I like it.
• 33:02
  I call them the pit bulls of the, of the playground because
• 33:07
  everyone has this, I believe, irrational fear when it comes to
• 33:11
  pit bulls. They look at them and they look
• 33:14
  brolic and they look scary and they look angry.
• 33:17
  But there was a time in America where pit bulls were referred to
• 33:20
  as nanny dogs because they were the ones who would guard your
• 33:24
  kids. You can even find black and
• 33:27
  white images of pit bulls just standing here with a baby
• 33:31
  sitting right next to them. Even even the data doesn't
• 33:34
  suggest that pit bulls are the most violent dog in America.
• 33:39
  But they have this fear. And it's, it's the same when it
• 33:43
  comes to these little boys. They have a fear of young black
• 33:47
  boys. And instead of just pouring into
• 33:49
  them, there's this just backlash that just smacks him up.
• 33:57
  And and then it starts that cycle because not that little
• 33:59
  boy can't trust this system of a beast, the system of adults in a
• 34:04
  in a school that's supposed to be there for him.
• 34:11
  But there is this. I remember I was when I was in
• 34:13
  high school, I was doing, I was interviewing for some program
• 34:17
  that would get us summer jobs and, and it shows up like this.
• 34:23
  Oh my God, you're just so articulate and.
• 34:27
  You can hear the tone. So you had a stereotype that I
• 34:34
  would come up in here saying any old thing.
• 34:37
  I was 16 at the time. So we have to deal with that.
• 34:45
  We also have to deal with with our challenge with addressing
• 34:56
  things that we have control over.
• 34:59
  There's some things we have control over in terms of when
• 35:05
  presenting an option and how we're going to interact with
• 35:07
  people or react to people. I understand trauma coping
• 35:12
  mechanisms may not exist and trauma may force us to behave in
• 35:16
  certain ways, but we got to at least discuss that so that we
• 35:21
  can provide resources, so that people can do things that are
• 35:24
  more appropriate in the environment we find and not get
• 35:28
  caught up on that. Oh, this is respectability
• 35:31
  politics. No, this is a matter of survival
• 35:33
  right now. This is a matter of survival
• 35:36
  right now. I'm not saying you got to smile
• 35:37
  up in these people's faces, but you ain't got to knock someone
• 35:42
  over the head either. And there's a whole lot in
• 35:45
  between smiling and knocking them over the head.
• 35:48
  And that's being authentic, right?
• 35:51
  And something that I heard. And you, you, you, you, you jog
• 35:56
  the memory, but I can't remember what it was.
• 35:58
  But someone else used the Pitbull reference in a similar
• 36:01
  way. But as you were describing it.
• 36:03
  And I'm just thinking about boys, right?
• 36:05
  Like there are still black boys who clearly don't look like a
• 36:09
  threat, right? Like a pit bull is strong.
• 36:11
  It can look threatening. But like a lot of it is what I
• 36:14
  do with animals. I can look a dog in them, in
• 36:16
  their eyes and know if I'm going to approach or cross the street.
• 36:22
  But like, a child is a child, and it's really unfortunate that
• 36:26
  people cannot see our boys as children.
• 36:30
  It does not matter how tall they are.
• 36:32
  You can look at a child and see a child.
• 36:36
  And for people to be blind to that, or choose to be blind to
• 36:40
  that, or focus on other things and to villainize them just for
• 36:48
  their existence, that's awful. Awful.
• 36:52
  Like they they can they let some of these children literally look
• 36:56
  non threatening. So let me let me add a wrinkle
• 36:59
  to that. Have you ever seen an angry
• 37:04
  child who just looks angry for no reason, just scrunched her
• 37:07
  face just walking down the street eating a Cheeto?
• 37:09
  Have you ever seen anything like?
• 37:11
  When I was a kid I thought so, but as an adult I say no because
• 37:15
  I know no better. Now I have oftentimes that child
• 37:24
  is with a parent and what I, what I from the outside looking
• 37:30
  in, what I am perceiving is that here is a parent that is
• 37:35
  struggling with everything they've got to struggle with and
• 37:40
  then sometimes may take it out on the child.
• 37:43
  Absolutely. And now the child has been
• 37:47
  molded, hardened even. Yeah, I'm seeing a you're just a
• 37:54
  scowl on his face. Yeah, I one of the one of the
• 37:59
  the side things that I do photography and lifestyle
• 38:07
  photography, portraiture. One of the biggest pieces would
• 38:11
  be family photos. And when I get a mother yelling
• 38:17
  at a kid, but doing something that kids do, they jumping up in
• 38:23
  a puddle because he's jumping in a puddle with his good clothes
• 38:27
  on. And now as the photographer, I
• 38:29
  got to make this crying boy smile.
• 38:32
  That stuff that he internalizes and he takes with him.
• 38:36
  And that's just that one situation.
• 38:38
  That's a mother who can afford a photo shoot for these other
• 38:42
  mothers who can barely afford to just breathe, and they are
• 38:48
  dealing with their own trauma. In, in, in, in.
• 38:50
  Their coping mechanisms aren't fully there.
• 38:53
  The household itself could be a breeding ground for anger.
• 38:57
  Absolutely. So I see that child stepping
• 39:02
  into a classroom with the same scale on his face and as opposed
• 39:08
  to a teacher trying to help the child understand the child,
• 39:16
  understand the child, provide opportunities for the child to
• 39:20
  to decompress in this moment. Yeah.
• 39:23
  I've seen teachers look at that and be.
• 39:26
  Fearful of it and judge it and label it without investigating.
• 39:31
  So what you said, Rasheen, we're on the same of the same
• 39:35
  viewpoint because I know that's not for no reason.
• 39:37
  It's because of the parent. So that's why I said when I was
• 39:41
  before I would say no reason. But now that I know better,
• 39:44
  right? Like there's no such thing as a
• 39:47
  bad child. They are acting out what they
• 39:52
  are seeing and or experiencing unless there is some other
• 39:57
  medical issue that explains it. And people aren't taking the
• 40:02
  time to care about these children because there are
• 40:06
  children of the majority who exhibit far worse behavior and
• 40:11
  they're like, oh that's just boys being boys.
• 40:13
  What they just threw firecrackers in the toilet or
• 40:17
  something crazy or whatever. Right?
• 40:19
  Like someone else would have done that.
• 40:23
  It's a whole other outcome, right?
• 40:25
  Like, oh, they're just being mischief.
• 40:26
  Just think about the show. You remember that cartoon Dennis
• 40:29
  the Menace? Absolutely.
• 40:32
  And Dennis lived to menace another day for however long.
• 40:37
  That series. It wouldn't have been a show
• 40:43
  about it because he would have been in prison.
• 40:45
  He would have been in juvie, but yeah, so yeah, just like not
• 40:51
  having that space and that it matters who's in the classroom
• 40:55
  with these children. Because another part that's here
• 40:58
  going back with the Pitbull thing and even what you're
• 41:00
  saying that what's happening in the classroom because in school
• 41:02
  we know about the, you know, the school to prison pipeline,
• 41:06
  right? This is a thing of identity.
• 41:09
  So if you can start to condition the child that they're bad, that
• 41:15
  they're misbehaving, they're all whatever these things are that
• 41:19
  are not positive, right? Like already we're shifting
• 41:24
  their identity and they start to latch on to this thing.
• 41:30
  Well, maybe I may as well do this and that.
• 41:33
  So they start, excuse me, that's the right letter.
