What About Black Folk’s Mental Health?

Because prioritizing the domestic terrorist’s mental health but not the population he inflicts harm upon, is stupid

Mental Health?

In the wake of every single white supremacy terror agent’s killing spree of Black people, there is this talk about mental health.

The rhetorical function of this talk of mental health is to provide smokescreen cover for the undeniable facts that: [1] to align yourself with white supremacy is a choice; and [2] to engage in kinetic mass violence upon Black people is also a choice.

Rhetorical function. I just coined that shit. I suggest keeping that term in your back pocket because you’re gonna see it more as I call it more devices of white supremacy in this intellectual activism. Go ahead and use that in a sentence in the immediate future.

Anyway, while there’s all this talk of mental health, how come there’s no discussion on the mental health on Black people in these times of white racial animus? How come no one, on the national level that is, is talking about our mental health? Our collective mental health? If a Black person gets irate that the totality of white Americans is ignoring how they are fostering these white supremacist child soldiers, how come no one is looking at a Black woman’s mental health, or a Black man’s mental health when we have short fuses?

My Experiences

If I yell in the face of stupid white people concerning white supremacy and racism, how come no one thinks of my mental health?

When I was in the U.S. Army, I did flip out on co-workers, both military and civilian, based on how casual they were with Richard Spencer's Americanized Nazi shit. I raged in their faces on how they defend Confederate shit. I told them, “fuck your Klancestors” while wearing my U.S. Army uniform with my name and rank clear as day. I kirked out on them for their casual racism. One white fat fuck espoused great replacement theory white supremacist shit.

They hated me because they were not my intellectual equal (below me), on top of the fact that I do not tone police myself. I own all my anger and fury. I do not hide my self-defense-oriented Blackness. I do not pacify, especially in the face of selective stupidity.

My Mental Health Experience on Black Identity

While I did speak to mental health, as the military has those resources, the function of mental health was different based on them and me. To them, the mental health appointments were to, I suppose, make me what I call white supremacy-compliant. They, these casually racist, gaslighting fucks thought that psychologists and psychiatrists are going to train me to behave or something. As if, my anger was invalid. No, real doctors are not doing that.

My mental health doctors actually gave me the means to argue against white supremacy more effectively. My doctors introduced me to research psychology which has doctors and social/behavioral scientists who have already done the research on Black identity, white identity, and white supremacy. My doctors gave me the means to know the names of Black psychology types who should be in our school books. Franz Fanon, Janet Helms, Cross, and more.

My psychiatrists didn’t argue that my anger was invalid; they argued that my trauma is real. As all of our trauma as Black people in America is real. Complex-PTSD is a thing. Collective trauma is a thing. We got it, and they keep giving it to us with all this gaslighting and violence.

The problem with talking about mental health when it comes to us (the Black American public) is that it all of a sudden is not a rhetorical device. Talking about our mental health in the wake of white supremacist race soldiers killing us is a healthy, normal-ass thing to do.

But America is not healthy. America isn’t right.

Talking about Black folk’s collective trauma requires collective empathy from white people. Talking about how white supremacist killing sprees add to our collective trauma and c-PTSD requires seeing Black people as fellow Americans, fellow humans.

White people of America identify with white people in Ukraine more than their own fellow American Black folk here in these United States.

Black people in America speak English. Black people in America have Western mannerisms. Black people in America have English, German, Irish, and French first and last names. Black people are far more Western-European than Ukrainians are, yet, White people don’t see Black people as their peers. White people require that skin color and eye pigment. I ask you to ponder why.

This isn’t to say the Ukrainians don’t need help. I’m just saying there’s a flaw in how white Americans view humanity, because hell, half of these white people here view Russians as their peers over other democratic white people in the United States. White people are not qualified to judge humanity alone; they failed at this simple task from day one.

Overall

Even if white people of America decide to center Black people’s mental health in these types of crises, be wary of the fact that they probably discuss Black mental health as a means to be condescending, gaslighting the Black Community, with the forward goal of ensuring Black people are white supremacy-compliant.

They want you to get checked because you are not allowed to be angry as a Black person. To hell if your anger is valid. They don’t care; they wish for you to be well-behaved and non-threatening to the stat-quo and white zeitgeist.

And the threat is awareness and intelligence; hence why they attack the concept of Afro-American coined term, “woke”.

Real mental health concerning the Black community actually validates our anger and feelings, because complex-PTSD is real, collective trauma is real, terrorism is real, and national gaslighting agendas are real.

If you as a Black person were to see a psychiatry doctor, and you figure they lean white supremacy-compliant, get another doctor. You can choose another doctor in mental health.

I wanted to highlight this blind spot in American media and politics. I hope folk is paying attention after shedding light on this.

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