Black Men Be Careful Around Whites In This Trump Headed Racist Environment

THE TALK OUR ELDERS GAVE US WASN’T PARANOIA, 

It Was SURVIVAL

by Bishop Talbert Swan

For generations, Black families have had “the talk.” Not just about police encounters, but about navigating spaces where we may be isolated, outnumbered, and vulnerable. Many of us were taught as children: be careful where you go, who you go with, and never ignore your instincts.

The brutal 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr. remains one of the clearest reminders of why that lesson existed. James Byrd accepted a ride from three white men who instead kidnapped him, chained him to their truck, and murdered him in one of the most horrific racist hate crimes in modern American history.

Lauren Smith-Fields met a white man through a dating app. She died after spending time with him, and while the medical examiner ruled her death accidental, her family’s concerns centered on what they viewed as a deeply inadequate and dismissive police investigation.

In April 18-year-old Daniel Erving went on a swimming and fishing trip with two white men. They returned without him, and authorities later learned that Daniel had drowned. The men disposed of his clothes and belongings, claiming it was an accident. They never reported his drowning.

On July 4th weekend Nolan Wells traveled to a remote island with three white men and was later found dead. The men were in possession of his phone and deleted his social media accounts and text messages.

These cases remind us of something many Black parents have passed down for generations: exercise caution when entering unfamiliar environments where you are isolated and without people who know you or can advocate for you. That isn’t about fear. It’s about history.

History has taught Black people that our safety cannot always be taken for granted, that our disappearances and deaths have not always been investigated with equal urgency, and that justice has not always been applied equally.

The lesson is that situational awareness has long been a survival skill in Black America. Our elders didn’t teach those lessons because they were paranoid. They taught them because they lived through experiences that made those lessons necessary.

Black Men A Deeper Look At Being Christians And Niggers

By Franklin Jones, the Black Matrix

https://theblackpeoplesmatrix.com/

African Americans it's time to burry the ideology of the Christ!an N!gga. Christianity and the N word were both brutally beaten into submission within the blood soaked minds of our ancestors by their evil, racist, and ungodly enslavers during the lowest time in our history. Holding onto those two false ideologies keeps us mentally enslaved by the white society.

 
“Those who know the truth must teach.” - African proverb

 
The early white Christian’s conversion of Africans into their religion had nothing to do with saving African souls— so that Africans could join them in heaven during the afterlife. This is an irrefutable fact, because the early white Christians believed that Africans had no souls, and that heaven was for whites only. They in fact believed that the thought of an African entering heaven was as ridiculous as a dog doing so.

When we logically look at the fact as they were, we can say with great certainty that the white enslavers conversion of Africans into Christians had absolutely nothing to do with saving African souls. There was another self serving reason why these racist enslavers put their time, and energy into teaching Christianity to a people they otherwise treated so brutally. The reason was to indoctrinate the belief of a white God into their minds.

 
When the African were taught, through Christianity, to worship a white God, this produces a profound adoration of whiteness within their minds. This subconsciously happens without most even realizing it. This profound adoration of whiteness is then transferred and transposed— on a subconscious level--onto white people. This made the colonized and enslaved Africans more subservient towards their white colonizers and enslavers.

Therefore Christianity greatly facilitated the white society’s colonization and enslavement of Africans. The effects of that white revering brainwashing scheme implemented hundreds of years ago, has been left uncorrected and un-removed for generations. Many Black Christians insist that Christianity was originally practiced by Black people in Ethiopia. However, in reality the Roman Emperor Constantine created the false Christian religion in 325 AD. Christianity did not become the official religion of Ethiopia until the reign of King Ezana in 341 AD. That's 16 years after the white Romans created the false religion. Christianity is not the belief system practiced in Africa before 325 AD.

Furthermore, through Christianity million of Black people have been brainwashed to believe that all of the wrongs that the white society have done to us throughout history, have been washed away cleaned by the blood of a fictional white Jesus. Africans were also brutally forced to become Christians, and then its doctrine was use to compel them to forgive whites for all the brutalities afflicted upon them as the religion dictates.

*Note: The white society never actually repented for their evil deeds committed against Black people, they merely insisted that Black people, as good Christians, forgive them as their doctrine teaches. Furthermore, by teaching Black people that a white God sent down his white son to earth to die for them this literally makes millions of Black people feel indebted towards whites. Christianity has proven itself as being history's most successful propaganda tools used for controlling Black people.