• 41:36
  They start to, they start to like open themselves up to
• 41:41
  things that they probably never would have done because those
• 41:43
  things align more with this new identity, this thing they're
• 41:47
  hearing over and over again. And even the photo shoot thing
• 41:51
  that sends a message that the clothes are more important than
• 41:54
  the person in them having the experience.
• 41:56
  Those could have been beautiful photos, candid photos, that joy
• 42:01
  and it's so quick, like we're so going back to that correction
• 42:05
  connection thing, right? Like we're you're stealing his
• 42:08
  joy. He saw a puddle he wanted to
• 42:10
  splash. I get it.
• 42:13
  Just splash When we done we got take these photos first.
• 42:17
  Yeah, and, and they could have been wonderful photos.
• 42:21
  Like if he did not, if he did not stop and show fright and
• 42:25
  fear on his face in that moment, I would have had my camera.
• 42:31
  And this becomes a young boy who turns into a man who's fearful
• 42:34
  to make moves, who's rigid. He's not even comfortable to
• 42:38
  express in his body. He's going to second guess doing
• 42:41
  something that's going to make him smile and feel so good.
• 42:45
  And he just. Won't that's that's one of those
• 42:48
  things that we have part of that conditioning you asked about
• 42:52
  earlier. We can't experience joy as Black
• 42:57
  men, but we cooked that up in our own minds based on this
• 43:04
  experience, these experiences, we.
• 43:05
  Had Yep so it wasn't cooked, it was programmed, it was
• 43:08
  conditioned and so like you said earlier with your therapist, you
• 43:13
  all black men you can choose joy.
• 43:18
  I know we still have to pay attention and watch our
• 43:20
  surroundings because Black women, we have our own version
• 43:23
  of that too, that we have to be mindful of.
• 43:26
  However, we can choose joy. So that fear, let's, let's move
• 43:34
  into that a little bit more. So it's been established that
• 43:37
  you think fear does have a role with the Black experience,
• 43:42
  right? And it's particularly with young
• 43:44
  black men. So what does that look like or
• 43:47
  how does that shape how were treated in schools, workplace
• 43:53
  and even relationships? So we talked a little bit about
• 43:56
  it, but let's look into some of those other spaces.
• 44:00
  Yeah, like in general, I I just believe that you always feel
• 44:06
  what you don't understand. OK.
• 44:10
  And we, we are, we are a misunderstood group of people.
• 44:17
  I think you have other elements like internalized white
• 44:25
  supremacy at play, internalized black inferiority at play and
• 44:33
  just flat out hope. And, and I'm talking about now
• 44:35
  my own experience coming out of Yonkers, flat out racism at
• 44:41
  play, just just just strength racism.
• 44:46
  And then there's this hierarchy that is now put in place.
• 44:50
  We are. Depending on where you are
• 44:53
  within the hierarchy will determine if you will be treated
• 44:57
  as a human. There we go, and.
• 45:02
  If you aren't hiring on a totem pole that I am just tolerating
• 45:07
  you and with that just being tolerated opens the door to
• 45:13
  being mistreated. Yeah, because tolerated is also
• 45:16
  a means you're disposable. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:20
  I could just get another one here.
• 45:25
  Or I'd be. I'd be happy if they want any of
• 45:28
  you here. Yeah, that other you should be
• 45:31
  happy to be here. You should be more.
• 45:34
  Grateful. What's that?
• 45:36
  What's that? What's that?
• 45:36
  Ball had a man's name who works for the current president,
• 45:39
  Stephen Miller. He said he'd be happy if if the
• 45:42
  rest of it. He had like a few 100,000 white
• 45:47
  men in America who thought and looked like him.
• 45:51
  I'm paraphrasing right, but the devaluing of what we offer to
• 45:57
  America because you overvalue what you offer or what your
• 46:02
  community offers is if we can all offer things in our own
• 46:08
  ways. It's a 0 sum game that a lot of
• 46:11
  them play. In order for them to be on top,
• 46:15
  someone else has to be on the bottom.
• 46:18
  And that is showing up even in our schools, even though it may
• 46:25
  not be intentional on the teachers part or the
• 46:30
  administrators part. And they are acting out some of
• 46:32
  them, their own subconscious biases.
• 46:36
  Yeah, they, they think they doing good.
• 46:38
  Look at me. I'm working in, I'm working in
• 46:40
  this community. But are you working in yourself?
• 46:44
  But you're doing you're. Working here.
• 46:46
  For this community. So, so it goes back to that you
• 46:55
  you always feel what you don't understand and and they don't
• 46:58
  understand us if they think we are.
• 47:04
  Yeah. And used to think what?
• 47:06
  Because I'm like, here's the thing, we were minding our
• 47:09
  business on the continent and here they come.
• 47:13
  I have a hard time now saying they don't understand us.
• 47:17
  Actually, they understand us very well.
• 47:21
  And they use that to control, manipulate us in a way that gets
• 47:29
  transferred down intergenerationally.
• 47:31
  And they can. And it's so insidious because
• 47:35
  their hands, their fingerprints aren't directly on it today, but
• 47:39
  they planted seeds that are still bearing fruit from way
• 47:45
  back when. They know us very well and they
• 47:48
  know if they can get in here and get us to think they're
• 47:51
  inferior, we are inferior. They don't have to do the work
• 47:55
  of it. Or if you really, when you think
• 47:56
  about it, even when you're watching movies, when you see
• 47:59
  that competition between 2, the approach is to create doubt in
• 48:05
  the other person's mind and they project that they're superior.
• 48:10
  It's all psychological. Very much so.
• 48:14
  Yeah, they can get you to believe it.
• 48:16
  They don't need to do anything else.
• 48:18
  You'll do the rest of the work for them.
• 48:24
  That's an old Carter G Woodson quote Was about you no longer
• 48:31
  have to tell a black man to go to the back door because we have
• 48:36
  been socialized. No, we got to go to the back
• 48:38
  door. Yeah.
• 48:40
  And if there is no back door, we will we will build 1.
• 48:43
  That's deep. I'm here that you'll build it.
• 48:45
  Instead of just walking. In the front.
• 48:48
  Instead of just walking in the front.
• 48:50
  Well, that that also speaks, though, to the ingenuity.
• 48:54
  Love us too, right? Like we're going to build it.
• 48:57
  We can make it we can do it because why else would you bring
• 49:00
  all of these people over do a whole transatlantic we OK, we're
• 49:04
  going to stop there. We'll, we'll.
• 49:05
  Save that for that no we'll. So everything, there's a reason
• 49:11
  and it's right here in our faces and we're it's the ultimate gas
• 49:16
  lighting. Absolutely, absolutely.
• 49:21
  And trying to make us think we're crazy for what we're
• 49:24
  seeing. Absolutely.
• 49:26
  Same thing when we work, when we work on behalf of these little
• 49:29
  boys and these little black girls in in the school system.
• 49:32
  And then the system's trying to make us think we're crazy, that
• 49:35
  we don't see these children being, for lack of a better
• 49:37
  word, abused. Yeah, by the yeah.
• 49:41
  And sometimes the actual teachers and Staffs by small and
• 49:47
  subtle things that are being said and done in the classroom.
• 49:52
  Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm sick of it.
• 49:57
  It's been going on for forever. Yeah, it has been.
• 50:01
  It has been. So what do you think are some of
• 50:05
  the consequences? And I think we started to go in
• 50:08
  there organically of constantly being misunderstood or
• 50:12
  misrepresented. Well, consequences, of course.
