Black Man… Black Boy, you are not alone…
Consider that you, a human being, have the same biological reactions that all other human beings have. Your sense perception, or way that you navigate the world through these biological reactions is no different than any other persons. Acknowledging your own humanity requires that you also understand the emotions that are characteristic of being human. How difficult is it to acknowledge this when your awareness is clouded by intense propaganda and treatment that says otherwise?
What, then, would it mean to construct a narrative or story that allows you to come to this awareness, unencumbered by the pathology of trauma that is, knowingly or unknowingly attached to your being?
- If allowed by grace, I posit that the reconstruction of a story or narrative, that centers your humanity and the feelings that come with being human, creates a space where you can detach from the emotional and intellectual limitations society has projected onto the concept of your being since the conception of America, itself. The Black body had no control over its existence. That is not your fault, and neither are the collective and individual pathologies that have manifested from the experience of this “experiment”.
The grief narrative, being the story that one tells themselves about the loss they experience, is subjective. It is personal. It is experienced within the confines of ones own self. This narrative, or story, is constructed by the person who is experiencing the grief or loss. This loss may be experienced collectively but the individual feelings about that loss and/or grief is subjective… personal.
“Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty. And so, by fateful chance, the Negro folk-song —the rhythmic cry of the slave — stands today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side of the seas. It has been neglected, it has been, and is, half despised, and above all it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood; but notwithstanding, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people”
W.E.B Dubois - The Souls of Black Folk
- The process of excavating or digging up personal truths is painful. It takes time and radical self honesty to reconstruct a personal narrative that is more aligned with the worthy and progressive ideal you deserve. Managing the self in a productive way empowers the mind and releases the heart from the negative attachments that keep it from becoming the progenitors of a cleansed self concept.
"Catharsis awaits those who begin to anticipate its embrace.
The caged birds who sing songs of sorrow.
Sorrow song singers.
Songs of spirit. Spirituals."
-Yogabrofessor
“Treating relationships as preeminent; attaching ourselves to temporal rhythms; emphasizing learning through subjective barometers and symbolic imagery: these are the core of the African-American culture. We feel them, know them to be true. Our mission is to integrate and learn how to use them to our advantage in the world in which we find ourselves”
Dr. Joy Degruy - Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome
The personal truths that you dig up are integral to the reconstruction of a personal narrative, because the personal truths determine how the narrative is constructed; what it looks like, and the feelings that are attached to the story being constructed. This process is significant because it removes the need to feel how other people feel and focus solely on how you feel; and what you tell yourself about what you feel. This is done away from outside influences that, knowingly or unknowingly, dilute your subjective feelings with their subjective emotions.
“So who and what are we? If we are to believe what the dominant society would seemingly like us to believe, the lies they promulgate: we are stupid, criminal, unmotivated, lazy, underachieving, immoral, and undisciplined… in a word, inferior. History reveals a very, very different story.”
Dr Joy Degruy - Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome
The nineteenth was the first century of human sympathy, the age when half wonderingly we began to descry in others that transfigured spark of divinity which we call Myself; when clodhopper and peasants, and tramps, and thieves, and millionaires and — sometimes — Negros, became throbbing souls whose warm pulsing life touched us so nearly that we half gasped with surprise, crying, “Thou too! Hast Thou seen sorrow and dull masters of loneliness? Hast Thou known life?
W.E.B Dubois - The Souls of Black Folk
Black Man... Black Boy,
Is your sorrow song sweet or bitter? The reconstructed narrative of a personal sorrow song is meant to be sweet to the ears of the person who sings its melodies.The bitter sorrow song is one that relies solely on the negative aspects for its rhythms. It is full of the hopelessness that accompanies the negative input that changes the tempo, throws off its melody. It taints it to become as bitter as the external world in which it is written.
Begin to craft your own narrative, begin to sing your own personal sorrow song; do so with the intention of “forecasting in the mirror of art what we see and recognize in the streets of reality tomorrow, foretelling in new notes and accents the maturing speech of full racial utterance (Locke, 1925)”
I hope this resonates and edifies,
Yogabrofessor
DeGruy, J., & Leary, J. D. (2005). Post traumatic slave syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Joy Degruy Publications Incorporated.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903). The souls of Black Folk
Locke, L., Alaine. (1925). The New Negro
Add comment
Comments