Subject: FW: [Africare-newpublications] FW: The Bridge: Reatarded Black Men
(A Must Read
for All Brothers!)
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 07:16:16 +0000
---------------------------------
From: "Dr. Valentine Ojo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Africare-newpublications] FW: The Bridge: Reatarded Black Men (A Must
Read for All Brothers!)
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 23:49:08 -0500
Culled From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The BRIDGE: Retarded Black Men
By Darryl James
(November 27, 2007)
Retarded:(adj) relatively slow in mental or emotional or physical development.
*When I lecture and/or do seminars and talk about how American men in general
and Black men in particular are emotionally retarded, the reaction is not
always good.
Some men are offended over the usage of the word âretarded,â but in itâs
literal meaning, the word is very appropriate.
In America, many boys are taught from an early age to disconnect from most of
our emotions. We can still feel pain and our feelings can still get hurt. We
feel joy and we still love, but the feelings are distant at best and foreign at
worst. We donât feel the need to talk about them or face them enough to
process them.
We need to discuss this issue because itâs ripping our community apart.
Without a connection to emotions, the response to them is sometimes backward
and inappropriate.
For example, while women will typically cry when hurt or angry, emotionally
retarded men will typically lash out, having been taught that violence or
aggressive behavior are appropriate responses to pain or anger.
What some perceive as a choice to act stoically is actually a pathological
attempt at erasure of emotions. Too many Black men hold our feelings inside
until they fester and tear us apart, causing more of us to die early from
stroke, heart attack, and other stress-related maladies.
Some of us are raised as emotional retards, but some of us fall into it later
in life.
I became emotionally retarded after being raised in good emotional health. I
was fifteen when I finally gave up my tears.
I blame part of my emotional retardation on the âbig boys donât cry"
syndrome, but part of it came from having so much to cry about in such a short
time, that my emotional system shut down as a failsafe against insanity.
At the age of fifteen, my stepfather--the man who raised me as his own--lost
his battle with cancer. Within one year, I also lost my oldest brother and my
grandmother.
Prior to that time period, I used to cry when I was happy and cry when I was
sad. I would cry when I was afraid and cry when I was lonely. But once I became
emotionally retarded, I no longer cried. In fact, I didnât cry from sixteen
until twenty-one, when my mother died.
I remember curling up in a little tiny ball and crying my eyes out, wanting to
die and join her or explode and cease to exist, but right after the funeral, I
âmanned upâ and turned off the tears again, because after all, big boys
donât cry. My girlfriend at the time told me so. She had decided that I had
been crying too long and was starting to âbitch up.â
I turned off my tears again, and in doing so, I turned off a connection with
humanity. I intellectualized pain, and tried to analyze love, life and even
laughter from a purely cerebral perspective. âI think, therefore, I am, but I
donât cryâ was my motto.
I would look at emotionally healthy people in confusion, not quite
understanding the emotions they would demonstrate so openly. I remember
laughing once because a girlfriendâs crying seemed so puzzling. Not that it
was truly funny, but I just didnât understand, and in my confusion,
discomfort gave way to laughter, a primary nervous reaction.
Itâs not just Black men who are emotionally retarded. We are following the
emotional retardation of the dominant culture, which is where we get the whole
âbig boys donât cryâ syndrome. But the reality is that we have embraced
it and it belongs to us now, too.
That retardation must be appealing to our sisters, because many of them are
becoming detached from their emotions as well.
Some of the disconnected still have vestigial emotionsâremnants of what once
existed, firing off neural connections in a similar fashion to severed arms and
legs which still âfeelâ as though they are still there.
We can reconnect to our emotions, but we have to acknowledge that there is a
disconnect. I acknowledged my own, and over the past few years, I have been
slowly reconnecting.
By the end of my twenties, I began to analyze the appropriate emotional
response to the feelings I had intellectualized. I began to understand and
reconnect. It was a beginning.
When my last relationship ended, I was also going through some professional
difficulties. It seemed as though my entire world was falling apart and I knew
that I was a mess. I not only embraced celibacy, but I embraced my spirituality
like never before and thatâs when it happened.
I cried.
I cried as though the skies were opening up, but in fact, it was my heart
opening up.
I felt things, not just intellectually, but really felt them and I cried about
feeling them.
My reconnection to my emotions was an important event, which ostensibly
heralded a crucial stage of my journey towards enlightenment.
I am healing still, but I thank God that I have some of my emotions back. I am
happy about it, even though I can not yet cry about that happiness.
The most intellectual of us can recognize each other easily as I did with my
friend and fellow emotional retard, Trey, when he explained that the only two
emotions he had as a youth were rage and indifference. His words were my
reality. He intellectualized his emotions and chose an emotionally healthy
woman to provide his children (two boys) with normal emotions.
There are many of us who are emotionally healthy.
Some of my best friends are emotionally healthy and Iâve seen several of them
cry openly. Iâve even seen them shed tears of joy, which gave me hope that
one day I, too, will have tears for the joy that warms my heart. I harbor hope
that one day, I, too, will be emotionally healthy.
I am admitting that I am emotionally retarded, even though I now have tears for
most of my emotions. And I want more brothers to find their tears and to find
their emotions, so that we can heal and our community can heal.
Mock me if you want, but Iâm a man and I am no longer afraid to cry.
I am also unafraid of the term âretardedâ to refer to a state of emotional
being that actually exists.
Darryl James is an award-winning author who is now a filmmaker. His first
mini-movie, "Crack," was released in March of 2006. He is currently filming a
full length documentary. Jamesâ latest book, "Bridging The Black Gender Gap,"
is the basis of his lectures and seminars. Previous installments of this column
can now be viewed at www.bridgecolumn.com. James can be reached at [EMAIL
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