• 50:16
  You're going to be live. We're going to be locked out of
• 50:18
  opportunities, so we'll have to create our own spaces as we
• 50:26
  should anyway, as we did prior to the the the grand idea of
• 50:32
  integration. But because we do not control
• 50:39
  the the power structure OK, even in creating our own spaces, it
• 50:44
  exists at the will of someone else because we have seen our
• 50:51
  own spaces created and destroyed.
• 50:54
  Because people don't mind their business.
• 50:56
  So, you know, consequences what we're, we're going to be locked
• 50:59
  out. We continue to be locked out.
• 51:02
  We continue to fight for our, our place at the table.
• 51:07
  We also continue to see generations of youth being
• 51:14
  discarded. You talk about the the prison,
• 51:18
  the the school of prison pipeline.
• 51:20
  Yeah. Like they're still investing in
• 51:23
  prisons. Yeah, they are.
• 51:25
  In in my fear is that in this in this current political climate,
• 51:32
  they are comfortable trying to deport everybody and then taking
• 51:39
  up a hatchet to education so that we can create a permanent
• 51:44
  underclass in America. And then our babies will have to
• 51:48
  do the work that the deported people are no longer here to do
• 51:53
  because business still needs they fruit picked.
• 51:56
  Yeah, I think there there's a really big gap in that because
• 52:02
  when you look back at who last time I checked, the highest
• 52:06
  recipients of like TANF, SNAP benefits, it's not us, it's not
• 52:15
  us, it's not us, it's not us. It's not us, but they have done
• 52:19
  a great job convincing America that it is US.
• 52:23
  And it's their racism that's leading them to support those
• 52:26
  people and make those changes. But those, those red, those red
• 52:31
  states in those communities, in those red states, they're,
• 52:36
  they're going to miss out. I mean, but this is what they
• 52:41
  wanted. But I think, you know, they can
• 52:44
  continue doing what they're doing because they believe that
• 52:47
  they get rid of the, the, the, the, the immigrants and we take
• 52:51
  a hatchet to education. These young black people won't
• 52:55
  have no other option if they want a job but to do this, this,
• 53:02
  this, this labor work. They want to create a permanent.
• 53:06
  I believe it looks like they're trying to create a permanent
• 53:09
  underclass. Yeah.
• 53:11
  And here's the thing about it. So children that are growing up
• 53:15
  right now, let me see what somewhere in adolescent.
• 53:21
  So these are people who are seeing two things.
• 53:24
  They're seeing the extremely successful, highly educated, but
• 53:27
  then they're being witnessing all of these things that are
• 53:32
  happening that are creating fear.
• 53:35
  Like what you're saying, you see what they're doing to the
• 53:37
  education system. They're saying people being just
• 53:39
  supported. They're seeing that certain
• 53:41
  things are dangerous. And so they're planting a seed.
• 53:46
  No, no, no, no, we don't do that.
• 53:48
  Remember I talked about those seeds and bearing fruit for
• 53:51
  years to come. So now they're doing another
• 53:53
  version of that, but it's like now they're targeting the
• 53:58
  immigrant population, which that's going to have multiple
• 54:06
  lines because that's going to that that that's happened to
• 54:09
  other countries as well. Again, another episode, almost
• 54:14
  so many topics in here. But just like what they're doing
• 54:17
  is that it's it's instilling some fear and it's, it can
• 54:23
  change what has become kind of like normalized and what has
• 54:27
  been seen. And just the we had President
• 54:32
  Obama, we had, we still have, you know, Kamala Harris, vice
• 54:41
  president. So what was what's a common
• 54:44
  thing in there? Education.
• 54:46
  So if people don't have access to education like that anymore,
• 54:51
  we don't have to worry about this coming up again.
• 54:54
  Let's snuff this out now. So then this won't be a issue 3,
• 55:01
  4 generations later, Maybe even 2 in some households.
• 55:05
  Yeah, yeah. It's deep, it's deep, so go
• 55:15
  ahead. Now I'm saying and depressing.
• 55:18
  That's what I was thinking. It's deep and depressing because
• 55:22
  we've been fighting this by forever.
• 55:24
  All right. And what what goes off in my
• 55:27
  mind and I had like have to remember that God is on the
• 55:32
  throne. He's saying yesterday, today and
• 55:36
  forever. And we know that even in the
• 55:41
  Bible, the children of Israel, they went through it.
• 55:43
  They weren't slaves. He led them out.
• 55:45
  Some of them wanted to go back kicking and screaming because
• 55:47
  they had meat to eat, forgetting all the awful things that have
• 55:51
  been done to them and that they had cried out and asked God to
• 55:55
  be delivered, right. But just just that there's the
• 56:01
  milk in the land of milk of honey is still there, right?
• 56:04
  And God's promises, they're they are true.
• 56:07
  And so I think that's a good segue.
• 56:10
  How has your relationship with God influenced your ability to
• 56:13
  heal? Actually, a piece of it lies in
• 56:20
  what you just alluded to because what has always stuck with me is
• 56:29
  the word hardened, because while the children of Israel were
• 56:35
  going through what they were going through, trying to come up
• 56:37
  out of Egypt, by God's grace, God also hardened the heart
• 56:45
  affair. So they couldn't go.
• 56:47
  So he, he, he was going to continually be an obstacle.
• 56:51
  Yeah, to God's promises. A part of this is me accepting
• 56:58
  they're going to be challenges, they're going to be obstacles.
• 57:02
  It's going to be messy, and I'm not going to get anything easy
• 57:05
  in this world. And I think knowing that on the
• 57:08
  front end prepares me because when these things pop up and
• 57:13
  they attack my, my, my, my mental Wellness, I don't go over
• 57:18
  the deep end. I don't go over the deep end.
• 57:20
  I used to work with a woman back in New York who was a therapist
• 57:24
  and she said we are all one traumatic event away from major
• 57:26
  psychosis, she said. Everybody.
• 57:31
  Anything can happen that can change all of us.
• 57:35
  And she said it depends on issues that you got to really
• 57:37
  take care of your mental Wellness so that when you are
• 57:39
  coming up against these these challenges that you don't go
• 57:44
  over to the Cliff. She said more specifically for
• 57:47
  me, like you're, you're genetically predisposed, so you
• 57:49
  really got to take care of yourself.
• 57:51
  I'm almost schizophrenic, bipolar and just lived in
• 57:55
  depression and wouldn't take her medication.
• 57:58
  None of that. So, so that understanding, which
• 58:05
  for me is scriptural, says God's got me, but it ain't going to be
• 58:09
  easy. Yeah.
• 58:11
  And there's scripture that says that too.
• 58:13
  Yeah. Yeah, it and for me it works
• 58:17
  because because I have had such a hard life and I had
• 58:22
  connections with people who have given up because they couldn't
• 58:27
  process that, they couldn't understand that.
• 58:30
  So I anchor myself into that. But then come all the way
• 58:36
  through to Christ. It's all about grace.
• 58:40
  It's all about grace and in I have got to give myself as much
• 58:46
  grace as possible because I'm not going to get this right
• 58:49
  every time. I'm not going to be OK every
• 58:52
  time. And you know what?
• 58:54
  Neither is she and neither is he and neither will they.
• 58:57
  So it's something that has to come in and spread outward.
• 59:01
  And if I can do those things, but it's going, it's going to be
• 59:03
  a struggle. And then give people space to
• 59:06
  make mistakes, including yourself.