The reason why there is rarely any resolve whenever a Black conscious person tries to teach these notes truths about the falsehood of Christianity to Black Christians, is because the conscious person presents documented facts, critical thinking, reasoning and common sense, but Black Christians have been taught to stand by blind faith even when the abundant of evidence is to the contrary. This sounds very admirable, but this actually imprisons the mind. This abandonment of intelligent critical thinking skills, in exchange for blind faith is why it can be very difficult to convince a Black Christian about fallacies within their religion - even when presenting them with facts and historical evidence.

This is also why most will argue vehemently defending their religion, but rarely ever will they research any evidence presented to them that is contrary of their religion. Some will even label those that try to show them evidence contrary of their faith as being agents of the devil. They have been conditioned to abandon their critical thinking skills and to ignore all evidence to the contrary of their religions. 

Therefore their intelligence have literally been decreased by religion. To try to teach mental liberating truths to a person that has renounced the use of reason, facts and common sense is like feeding medicine to the dead. Christianity has proven itself as being a very successful tool used to manipulate Black people to think and behave in ways that are against our own collective interests and instead in ways that serves and protects the interests of the white society.

Here’s the truth about the N word:

 
In order to subjugate and control a large targeted population the first step is to neutralize their alpha males - aka those possessing warrior spirits. These are also the males that are psychologically wired to protect our women and defend our communities. White social scientists neutralized Black alpha males by socially engineering millions to self identify themselves as the N word. Self identifying ourselves as the N word conditions us to perceive ourselves through a false inherent inferior identity that aids the white society in maintaining its social dominance over us.

Self identifying ourselves as the N word instead of as Africans also psychologically divides us from Native Africans. When Africans are divided globally we lose are global numerical advantage and loses all hopes of defeating global white supremacy. Self identifying ourselves as the N word instead of as Africans also separates us from our unifying African heritage.

Without having a base identity to connect to our vast cultural wealth, over time, we becomes further fragmented and becomes weaker as a people. We can then be made into anything the white oppressors wants us to be. They’ve placed an elaborate negative spell upon the subconscious minds of millions of African Americans with the N word.

WE AFRICAN AMERICANS NEVER MADE THE N WORD OURS:

 
The narratives that we African Americans made the N word ours, and that using it now empowers us are both lies created by white propagandists to keep us from learning the truth. Those false narratives are believed and repeated by those of us that are ignorant, naive, and gullible - therefore are usually the easiest victims of the white oppressors’ fraudulent propaganda campaigns.

It was actually white oppressive forces that socialized us to self identify ourselves as N!ggers through the hidden science known as negative media social engineering. Because they control our media images they’re able to covertly negatively steer our culture. By socializing us to self identify ourselves as N!ggers they’ve conditioned us to perceive ourselves through a false marginalized identity that aids them in maintaining their white dominance over us.

 
Most people naively believe that the media reflects our reality, but in truth it is more often we that imitate what we see and learn from the media. A group’s identity is greatly shaped by how they repeatedly see themselves depicted in the media. People often becomes those derogatory media depictions of themselves that they accept as being their reality. It’s a true science known as media social engineering.

 
"Whoever controls a people’s media images controls their culture." - Allen Ginsberg

 
Because the white society controls the media images of African Americans this fact allows white social scientist and propaganda designers to negatively steer Black culture. Their ability to steer Black culture through media social engineering is immensely powerful. So much in fact, that if these white men wanted Black youths to start walking around everyday with a yellow Afro combs in their left rear pockets, all they would have to do is place that image in several rap music videos, movies and TV shows being depicted as very cool and trendy.

In doing so our Black youths would then see the image, imitate it and then adopt the image as being of their own making-although it is in fact actually not. The style and behavior was actually learned from what they repetitively saw in the media. It was secretly created by white media social engineering scientist and propaganda designers.

When these white social engineering scientists creates trends and customs for Black youths to imitate they deliberately create those that gets our Black youths acting and dressing as caricatures that reinforces resentment and anti black prejudicial perceptions. Moreover, those images that reinforces many negative and racist stereotypes about Black people. Black youths becomes the caricatures of the derogatory images and stereotypes they accept. The African American culture is being negatively steered by white oppressive forces.

