Black Men Have Been Fed Poisoning Food For The Mind

As Black men in America throughout our lives we've been fed a steady racist mental diet of sickness consisting of propaganda, miseducation, and stereotypes that has caused self-limiting, self-handicapping, self-diseasing, self-defeating, self-prisoning, and self-destructive behaviors. This mental diet has been psychological food poisoning! Until this bad psycho-food is thrown up 'vomited' out of our minds we will remain sick in the head unable to heal, have self-worth, and be progressive self-determining Black men.

Only White Men Can Use Violence For Freedom

"So they become frustrated and don’t know what to do. So they do the only thing they know how: they do the same thing the Americans did when they got frustrated with the British in 1776 — liberty or death. This is what the Americans did; they didn’t turn the other cheek to the British. No, they had an old man named Patrick Henry who said, “Liberty or death!” I never heard them refer to him as an advocate of violence; they say he’s one of the Founding Fathers, because he had sense to say, “Liberty or death!” - Malcolm X

Donald Trump An Example Of White Men Can Really Do No Wrong?

 

In America Terrence Bud Crawford Is Still Just A Nigger

Recently Terrence Bud Crawford a Black man won the undisputed world super middleweight boxing championship by defeating Canelo Alvarez. Crawford after being honored at a celebratory parade in Omaha (NE) found himself later being stopped by the police at gunpoint, Crawford the current world’s greatest boxer holding 4 major titles is reminded in America he’s still just a nigger.

Black Males Triple-Threat: Unhealthy Eating, Over-Sexing, and Verbal Provocations

Black men, yes externally racism is the #1 cause of our overall hardships, however internally if we tell the truth 'keep it 100' we know thousands of thousands of us year after years, decades after decades have gotten chronic diseases or died because of poor diets (high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart attacks); we know thousands of thousands of us year after years, decades after decades have created multifaceted problems engaging in out of control lustful sex (diseases, financial hardships of unwanted child-support, fatherlessness); we know thousands of thousands of us year after years, decades after decades have created conflicts negatively running our mouths provoking conflicts, violence, and deaths (continuous cycle of injuries, disabilities, homicides). 

 

Black Males We Must Significantly Reduce This Triple-Threat!

Gun Violence: Black Boys And Men

"Black boys and men not only are the most likely victims of gun violence but also are exposed to gun violence most often. Despite the fact that Black boys and men account for just 6% of the total population, they comprise more than half of all gun homicide victims. In the nation’s 20 largest counties, Black men ages 15 to 24 die from gun homicides at a rate nearly 22 times that of white residents. This disparity means that while five out of every 100,000 young white men in these counties die from gun homicides, nearly eleven in every 10,000 young Black men are killed in such incidents. From 2019 to 2023, gun suicide rates increased just 9% for white people, but 45% for Black people. Gun suicide increases and the racial disparities in these increases are particularly pronounced for Black youth. From 2019 to 2023, the firearm suicide rate for Black people ages 10 to 24 rose 37%. Black communities have disproportionately shouldered our nation’s gun violence epidemic for decades, and will continue to do so unless we take concerted, community-driven steps to address this public health crisis."

- Alex Nguyen & Kelly Drane

https://giffords.org/lawcenter/report/gun-violence-in-black-communities/

June is Black Music Month

by Kenny 'Cinque' Anderson 

A Black Man’s Critique of Black R&B Love Music as Romanticism

“For decades Black folks have been doing the most singing about and listening to romantic love songs, yet Black men and women for the most part aint really been seriously working on developing no loving relationships. In 2023, 44.6% of Black children lived with only their mothers.” - KenRaySun

June is Black Music Month, a time to honor the genius, soul, and sacred fire of Black sounds. Among its richest expressions, R&B music especially from the Classic Soul era has served as protests words, racial pride, cultural balm, and intimate soundtrack.

Specific R&B Black music with its themes of love, longing, heartbreak, and desire have given voice to our deepest emotional experiences. Indeed, as a child of the 1960’s and 1970’s I listened to all the classic soul love songs.

Yes, I listened to the love songs of Motown artists, Aretha Franklin, Issac Hayes, the Isley Brothers, Earth Wind & Fire, Roberta Flack, Barry White, Newbirth, Teddy Pendergrass, Chaka Kahn, Maze, LTD, Phyllis Hyman, and many-many others.

The older I got I remember asking myself, that Black folks make more love songs than any other people in the world, but where is the love between Black men and women? Had being caught-up in listening to love songs became an 'infatuation', an unrealistic substitute for working on love?

From my perspective as Black folks we must culturally critique popular Black love music over the decades and its impact on how we imagine relationships, especially romantic love.

Over the decades Black R&B love songs have often promoted romantic relationships as emotional utopias; spaces of escape, completeness, even redemption.

However, this fantasy love music comes at a cost! It can condition us to crave a version of love that is unsustainable, idealized, and detached from the realities of Black life.

The Black Love Fantasy Within the Harmony

Black Romantic R&B love songs provides us the fantasy that love is simple, natural, and transformative; that once you find "the one," everything else falls wonderfully into place.