• 59:07
  It's going to be OK. All of that comes from scripture
• 59:10
  for me, and all of that kind of conducts me through my own
• 59:16
  mental health and mental Wellness experiences.
• 59:20
  Awesome. That's so good.
• 59:21
  That's so good. There's there's just there's so
• 59:25
  much in there. And I think sometimes when we
• 59:29
  don't like know the word and we just know the struggle, like
• 59:33
  that's where the enemy wants to come right in that gap and to be
• 59:37
  like, God doesn't love you see why we let this happen to you
• 59:41
  like and have you questioning things.
• 59:43
  And it's like that's not even what's what's what's going on.
• 59:46
  If you know the word, though, that you know that there's going
• 59:49
  to be difficulties. There's nothing that says life
• 59:52
  is going to be easy. Well, it's just my yoke is easy,
• 59:56
  but it tells about ease and struggle.
• 1:00:00
  There's both. There's both.
• 1:00:04
  There's there's going to always be both and, and in, in, in
• 1:00:08
  Scripture has a purpose and a reason.
• 1:00:10
  And some will teach the lesson about ease.
• 1:00:14
  Some will teach the lesson about struggle and then some that will
• 1:00:17
  teach both lessons at the same time because the Bible is in
• 1:00:20
  conversation with itself. And sometimes we'll be reading
• 1:00:23
  things to be like, well, I just read this over here that over
• 1:00:26
  there. And then we've got to lean on
• 1:00:29
  our relationship with God in prayer to discern what what the
• 1:00:35
  lesson is there, because it even that's not going to be easy
• 1:00:39
  understanding that book. And you know, sometimes
• 1:00:43
  different contexts it the the word applies, you know, it's the
• 1:00:47
  living word. So that's how it was applied in
• 1:00:50
  that moment. But also, you know, we're not
• 1:00:51
  supposed to lean on our own understanding.
• 1:00:53
  You're absolutely right. I agree.
• 1:00:55
  And prayer to just like ask God for clarity on it.
• 1:00:58
  What do you want me to get from this?
• 1:01:00
  Show me how this applies to where I am, what I have going on
• 1:01:04
  all those things. But sometimes we want it to be
• 1:01:08
  so black and white, but like we haven't really welcomed God in
• 1:01:12
  to say God like come into this space right like and what is it
• 1:01:18
  if you he that have hold on, how does it go?
• 1:01:23
  He who has ears, let him hear. He who has eyes, let him see.
• 1:01:27
  And we've not surrender our ears and eyes sometimes to God.
• 1:01:32
  And then we wonder why we can't understand, right?
• 1:01:36
  Yeah, yeah. So Speaking of, what role do you
• 1:01:41
  believe churches or spiritual communities play in supporting
• 1:01:45
  black men and or maybe even feel in supporting black men?
• 1:01:55
  I think we can do a better job opening our doors to the black
• 1:02:03
  man that isn't typically coming to church.
• 1:02:07
  OK, say more about that. They they there are they a lot
• 1:02:13
  of black men have so many questions about what is preached
• 1:02:20
  what what they read, how they understand it or the lack
• 1:02:23
  thereof and it and it puts them in a position where they're
• 1:02:27
  going to be extremely critical of religion and Christianity
• 1:02:32
  because the role it played in Ardsley and some of our churches
• 1:02:40
  are scared to let that black man in the door because they don't
• 1:02:45
  want to be questioned. They got an issue with someone
• 1:02:51
  saying, well if the Bible says how come dot dot dot dot dot I
• 1:02:59
  think the doors should be open to them.
• 1:03:01
  I think they should be sought after.
• 1:03:03
  Yeah, because this is the person showing curiosity.
• 1:03:07
  Could be but. Some.
• 1:03:08
  People are there to be divisive too.
• 1:03:11
  Some people are there to be divisive, but but there are
• 1:03:14
  people there who just need understanding.
• 1:03:16
  Yeah. And when you push back on their
• 1:03:19
  genuine desire to understand, that could lead them to being
• 1:03:25
  divisive. And we may not know front.
• 1:03:29
  We may not know a front. What I'm saying is, don't run
• 1:03:32
  from them until you do. Have a conversation.
• 1:03:37
  Bring them in. Yep.
• 1:03:39
  Like accept their questions. And also if the response to the
• 1:03:46
  question is I don't know, then you know what?
• 1:03:49
  Just say you don't know. Yeah, sometimes we feel like we
• 1:03:52
  got to have an answer. You don't.
• 1:03:56
  Sometimes it's like, yeah, I don't know, I might have to look
• 1:03:58
  into that and get back to you. And they may risk that more than
• 1:04:03
  because it's in Bible, because the Bible said so.
• 1:04:05
  But you know what that is? You're not going to respond well
• 1:04:08
  to that energy. And I need the church to respond
• 1:04:12
  well to that energy. Yeah, because it's given because
• 1:04:14
  I said so, which goes back to more correction than connection.
• 1:04:18
  Yeah, I had. I had a old minister way back in
• 1:04:22
  the day who said, yeah, Christians go by the Bible.
• 1:04:24
  They put it on a coffee table and they go right by it.
• 1:04:29
  You're not picking it up, not picking up and reading it, Not
• 1:04:31
  not really going deep, not looking at historical context,
• 1:04:34
  not looking at cultural context, not looking at where the Bible
• 1:04:37
  contradicts itself. There are spaces where the Bible
• 1:04:42
  will and fearful to have that conversation.
• 1:04:46
  I believe that my God is bigger, so I'm not scared to have
• 1:04:55
  conversation anyone about it, even if it's at a point where I
• 1:05:00
  can't answer a question. I can't, I don't know.
• 1:05:05
  Let me look. Let me bring someone who's been
• 1:05:07
  doing this a little bit longer than me.
• 1:05:09
  Let's connect. Let's have more dialogue and,
• 1:05:12
  and while I got you, while, while you're in the door and
• 1:05:18
  we're having dialogue that then gives me an opportunity to do
• 1:05:22
  for you what Jesus did for the people that he came in contact
• 1:05:27
  with. Yeah.
• 1:05:28
  Jesus took care of everybody. They weren't all of the Jewish
• 1:05:36
  faith. There was no Christian faith at
• 1:05:39
  the time. He was.
• 1:05:41
  He was. They were Jews and Gentiles.
• 1:05:43
  They were Sabians. There were a whole bunch of
• 1:05:45
  different religions. Yeah, and he was, he was
• 1:05:50
  fulfilling Hebrew prophecy. He didn't surround himself with
• 1:05:56
  a bunch of Hebrews. Like, I'm only going to hook up
• 1:06:00
  with the Hebrews. I'm only going to help the
• 1:06:01
  Hebrews. I'm only he accepted everything
• 1:06:04
  and he, he healed, he taught. Heal these people.
• 1:06:10
  They ain't got to believe what you believe.
• 1:06:12
  They ain't got to be a Christian.
• 1:06:13
  They have to have accepted Jesus Christ as they Lord and Savior
• 1:06:17
  for them now to get us a resource from you, because
• 1:06:21
  what's going to happen is that boy will pick up the Bible and
• 1:06:26
  he will see all the examples of people in the Bible that
• 1:06:30
  actually reflect, reflect his life.
• 1:06:34
  And he will see how Jesus did everything for those people.
• 1:06:40
  But this church won't. So accept, accept these boys who
• 1:06:47
  who are on the fringes, have them in, have conversation with
• 1:06:51
  them and then work to healing them.
• 1:06:55
  I mean, we can get to the proselytizing later.