 
BLACK SAGGING IS THE RESULT OF NEGATIVE WHITE MEDIA SOCIAL ENGINEERING:

Some African Americans insist that sagging started with slavery. This is untrue. if it had the style would’ve been prevalent throughout the many years that followed slavery. It was not! The style didn’t exist on a national scale until the early 1990’s Furthermore, if slaves were sagging this would’ve severely reduce their productivity. Because a slave couldn’t pick much cotton while holding up his pants. The white enslavers would also never allow a slave to sagg because this creates the possibility of their wives and daughters seeing the Africans larger penis. So when you critically think and observe all the facts as they were it becomes clear that sagging did not come from slavery.

The Sagging phenomenon is not the result of the prison industry — where most prisons have a heavily enforced dress code requiring prisoners to wear velco belts. Furthermore if men engaged in homosexual behavior while incarcerated most do not return to their communities and families flaunting that fact. Most will conceal any customs or behaviors association with the practice. When you’re ignorant nonsense makes perfect sense. Furthermore, that prison to the street theory is not how national trends are created. For something to thing to become a trend requires concerted efforts of media marketing. The style of sagging It was deliberately achieved by white negative media social engineering of the African American culture.

The sagging style was placed in movies and music videos being depicted as cool and trendy and then millions of Black youths merely imitated their style. This isn’t some feeble minded attempt at scapegoating that wrongly blames white people in order to absolve ourselves of our own responsibilities. It’s the absolute truth. They’re waging a covert war against African Americans that most don’t understand. Because we African Americans were stripped of our true identity and culture- during the enslavement of our ancestors- we’re therefore more susceptible to media social engineering.

THE N!GGER PROGRAMMING:

 
The true reason why millions of African Americans now self identify themselves as n!ggers is also actually a true testament of the immense power of white negative media social engineering. Although this n#gger programming is now routinely deployed through the white controlled Hip Hop music industry, that industry merely reinforces an earlier programming.

 
The n#gger terminology was originally indoctrinated into the African American culture many decades ago long before the hip hop music industry was even created. It was originally done so by using the movie industry. Most people think that movies are made for nothing more than entertainment. That never was the case. The greatest social messages are promoted through movies. Social norms promoted through films can influence the way of thinking and the “cognitive map” of the populated audience. 

In a normal conversation when using logic and facts your guard is naturally up. But when your watching a movie there's no debate, your guard is down, the sensor part of your brain is not in action, it isn’t saying yes I agree with this, or I disagree with that like you would in a debate or a conversation. You’re actually in an alpha state being completely downloaded with ideas and images. This programming system was used to convinced millions of Black movie watchers, during the late 60's and early 70's,that they were niggers.

 
Up until the mid 1960's the word n#gger was viewed unfavorably by most African Americans. That era's generation of African Americans had experienced dehumanizing segregation, and many also had great grand parents that were born during slavery. Therefore, they knew intimately well the brutality and degradation that often accompanied the ugly taunts of the word nigger. Therefore, the usage of the word was most often forbidden within many African American homes. It was deemed as being a profoundly offensive word. The usage of the word n#gger became more accepted among African Americans during the late 60's and early 70's as the popularity of Blaxploitation films grew.

 
Blaxploitation is a term coined in the early 1970s to refer to black films that were aimed at black audiences. Featuring African-American actors in lead roles, the films frequently depicted stereotypical characterization and glorification of violence. It was that era's Black exploitation films that first taught African American youths on a national level that it was a cool and trendy term of endearment to call themselves n#gger. In those films, written, directed, and produced by white people, Black actors were hired to shuck and jive and to repeatedly called themselves n#gger. 

This n#gger indoctrinating process was repeated and reinforced countless times in many times within many Blaxploitation films. Here's a list of just a few of those movies: The Black Klansman (1966), Black Like Me (1964) Black Lolita (1975), Black Mama White Mama (1973), Black Rage (1972), Scream Blacula Scream (1973), Shaft (1971), Shaft in Africa (1973), Shaft's Big Score (1972), Sheba, Baby (1975)etc...Within each of these films, produced by white movie studios, Black actors routinely called each other niggers. Some of these films also blatantly included the word n#gger in its titles such as Boss N#gger (1975), Run N#gger Run (1974), and The Soul of N#gger Charley (1973) etc.

