Black Mental Health
Black Pain ‘Is’ A Laughing Matter
Surviving in a white space is often a matter of how best to counter harassment even if that means doing it at your own expense.
If you are Black in a white space, one of the many valuable life lessons you learn early on is how to survive. This is not something you learn in the classroom, or from a textbook, and certainly not from a white teacher. This you learn in the field through trial by fire.
With no formal prep, no comprehension of purpose, and knowing no strategy to avoid potential psychological trauma, your worldview becomes more polarized each time you’re put in the crosshairs of racial injustice.
This is when survival tactics first begin to take form and to a lesser degree, your skin begins to thicken.
We’re not laughing at you, we’re laughing with you
Bullying is universal and generally, people (especially school-age kids) can be relentless in their pursuit of destructive harassment. If you are on the receiving end of such cruelty, life can seem difficult to navigate, leaving little hope of finding ways to cope.
My tactic in this regard was to use humor. I had to. I wasn’t the strongest growing up nor did I have the social support at my back in times of attack. As one of only two Black kids in a mostly white school, I had few tools to effectively thwart being targeted.
Leaning into this “apparent” talent for making others laugh was a way to keep from being targeted by classmates and, at times, teachers; anyone who viewed me only as, the “Black kid.” Someone who was just there. Someone who didn’t matter.
Though the humor I eventually offered up never gave me a sense of a moral victory, it did provide some sense of security as it often masked the pain I kept hidden. The last thing I wanted to do was to break in front of my tormentors and provide them additional fodder with which to continue their assaults. And with virtually no support from others, the feeling of being left alone to handle moments of discomfort was often overwhelming.
Perhaps it was a flawed strategy but using whatever I had meant the difference between possible physical harm and controlling the narrative by turning the tables on an aggressor. This wasn’t a calculated approach (not at first) — I didn’t whiteboard any plan of retaliation before each school day.
I did what I had to do at the moment.
I don’t know karate, but I know crazy. — James Brown
It didn’t matter if I acted a fool or spun some new comedic telling, my objective was always the same; divert my captors from using me as target practice or from being their hateful catch-all.
“Go back to where you came from.”
“You don’t belong here.”
“Grunt for us.”
“You f*cking monkey.”
“When did they let the animals out of the zoo?”
Countering these frequent bigoted verbal jabs by playing along, or diverting to places of levity quickly became effective tools in manipulating how others treated me. Surprisingly, the allure of cornering me just to feed a desire to harass started to wane. It must have because, over time, I wasn’t being hassled as much allowing me to blend in, well, as much as you can in an all-white setting.
After years of conditioning and consistent bullying, similar to today how many Black people have to deal with mistreatment by the majority, I did what I could to control the abuse even if that meant making everyone laugh at my own expense. In some twisted way, it was as though I was taking control of my own mistreatment; making it easier for me to control the narrative. This also meant I could often control the outcome.
The thing about disarming those too eager to target you for any reason is that they don’t generally tend to have the mental capacity to comprehend when a situation is being turned around on them or if their original objective is being commandeered.
Eventually, it got to the point where I would be proactive in my comedy routine simply to avoid any potential racist encounter. By making people laugh I was laying the groundwork for not only survival but for them to see me as being more than a color.
Additionally, I came to realize that the decisions I made later in life were born out of how I survived past interactions; particularly with many in the white community. Should I retreat to some form of humor to help quell a potential dust-up? Perhaps I can avoid a dispute by taking the self-deprecating role?
Strategically this seemed the best option though not ideal. What was evident, however, was that in times of uneasiness, I needed to find solutions in those encounters of racial injustice that often left me struggling to find space to breathe or peace of mind.
Do what you can, when you can
For many of us what we experienced in our early years is a direct line to how we are as adults, how we interact with others, and how we live our days. The frequency of said experiences can be impactful and at the same time, influence later behavior.
As someone who, as a child, experienced his fair share of injustice from the outside world, especially in school, it was enough to permanently shape how I perceived others and how as an adult, interacted with those around me.
Today with heightened social unrest and a spike in anti-Black hate, racial intolerance, as seen in a recent report by the Government Accountability Office is ever-growing. It has become increasingly more difficult for young people of color to reconcile their surroundings when they are constantly being tormented.
When you hear me say “by any means necessary,” I mean exactly that. I believe in anything that is necessary to correct unjust conditions-political, economic, social, physical, anything that is necessary. — Malcolm X
The trauma never fully took root although, at a young age, constant questioning of why people treated me as an outcast, or as a dirty animal because of my skin color did in some way prepare me for what the real world — the white world — would be like whether it be in the workplace, out in public, or in relationships.
If you are Black in a predominately white environment you will experience, on a larger scale, what you had to endure during your school years.
Black mental health is a very real issue and has been thrust into the collective zeitgeist for the simple fact that our community has had to endure monumental trauma over these past five years or so; well, more pointedly, over the past few centuries. When you consider the historical and still continuing betrayal of the Black community by a society that does nothing to foster its original objective of inclusion, the reality of marginalized groups being mistreated is realized through everlasting and devastating psychological suffering within them.
It’s no laughing matter. We must do what we can to survive… by any means necessary.
Thank you for reading!
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