• 1:06:58
  We we can get to that. But do you need food?
• 1:07:03
  Do you need clothes? Is there something going on with
• 1:07:07
  your mental health and we can connect you to professionals?
• 1:07:10
  Do you need me to be an advocate for you at your school because
• 1:07:13
  they acting while over there? What can I do to make this life
• 1:07:18
  better for you before I come with the sales pitch in a Bible
• 1:07:23
  in my hand? I think that's where we get it
• 1:07:25
  twisted. Yeah, I think that's exactly in
• 1:07:28
  a twisted. I mean, I think a very big part
• 1:07:31
  of this is show me the character of Jesus.
• 1:07:35
  That's really what it is. And I also get, right, like
• 1:07:38
  there are some people holidays are coming up.
• 1:07:41
  They have their list of the churches they're going to hit up
• 1:07:44
  for those holiday baskets, right?
• 1:07:46
  That's different than the person coming in the door with the
• 1:07:50
  question. You can also feel if it's a more
• 1:07:54
  of a divisive energy that they're coming with versus
• 1:07:57
  curiosity. And even how you said it
• 1:08:01
  sometimes I it's in the question, right?
• 1:08:03
  The role of Christianity and enslavement.
• 1:08:06
  It wasn't that it was how it was misused.
• 1:08:09
  It's the people who distorted it, which is a big difference.
• 1:08:14
  But people will put it on the religion and it's like, no, the
• 1:08:16
  Bible is still the same. It's how it was used.
• 1:08:20
  That gaslighting, that manipulation that I was talking
• 1:08:22
  about. Like it's the same thing.
• 1:08:24
  But anything can be. People can try to twist it in
• 1:08:28
  the craziest, craziest of ways. We see people do this all the
• 1:08:31
  time. We see it at work, we see people
• 1:08:33
  doing it on TV and dating. Like all these things where
• 1:08:37
  they're just taking things and twisting it.
• 1:08:39
  And then I think it's more of a personal thing, like why are you
• 1:08:42
  susceptible to it? But then it's like you're
• 1:08:45
  talking about, I ain't going to even go there.
• 1:08:47
  I'm leave that alone. But there, it's all right.
• 1:08:51
  It's like it's outlook again. I think we got like 3 episodes
• 1:08:55
  already in here that we could come back to without getting
• 1:08:59
  getting too far. But just like, yeah, I think
• 1:09:02
  people are just mad and they need a focus or somewhere to put
• 1:09:07
  that negative energy. And sometimes it's misplaced or
• 1:09:13
  they're they, they misunderstand or just because there's anybody
• 1:09:18
  that's not that doesn't look like us involved, then it's
• 1:09:22
  it's, it's evil. So like, or it's, it's, it's a
• 1:09:26
  bad thing. Yeah.
• 1:09:27
  It's just like completely. It's like it's very binary, all
• 1:09:30
  or nothing, black or white. So like, even with like, I was
• 1:09:33
  watching Shirley last night on Netflix, Right.
• 1:09:36
  So when Shirley Chisholm went to go visit George Wallace and
• 1:09:40
  people were like, Oh my gosh, like, how could she do this?
• 1:09:42
  She stopped. I thought she was black.
• 1:09:44
  She's a Christian first. She really exhibited the love,
• 1:09:50
  the character of Christ in that moment and said pray for me,
• 1:09:54
  like, and I'm going to keep praying for you.
• 1:09:56
  You know what I mean? Like she recognizes that it's
• 1:09:59
  not hate, but people think it has to be all or nothing love or
• 1:10:02
  hate when all of those people that are hard to love like the
• 1:10:08
  George Wallace's of the world, right?
• 1:10:10
  Like they still need prayer because God is the only thing
• 1:10:14
  that's likely going to be able to change.
• 1:10:16
  That's God is the only thing that can change them.
• 1:10:18
  And then even they have to be in agreement with that.
• 1:10:21
  And then sometimes things have to happen to put them on their
• 1:10:24
  knees to see, or if not, well, they kicking it with kicking it
• 1:10:32
  with the death. I I don't, I don't got the power
• 1:10:35
  to send nobody to hell. Yeah.
• 1:10:38
  But don't. So I I'll.
• 1:10:39
  I'll. I'll.
• 1:10:40
  Do what I'm supposed to do. So I'll do what I'm supposed to
• 1:10:45
  do, what I've been called to do, and then leave that with them in
• 1:10:50
  the Lord. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:52
  At the same time, extended grace was because I also know what I
• 1:10:57
  have done in this world. I and I got to make sure you
• 1:11:00
  forgive yourself. I got grace.
• 1:11:04
  OK. So it would be ridiculous for me
• 1:11:10
  not to extend it. Yeah, be ridiculous, man.
• 1:11:14
  I'm I ain't going to be no fool. Right.
• 1:11:16
  I was like you, you, you. Take the grace on over there.
• 1:11:20
  The sermon is real. Yeah, you get, you give a God
• 1:11:23
  y'all, y'all work that out. But you ain't got to.
• 1:11:27
  You don't have to be here with me.
• 1:11:29
  And Titus, is it Titus 310 that it talks about how to deal with
• 1:11:32
  divisive people, right? But obviously I know Jesus came
• 1:11:35
  back and said, you know, we're forgiven 70 * 7 and you know, so
• 1:11:39
  on and so on. But like still some people,
• 1:11:42
  that's, that's what they're choosing to do.
• 1:11:45
  So what would it look like to create safe spaces where Black
• 1:11:50
  men feel safe enough to be vulnerable?
• 1:11:53
  And when I say vulnerable, I mean emotionally.
• 1:11:56
  We're not talking about physical safety because a lot of people,
• 1:11:59
  they struggle with that word vulnerable because then that
• 1:12:02
  means you're susceptible to threats.
• 1:12:04
  And we're saying just emotionally to be present, to
• 1:12:07
  not suppress, to be authentic, to embody, emote, express what
• 1:12:14
  they are actually experiencing and feeling.
• 1:12:19
  Well, one that I, I believe we've got to be encouraged to
• 1:12:22
  express ourselves because sometimes we don't even feel
• 1:12:25
  like there's space for us to do it on the front end.
• 1:12:28
  So I think the positive encouragement is good, but then
• 1:12:32
  after that making sure that it what we expressed is received
• 1:12:40
  and not criticized, OK, not belittled.
• 1:12:45
  Yeah. Not judged it.
• 1:12:50
  If you do those things, then I'm going to Stonewall and then I am
• 1:12:55
  not going to share. And I would say even though you
• 1:13:00
  all appear to be emotionally shut down, you all are very
• 1:13:04
  sensitive because you know very quickly if this is a space I
• 1:13:09
  can, you're going to pick up that whatever that Tony is
• 1:13:13
  quick. Yep, yeah, if that can happen,
• 1:13:19
  that that lays a good foundation.
• 1:13:23
  But this is something that has to be practiced over and over
• 1:13:28
  and over and over and over again for us to be to be fully
• 1:13:33
  comfortable and doing it. And depending on the level of a
• 1:13:37
  person's trauma and their experiences, I think that has a
• 1:13:41
  big thing to do with it, like a big part of huge influence.
• 1:13:46
  Absolutely. Because when I was young and I
• 1:13:48
  was going through the thick of everything and it was apparent
• 1:13:52
  that I was I was going through it and I had adults pull me into
• 1:13:59
  a room like tell me what's going on.
