There is little doubt Black America is facing an unprecedented mental health crisis.
In many respects, it is one of the most profound challenges of our existence, dating back to when our ancestors were released from plantation prisons without a pot to pee in and a window to throw it out.
As in 1865, our streets today are littered with the psychologically scarred survivors of ‘American apartheid.’
Unlike Reconstruction, however, today they carry the added weight of a virus (COVID-19) that has resulted in the loss of jobs, drained bank accounts, and burdened students to the point the Black depression rate is soaring.
At the very least, it widened the academic achievement gap where our children are, on average, two years behind their white counterparts.
One report conservatively suggests 60% of Black Milwaukee students emerged from the pandemic in need of counseling—’emotional repair.’
Depending on your reference, a similar rate of Black adults have been affected.
This mental health crisis has turned our village into a reservation (no disrespect to our Native brothers and sisters).
As such, we have turned our frustration, anxiety, and depression inward in the form of road rage, domestic violence, and child abuse.
Car accidents now lead to gun fights. The dozens can quickly lead to ‘six’ (six bullets—if the gun is a revolver—or six feet in the ground…as in grave).
The atmosphere is so toxic the police have hired security.
But jokes aside, at what point does our cultural dysfunction intersect with mental illness?
In other words, are we blaming mental illness for the communal implosion, urban terrorism, and record homicide rate?
The pandemic did, in fact, exacerbate the level of what has been called ‘urban PTSD.’ Still, there are other contributing factors to the poor academic performance and discipline problems in local schools, as well as the epidemic of reckless driving, domestic abuse, and record-breaking murder rate.
Simply put, another viral contamination impacts a large percentage of the innocent and vulnerable. And it’s not chemical; it’s cultural.
I received hundreds of comments from a photo I posted last week of a mother and pre-teen daughter adorned in matching outfits, extending their middle fingers (above photo).
While the photo was widely condemned, few responders expressed shock. No one suggested it was an anomaly.
On the contrary, most posited that this ‘mother’ was planting dysfunctional cultural seeds that would manifest into another Neckbone…2.0…with hot sauce.
Don’t blame this example of cultural dysfunction on a virus. Instead, shift the focus on a sub-culture that is overwhelming social services, law enforcement, and spiritual ignorance.
Worse still, it is not by accident we are confronted with this disingenuous paradigm. Many will point toward a conspiratorial poison we ingested as if it were sugar-laden Kool-Aid. Ironically, we had the opportunity to abate but, instead, fueled this scheme with ignorance, apathy, and gullibility.
Few members of the ‘Negrocracy’ will admit it. Still, when the overseers’ political agenda replaced fathers with an uncle (Sam) in the 1970s, a ‘devolution’ of our Africentric tenets was set into motion, replacing them with the existing ‘Culture of Poverty.’
Despite warnings, Black leaders hid their heads in the sand or tapped danced to ‘missionary tunes’ while they stripped from us our mores, values, and even our God-ordained family prototype.
Before that ‘scheme,’ it is estimated that 70% of Black households were nuclear (mother, father, two children tops), albeit a large percentage being poor.
Today, 70% are headed by a single sister (mother), trying to take on the Herculean task of being a mother AND a father.
Far too many ventures into that role, either ignorant of the task at hand or hopeful that the sperm donor will awaken from his fog of self-hatred, illiteracy (over half can’t read or write above a fifth-grade level), and illegitimate lifestyles.
Many brothers do take responsibility for their child or children. They work hard, provide both financial and emotional support.
Within that group, a significant percentage have become role models worthy of duplication.
Many single mothers likewise overcome the odds, producing culturally and spiritually attuned children who embrace their God-given talents and excel in life.
But in far, far, far too many cases, today’s multigenerational impoverished sistah is rowing upstream.
She is an uneducated, frequently illiterate, and spiritually bankrupt ‘baby mama’ who is content with her status, as she has been programmed to be.
And she ‘manages’ more than disciplining her children. She “raises her daughter, but loves her son,” who becomes an ‘independent contractor’ raised by the streets and peers.
Mental illness is crippling our community, and limited resources are slowing what has become an epidemic of monumental proportions.
But you can’t blame the activities of the Kia boys and girls, the urban terrorists, or the disrespect they show toward Black institutions, our elderly, and each other on the stress created by the pandemic.
Recently, I heard a White ‘apologist’ who, several years ago, blamed the academic failure of Black students on poverty. She updated her excuse to now blame mental illness.
Indeed, the pandemic impacted Milwaukee’s status as hosting the broadest academic achievement gap between Black and white students in the country.
But Milwaukee was already—by then—home to the lowest reading proficiency rate for African American fourth graders in the country! We were ‘awarded’ that status in 2010!
Yet, because Black leaders went ‘MIA,’ and the governor—who was state superintendent of schools at the time—did nothing but sing the blues, their collective apathy led to a similar status for Black eighth graders several years later.
Milwaukee has been at the lower end of the graduation rankings since the school desegregation settlement of 1976 while hosting a suspension rate that has prompted a federal complaint.
The state distinction of having the highest Black male incarnation rate directly results from our educational failures.Wisconsin ‘earned’ that distinction three decades before thepandemic.
You can blame the pandemicfor much, but it wasn’t a virusthat kept 90% of the parentswhose children are underperforming home for the schoolboard elections earlier thismonth.
Mental illness doesn’t stopBlack parents from attendingteacher conferences, teachingtheir children to count and/orknow the alphabet before theysend them to school.
What virus stops them fromreading to their children, taking them to the library, orstressing the importance ofeducation?
Or maybe it’s the lead-infused water that ‘forces’ themto convince their children theyare ‘niggers (n-words), bitches(b-word), hoes, and heifers?
If it were left to me, tellingtheir children they are lazy,shiftless, ‘ignorant savages'(that’s what nigger means), oran animal—male and femaledogs–is second-degree felonychild abuse.
And those sperm donors(single Black males who can’tkeep it zipped-up) are equally,if not more, responsible for thistragedy. A male who helpsmake a child—but does notsupport or guide that child—isscum, a traitor, a ‘Neckbone’covered in chitterlings gravy.
A ‘man’ who is proudly unemployed (unless pimping hiswoman), too busy smokingjoints, or smelling his feet is, atbest, a ‘man-child’ who epitomizes the disingenuous role of’baby daddy.’ Make that ‘babydud.’
Yes, COVID-19 and the resulting pandemic contributedmightily to mental illness inour community. But it is a cultural virus of another sort thathas plagued us for the last half-century.
Hopefully, resources will become available to address thatmedical problem. But it’sgonna take more than a WhiteKnight and his ‘Uncle’s’ intervention to solve what reallyails us.