Black love song lyrics seduce us into believing that love is a balm for brokenness, a cure for loneliness, and a shortcut to emotional wholeness.

The fantasy becomes dangerous when it teaches us that relationships should feel like a constant high ‘ecstasy’. That if love is hard, it must not be "real." But deep, lasting love is not about butterflies and ballads, it’s about emotional repair, truthfulness, accountability, shared struggle, and inner growth.

This idealized romantic love becomes a kind of drug, one that numbs us from confronting our trauma, our dysfunction, and the everyday pressures of being Black in an anti-Black society.

The Irony of Black Love Songs: Singing the Love Dream While Relationships Were Nightmares

The truth is that many of these Black singer icons who sang those timeless love songs voices we still adore were themselves locked in deeply troubled relationships, unable to live out the very ideals they recorded.

It’s no small contradiction when you are a realistic mature Black person that many of the Black R&B legends who gave us these love anthems couldn’t sustain love in their own lives:

*Marvin Gaye, the prince of sensual soul, whose duets with Tammi Terrell defined Black love, was in a volatile marriage with Anna Gordy and later had a deeply toxic second relationship that inspired his album Here, My Dear.

*Bobby Womac, whose admitting voice brought was “I Wish He Didn't Trust Me So Much,” was plagued by allegations of infidelity and many troubled relationships.

*Teddy Pendergrass, the king of seduction, had multiple public relationships and personal struggles, including the tragic accident that changed his life.

*David Ruffin, of The Temptation’s whose romantic ballads are immortal, he battled with drug addiction and his relationships were notoriously toxic.

*Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, sang of empowerment and passion but endured abusive relationships and deep personal turmoil.

The above list of Black celebrity singers could be extended going on and on! These artists lived complicated, painful, often heartbreaking love lives which calls into question the very narratives of everlasting, redemptive love they popularized.

Their personal lives didn’t match the fantasies they sung and yet we continue to consume those fantasies without critique.

Black Love Music Bypasses the Reality of Racist Oppression

Black romantic R&B often ignores the structural realities of Black life: economic hardships, racist policing, mass incarceration, inter-generational trauma, and mental health disparities.

These racist produced realities press on Black relationships like heavy weights and yet in most love songs, they are either invisible or irrelevant.

This romantic Black love escapism bypasses both external stressors and internal wounds. It tells us that love will heal everything without addressing:

*The pressure of Black men to perform masculinity without vulnerability.

*The unhealed wounds from childhood that haunt our emotional lives.

*The struggle of Black women to be loved beyond labor and survival.

*The mistrust and miscommunication born from systemic racist oppression and promoted divisiveness along with misplaced anger.

In ignoring these truths, the music sets us up for failure. We come to relationships with sky-high expectations and no skills for how to sustain them. And when the fantasy breaks, so do we.

Though this is a critiquing article it isn’t a call to silence Black love music, it’s a call to deepen it. We need more R&B love songs that tells the whole truth about Black love. That acknowledges the pain, the struggle, the trauma, and the growth.

Black love music that honors not just the beauty of connection but the very hard work it takes to keep that connection alive. That sings about the challenging labor of love, not as an escapist fantasy.

In real life, Black love is not magic it’s a challenging, sacrificing, and loving maintenance. Black Love is not a soulful lullaby, it’s a committed struggle, a classroom, and a healing practice.

Real Black Love Ain’t a Fantasy—It’s a Fight to Overcome Challenges!

Romantic R&B love songs has given us some timeless genuineness and surrealness —but also dangerous illusions. As we celebrate Black Music Month, let’s not just press play every time on the classics love songs.

Let’s press pause and reflect on these love songs with emotional soberness. Let’s love with our eyes open. Let’s build love that doesn’t depend on perfection or escape, but on commitment, self-awareness, and shared transformation.

Because love, like Black political freedom progression ‘self-determination’, is not a feeling, it’s a choice! And like any struggle worth fighting for, love demands more than harmony. It demands truth!

The following are some Black Music Month provoking questions reflecting this article for readers:

1. Why do we continue to idealize romantic love in music when real-life relationships rarely reflect those ideals?

2. How has R&B music shaped your expectations of what love should feel and look like?

3. What does it say about our culture that we crave love as escape rather than love as shared struggle?

4. Why do we rarely hear love songs that deal honestly with trauma, mental health, and healing?

5. How do economic stress, racism, and gendered oppression show up, or fail to show up in our favorite love songs?

6. Can we truly sustain love without addressing our internal wounds and family legacies?

7. Are we addicted to the feeling of love more than the practice of love?

8. How might our relationships change if our music centered honesty, growth, and conflict resolution over fantasy and seduction?

9. What are the consequences of using romantic love as a replacement for community, therapy, or spirituality?

10. What responsibility do artists have to reflect the real emotional lives of Black people—not just their desires?

11. How can we raise the next generation of lovers to desire love rooted in truth, healing, and liberation?