• 1:14:02
  How can we help you? And even though they they were
• 1:14:06
  clearly had never said a a bad thing to me, they had always
• 1:14:10
  been supportive, never criticized me, always encouraged
• 1:14:13
  me. I still could not open my mouth
• 1:14:16
  to talk about the stuff that was going on.
• 1:14:18
  Because that programming and the threat of what will happen when
• 1:14:21
  it got back home and the what goes on in this house stays in
• 1:14:26
  his house. He was out here telling our
• 1:14:28
  business. So if it's already bad without
• 1:14:31
  you talking, it's going to get worse when you do talk, not
• 1:14:35
  understanding interventions and what can happen or then also
• 1:14:40
  feeling the burden of what will happen then to my my caregiver
• 1:14:45
  if I say something. Yeah, there's so there's so much
• 1:14:48
  that kids carry. Yeah.
• 1:14:51
  Yeah. So I think yeah, providing that
• 1:14:53
  space and coupled with what you said, you know, depends on what
• 1:14:56
  they're going through that might how many times we got to go back
• 1:15:01
  to the well with them. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:06
  You're free to say whatever you want here, so judge from a free
• 1:15:09
  zone, it's OK. Got to continue to handle that
• 1:15:12
  hold of this. And, and you can't tell a
• 1:15:15
  person, you can't talk a person. It's a feeling safe.
• 1:15:19
  It's an experience that has to happen.
• 1:15:21
  And So what happens is that people think, oh, I said it's a
• 1:15:25
  safe space. You think that they're supposed
• 1:15:27
  to put down 10:15 however many years of conditioning depending
• 1:15:31
  upon when you enter their life and that moment because you said
• 1:15:35
  it was safe. No, they they need to see if
• 1:15:38
  they need data. So that's, that's here's the
• 1:15:41
  other part about this. While you all as black men, you
• 1:15:46
  know, who are shut down, you gained A superpower, though on
• 1:15:51
  the other side of that, like then that hyper vigilance,
• 1:15:53
  you're able to read people very quickly, you're able to collect
• 1:15:56
  data, you're able to pivot and know how to move.
• 1:15:59
  Like, there are powers that come out of it, but like, it's
• 1:16:04
  disproportionately high. And it's unfortunately, it's
• 1:16:08
  unfortunate the way in which the superpower was formed.
• 1:16:12
  It doesn't have to go away. But then when you learn to
• 1:16:15
  create safety within yourself and you do the work and, you
• 1:16:18
  know, like your therapist said, like, you know, you're the adult
• 1:16:22
  now. You can allow the child you to
• 1:16:24
  shine and lead because adult, you can protect him.
• 1:16:29
  And that goes for any woman that's listening to this.
• 1:16:31
  Yeah. But we don't.
• 1:16:33
  It's all or nothing, right? Like.
• 1:16:35
  And it's just like, that's been a huge part of my
• 1:16:37
  transformation. Like I have this particular
• 1:16:39
  photo of me that I see her and I was like, that's who's coming
• 1:16:44
  out. She's so much fun.
• 1:16:47
  Like I always thought I was fun. But like, she takes up space,
• 1:16:51
  she commands attention. She's a light, she beams, right?
• 1:16:57
  And so it's just like I had to put her away for a little while.
• 1:17:01
  It's like she got me in trouble a little bit when I went
• 1:17:04
  perceived trouble, perceived troubling, right, Because I went
• 1:17:08
  into a different environment with my aunt and she's like,
• 1:17:11
  Nah, Nah, Nah, tone that down. That kind of.
• 1:17:14
  That's what I mean when I say it got me in trouble.
• 1:17:16
  But there was sometimes my mouth was low.
• 1:17:21
  Yeah, just a little bit. But I know how to manage her and
• 1:17:26
  regulate her. And I got the things my aunt was
• 1:17:28
  bringing balance, but it swung from one end to the other and it
• 1:17:31
  was so fast that I didn't know what to do with her.
• 1:17:36
  And so now I finally come back to the middle.
• 1:17:39
  But that's been has a lot to do with my identity in Christ and
• 1:17:44
  really just letting him define me and not what I think I should
• 1:17:49
  be doing it because we we just should it on our whole life and
• 1:17:54
  we should on ourselves and just figuring out how to be in the
• 1:17:59
  middle of all that taking in what our parents told us,
• 1:18:05
  understanding that they're human and just like you know what's
• 1:18:10
  what do I want? I know other things.
• 1:18:14
  What do I want, what does that look like?
• 1:18:16
  And creating that safety within self, I think are hugely
• 1:18:19
  important. Yeah, it was another piece that
• 1:18:23
  I wanted to add. Come on, when you when you when
• 1:18:25
  you questioned about pretty much what can the the church do?
• 1:18:29
  What can the ministries do? Something I always share.
• 1:18:37
  Know you're Lane. OK, say.
• 1:18:39
  No, you're Lane say more ministers are mental health
• 1:18:43
  professionals. I'm lucky mine is, but not
• 1:18:47
  everybody has that. Not everyone has yeah and most
• 1:18:51
  of them done. Yep.
• 1:18:55
  Don't let no, don't let no minister diagnose you.
• 1:19:00
  They could pray for you and on you all they want, but they also
• 1:19:05
  have got to be able to encourage you and support you with getting
• 1:19:11
  help from professionals. The people who were who were
• 1:19:14
  trained and certified know what they talking about.
• 1:19:18
  This stuff is neurological, it's biological, it's chemical.
• 1:19:24
  And just because you was called to preach don't mean you know
• 1:19:28
  anything about this. Yeah.
• 1:19:31
  God told me to tell you. God can tell that to him.
• 1:19:35
  He'll need to tell you to tell him.
• 1:19:37
  So just pray for him and then send them to the professionals.
• 1:19:42
  That's good. Well.
• 1:19:44
  So that's one of. The and you're you're you're
• 1:19:46
  getting on AI think that's a whole other topic like the
• 1:19:50
  coexistence of faith and mental health.
• 1:19:53
  And it doesn't have to be an or. And I think that's why I forget
• 1:19:58
  how many. Oh gosh, it might be closer to
• 1:20:00
  10 years ago now that I'm thinking about it, but Howard
• 1:20:03
  introduced the dual MSW Masters of Divinity.
• 1:20:10
  Hugely important. Yeah, you need both.
• 1:20:13
  You need both. That is needed because people
• 1:20:15
  are bringing their trauma to the church and a lot of us are
• 1:20:19
  getting dopamine fixes, but we're not getting fixes to our
• 1:20:22
  issues. We're getting high off of
• 1:20:25
  praise, we're getting high off of hallelujahs, and then we're
• 1:20:28
  walking back into the same trauma.
• 1:20:30
  With no additional skills. No skills, nothing learned.
• 1:20:35
  Yeah, because we got that navigated.
• 1:20:38
  Yeah, that's an intentional piece that I love.
• 1:20:40
  Yeah, yeah, I was like, I get it.
• 1:20:43
  I see how it makes sense. And there we, we had no problem
• 1:20:46
  with people coming over into that program.
• 1:20:48
  And I met some some other really dope people who who who were
• 1:20:53
  doing that and they are working as like ministers and like as
• 1:20:57
  social workers. So like, I think it's a great
• 1:20:59
  balance. But when you think about it,
• 1:21:02
  like ministry is social work, except you get the mental health
• 1:21:07
  piece of it. And I have a lot of people, I
• 1:21:09
  don't think they understand that about a master's of social work.
• 1:21:11
  Like your bachelor's is not going to get as much into it.
• 1:21:14
  But like that master's of social work, that's where you're
• 1:21:16
  getting deep into that. If you take the mental health
• 1:21:20
  track and like understanding it and what it looks like in
• 1:21:23
  community, all these wonderful things.
• 1:21:27
  OK, So what would you say to brothers who are silently
• 1:21:32
  suffering but feel like they can't talk to anyone?
• 1:21:40
  I would encourage them to find some type of outlet, OK, that
• 1:21:45
  that doesn't necessarily require them to flip a switch and
• 1:21:49
  immediately be able to talk to somebody.
• 1:21:51
  That's good. I, I encourage the arts.
• 1:21:55
  I, I encourage writing, I encourage if, if you, if you
• 1:22:01
  want to do spoken word or you want to rap about it, or you
• 1:22:03
  want to pick up a, a sampler and make beats that that express
• 1:22:07
  what you're, I encourage looking for some way of expressing your
• 1:22:14
  thoughts, your feelings, your emotions in.
• 1:22:18
  If you continue to do that, you may become comfortable enough to
• 1:22:21
  at that point say, well, I wrote this because I was going through
• 1:22:26
  that. Or it may not be that you write,
• 1:22:30
  maybe you pick up a book and you start reading a bunch of things
• 1:22:34
  that kind of serve you in a particular way.
• 1:22:37
  So people like why? Because I was going through.
• 1:22:41
  X and you identify with the character storyline.
• 1:22:46
  Yeah, yeah. So they can, they can be
• 1:22:49
  expressive without sitting on the the proverbial sofa.
• 1:22:58
  So I encourage that. But I could and that's also, I
• 1:23:02
  encourage creativity across the board.
• 1:23:03
  I think everyone's got at least one book in them and I'm not
• 1:23:06
  talking about 10 Steps to XYZ. It's about something creative.
• 1:23:09
  I think everyone has at least one novel in them, and I
• 1:23:11
  encourage people kind of finding out what that is.
• 1:23:13
  But you're right. I think that's easy to say, but
• 1:23:18
  when you think about it in school, we all could have
• 1:23:21
  written one. That doesn't mean it's going to
• 1:23:22
  be a New York Times bestseller. Like we all.
• 1:23:25
  You're right. We have stories that we can
• 1:23:27
  tell, whether it's fictitious, something we've observed, and we
• 1:23:31
  add on to it our own. Yeah.
• 1:23:34
  Yeah, you're right. OK.
• 1:23:36
  The overwhelming majority of human beings dream.
• 1:23:40
  They go to sleep at night, we all and they have multiple
• 1:23:43
  genes. We just may not remember.
• 1:23:45
  That. Some.
• 1:23:47
  People claim not to, but you may remember bits and pieces, so you
• 1:23:51
  dream your subconscious mind is creating stories all the time.
• 1:23:57
  I'm just saying that there are some resources out there and
• 1:24:00
  some practices that can help us cultivate a story.
• 1:24:04
  And once you get a story idea, then it's just about the
• 1:24:07
  mechanics. So are you going to come back
• 1:24:10
  and do an episode on how to write your first book and how
• 1:24:13
  we're all creators? I'll do, I'll do one even
• 1:24:17
  better. Not just write it, but also then
• 1:24:19
  to publish it because I'm an independent publisher.
• 1:24:22
  Once you have your, once you have your book, you can have it
• 1:24:26
  out there in the world within 72 hours.
• 1:24:28
  Well, I'm going to talk to you because I've been working on a
• 1:24:31
  few things. Come on 72 then let's.
• 1:24:35
  Look, and I say 72 just to give you a little more space to be
• 1:24:38
  honest, it could be out there 48 hours, but you would need to
• 1:24:41
  have a complete package and I will be able to show you the
• 1:24:44
  resources you need to make sure you have a complete package.
• 1:24:49
  Everything that a publisher would do, you can do not you do
• 1:24:53
  it, but you can get you have the ability to contract with the
• 1:24:57
  vendors who will be able to do everything the.
• 1:24:59
  Understood. Copy editor.
• 1:25:02
  You need a layout person layout. Do you have this already
• 1:25:06
  packaged? They're ready to go.
• 1:25:07
  Where can people find this and consume this?
• 1:25:10
  Asking for myself, I. I, I did, do you know, during
• 1:25:17
  the pandemic, I did do online workshop.
• 1:25:20
  I need to I need to go through my hard drives.
• 1:25:22
  Wasn't recorded. OK, I was going to say.
• 1:25:25
  I got, I got to go through my hard drives to see where the
• 1:25:27
  recording is. I know I haven't.
• 1:25:30
  And then that gives you. It sounds like you got another
• 1:25:34
  book. Well, I'm, I'm actually going
• 1:25:38
  to, I'm thinking about putting that together in a, a, a quick
• 1:25:43
  course, just something, some, someone click on one.
• 1:25:46
  Yeah, just kind of go through step by step.
• 1:25:48
  Yeah. So from beginning.
• 1:25:49
  And here's how you write your book and get it published.
• 1:25:51
  I'm gonna need that, and I'm sure somebody listen to several.
• 1:25:54
  Somebody's listening. Needed to just just to make it.
• 1:25:59
  To make it. To make it.
• 1:26:00
  Yeah, make it a thing. You're saying 48 to 72 hours is
• 1:26:04
  out there? You just need.
• 1:26:07
  You just need a complete package.
• 1:26:08
  Yep. And you'll give us a step.
• 1:26:10
  OK, Yeah. So I was about to say just
• 1:26:17
  because sometimes people can have the package, but that
• 1:26:20
  mindset blocks them from doing it.
• 1:26:24
  That battle of just like, you know, the that last pull, you
• 1:26:28
  know, pull the lever, push the button.
• 1:26:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that theater. Yeah.
• 1:26:35
  Stepping off the Cliff? Yep, but but I I anyone who
• 1:26:41
  might be in that space, I encourage you to press the
• 1:26:43
  button. OK.
• 1:26:46
  Press the button. So what myths or lies about
• 1:26:51
  black masculinity would you like to dismantle today?
• 1:26:54
  We don't all play sports. I mean, I'm going to go basic.
• 1:26:58
  We're not all entertainers, yeah.
• 1:27:01
  We're not all entertainers, we're not all basketball
• 1:27:03
  players, we're not all rappers and singers and dancers and,
• 1:27:10
  and, and, and some of us created the telephone and some of us
• 1:27:15
  created the filament for for the light bulb and some of us
• 1:27:19
  created the Super Soaker or sisters created the GPS that we
• 1:27:25
  use in I was thinking about. Her, yeah.
• 1:27:29
  So just allow people to show you who they are.
• 1:27:36
  But then that's also my message to these young men that you
• 1:27:41
  don't have to follow what popular culture puts in front of
• 1:27:47
  you because we don't we don't control what what gets passed in
• 1:27:51
  front of us. And it's very intentional.
• 1:27:53
  The images that are being shown and the audio and the audio.
• 1:28:00
  It's OK to think outside the box.
• 1:28:02
  It's OK to be creative, to do something new and something
• 1:28:05
  different. Flip side, this myth that this
• 1:28:11
  over sexualized experience that we are not everybody is, is with
• 1:28:18
  that and and, and, and young boy, not everybody is with that.
• 1:28:21
  So it's OK to not want to be with every woman who says every
• 1:28:26
  young girl who says she wants to be with you.
• 1:28:28
  You don't have to be with her. Or that you see and are
• 1:28:31
  attracted to that you have to go chase.
• 1:28:34
  You have to go there. There are there are, there are
• 1:28:37
  plenty of experiences where where, where young ladies have
• 1:28:42
  bought the lie that if they put it out there in front of the
• 1:28:46
  guy, he has got to take it. He wants to take it, he will
• 1:28:50
  take it. I feel like Jack Nelson in that
• 1:28:52
  movie. But the reality is there are a
• 1:28:55
  lot of boys who are being pressured into sex because
• 1:29:02
  they're trying to stand up to this image of what it means to
• 1:29:05
  be a, to come into your manhood. Yeah, it's OK to say no.
• 1:29:09
  Yep. It is absolutely all right to
• 1:29:11
  say no. You are not meant to sleep with
• 1:29:13
  everything that wants to sleep with you.
• 1:29:15
  And it's all good. I'll add to that, right?
• 1:29:18
  Like just as you know, we're taught or that message is given
• 1:29:23
  to women about being precious, right?
• 1:29:25
  Like, so are you. Not everyone deserves to
• 1:29:29
  experience you, to carry your seed, any of those things.
• 1:29:34
  Your identity is not between your legs.
• 1:29:38
  It's not based on your genitalia.
• 1:29:42
  That over that is, that is, that is Isaiah.
• 1:29:47
  I cannot get it out. That is, that is fetishization.
• 1:29:51
  There we go. Fetishization, fetishization.
• 1:29:54
  If you take it a minute, the fetishization so like that
• 1:29:58
  doesn't come from us. That was projected onto US.
• 1:30:02
  And then again, I'm I'm one of those people.
• 1:30:04
  I believe everything, not everything, but a lot of things
• 1:30:08
  that are struggles and traumatic in our community are connected
• 1:30:13
  to the experience of enslavement of ancestors, right?
• 1:30:17
  And how the enslaved males were forced to indiscriminately have
• 1:30:24
  sex for the purpose of creating the workforce.
• 1:30:29
  So therefore that develops that changes in your brain that sex
• 1:30:36
  is not love, sex is not relationship is not intimacy.
• 1:30:41
  We and it can turn into just literally sticking and moving
• 1:30:46
  and you're not responsible for any of that.
• 1:30:48
  So we have to recognize the role of the pattern of behaviors that
• 1:30:56
  are transferred down through our bloodlines.
• 1:31:00
  Remember, it did not start with you.
• 1:31:03
  So people don't I don't know if enough people are talking about
• 1:31:07
  that right? Like, so that comes through the
• 1:31:09
  slavery experience as well. Yeah, it does.
• 1:31:15
  And so again, it it did not start with you.
• 1:31:17
  It's not an excuse, it's an explanation.
• 1:31:20
  And I'm troubled sometimes when I hear men, especially young
• 1:31:23
  men, it's not natural to just be the one woman baby.
• 1:31:26
  That's trauma talking. And you don't even know it
• 1:31:29
  because now y'all's identity is shaped around this thing that
• 1:31:33
  was really a awful distortion of intimacy and how God created us
• 1:31:40
  and the way in which intimacy is to be experienced.
• 1:31:46
  Well, Rasheed, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you
• 1:31:50
  here and we could clearly go on and on.
• 1:31:54
  So I want to close us up with the signature question.
• 1:31:58
  If you can leave the audience with one powerful truth to help
• 1:32:03
  them to rise and thrive, what would it be 1.
• 1:32:06
  Powerful truth. And I guess it's it's something
• 1:32:09
  that we've discussed, the little 2 actually probably talked about
• 1:32:13
  explicitly already, but I think this is the biggest one.
• 1:32:18
  And this is based off of my experience working in higher
• 1:32:21
  education for my entire career. We are enough.
• 1:32:28
  Like what? What you bring is enough there.
• 1:32:36
  We suffer from a lot of self esteem issues that that really
• 1:32:42
  if we just knew how dope we were and someone told us something
• 1:32:49
  about ourselves that we believed a friend of mine that I used to
• 1:32:54
  allow leadership stuff with, you know.
• 1:32:56
  And Jordan talked about how he he travelled the country and he
• 1:33:01
  spoke to 1000 kindergarten students and would ask every
• 1:33:05
  student, every kid in every class 3 questions.
• 1:33:08
  Well, multiple questions. I can't remember, can you?
• 1:33:11
  Who can write or no, who can draw?
• 1:33:14
  Everyone raise a hand. Who could sing Everyone raise
• 1:33:19
  their hand, who could dance? Everyone raise their hand.
• 1:33:22
  And he said, who's better looking than the person on their
• 1:33:28
  right? Or they left all the kids to
• 1:33:29
  jump up. He would get into an audience of
• 1:33:32
  grown people and ask those same questions.
• 1:33:36
  A hand or two will go off each question.
• 1:33:38
  And his whole thing was we had a confidence when we were kids
• 1:33:44
  that got beaten out of us, lied out of us, stolen from us.
• 1:33:51
  And he referred to it as our kindergarten confidence.
• 1:33:56
  And we believe now we're not enough, that we can't do certain
• 1:34:00
  things. We can do whatever we want if we
• 1:34:06
  put online to it. Literally.
• 1:34:08
  There is nothing that we cannot accomplish if we don't put in
• 1:34:14
  the energy and the timing to accomplish that thing.
• 1:34:20
  So that's what I would leave for the people who are who are
• 1:34:24
  taking in this, this podcast that and you can do whatever it
• 1:34:28
  is you want to do. You may not be confident in it
• 1:34:32
  right now, but put in the energy, put in the effort.
• 1:34:37
  Don't sell yourself short because you was put here to be
• 1:34:40
  great. Yeah, it's as simple as that.
• 1:34:43
  That's so good, That's so good, that's so good.
• 1:34:48
  Well, thank you again for being here, Rashim.
• 1:34:52
  This is the part where we are going to switch to the audience.
• 1:34:56
  So audience, this week I want you to reflect what assumptions
• 1:35:00
  do I carry about black masculinity?
• 1:35:03
  And then I want you to take action.
• 1:35:05
  Check in on a black man or a young black man in your life
• 1:35:10
  this week. Not fixing, just listening.
• 1:35:13
  Just check in on them to see what what it is that they need.
• 1:35:16
  And then finally, your affirmation.
• 1:35:20
  I will honor the full humanity of Black.
• 1:35:25
  So I want to thank you all for joining me for another episode
• 1:35:28
  of Rise and Thrive, for Doctor J Nicole, and another thanks to
• 1:35:32
  Rasheem Brooke for joining us here today.
• 1:35:35
  Rasheem, if people wanted to stay connected with you, how
• 1:35:38
  could they do that? 1st thank you for having me doc,
• 1:35:42
  this has been a blast. I've enjoyed our conversation
• 1:35:46
  but if anyone wants to reach out to me you know social media is
• 1:35:49
  perfectly fine. I am officially Rasheem RASH EE
• 1:35:54
  M and that's the same handle for Instagram and TikTok but if you
• 1:36:03
  want to reach out to me on LinkedIn just search my name
• 1:36:07
  Rasheen last name Rook O OK E I'm the only rasheen Rook in the
• 1:36:13
  world so I will be the only one that pops up and we could stay
• 1:36:18
  in. Touch.
• 1:36:18
  All right. Well, thank you again and we
• 1:36:21
  will see you all next week. Thank you for tuning in for
• 1:36:24
  another episode. Thanks, Rashim.
• 1:36:26
  I should.