 
Those Blacks exploitive films were well received by many African American audiences because they provided them with cinematic Black heroes on the silver screen in a portrayal unseen in most Hollywood pictures prior to that time. Therefore, African Americans flocked to the theaters in droves to see themselves being represented as heroes on the big screen. Many Black audiences, believing that those fictional movie characters were true, accurate representation of their group as a collective whole began imitating what they saw in the movies -this included self identifying themselves as N!ggers. Through this system millions of Black people were socially engineered to perceive themselves as being n#ggers.

 
THEY DID THIS BECAUSE WORDS DO HAVE POWER.

Words put a spell upon your subconscious mind. We function based upon the words we assign to ourselves. This is why women that proclaims themselves as being bitches often becomes stubbornly unreasonable. It's also why men that proclaim themselves as being thugs are more likely to engage in a fight than to avoid it. Words effects how we function. This is a psychological phenomenon that white social engineering scientist have thoroughly researched.

WE ALSO TREAT OTHERS BASED UPON THE WORDS WE ASSIGN UPON THEM.

When we call others by negative words we dehumanize them which makes it easier to mistreat them. Case and Point: During the Vietnam war to ease the American soldiers anxieties about torturing and killing the Vietnamese soldiers they were taught to refer to them as Chinx, Gooks, and Kongs. This dehumanized them and made it easier to kill and torture them. This is also why men that refers to women as bitches, and hoes have a higher tendency to mistreat them.

 
These noted factors are the reasons why white oppressive forces socially engineered millions of African Americans to self identify themselves as and call each other n#ggers. ( Through negative media social engineering ) White oppressive forces have placed an elaborate negative spell upon the subconscious minds of millions of African Americans with the word nigger. The white prison industry is also filled with Black men that have been programmed to believe that they're real niggas. White social engineering scientist deliberated programmed millions of Blacks people to believe that they're n#ggers to achieve this agenda.

The Willie Lynch story is a work of fiction. The following reveals the truth of our collective condition:

The white media’s unrelenting negative depictions of Black people— that amplifies the negative to the point that it distort reality-- is much more than just bias media reporting. It is actually a insidious Black Racially Demoralizing Divide and Conquer psychological warfare campaign.  Demoralizing Divide and Conquer is the method of maintaining control over a targeted population through constant and unrelenting demoralization in order to create self hate and division between them. It’s a well documented and well proven social science tactic for controlling targeted populations.

 
“Whenever those in power wants to brainwash a targeted population to think and behave the way that they want them to, the first step is to heavily demoralize them. This divides them, makes them self loathing and much more easier to control.” - Yuri Bezmenov - Ideological subversion ( psychological warfare) expert.

“Demoralization of the target audience is is the next step in successful mind control.” - Dr. Joost Meerloo, psychoanalysis

 
“Demoralize the enemy from within - this is the warfare of the future." - Adolf Hitler.

"To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed." - John Henrik Clarke

 
“If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will” demand one.” Dr. Carter G Woodson, 1933

Throughout world history, oppressors have often deployed demoralizing divide and conquer tactic against the oppressed because creating self loathing and division amongst the oppressed makes them easier to control. This nefarious practice was never abandoned. It’s the warfare tactic that white oppressive forces presently deploys against Black people.

The white society writes all Black narratives and controls all Black mainstream media images. The white society therefore literally owns Black people’s interpretation of our collective state. This unfair scenario allows white oppressive forces to easily negatively shape how Black people perceives themselves collectively. They’ve transformed this scenario into their greatest weapon used for controlling Black people.

 
This modern demoralize and divide warfare system is deplored like a massive media marketing campaign that constantly subjects Black people to receiving only the fraudulent worst narratives about ourselves. Within this system fraudulent black racially demoralizing propaganda is pumped unrelentingly into the unsuspecting minds of Black populations--without being challenged or counterbalanced by an equal amount Black positive racially affirming information. It conveys the subliminal message that Black people are there own worst enemy and therefore needs whites to govern over their lives.

Moreover, that Black people should admire, respect, and trust only Whites. This system is extremely effective because when Black people are repetitively presented these noted narratives from trusted white media sources it can be very difficult to resist it's implied propaganda programming. Especially when the propaganda is being told daily and so unrelentingly. The basis of this concept of warfare works by affecting the subconscious minds of the Black population through demoralizing propaganda. It works by tapping into the immense power that shame has upon the human mind. Its weapon is the demoralizing message that it carries and the way that it adversely affects the Black population in terms of their behavior.

 
With time, being unable to refute the constant negative information about themselves, many Black people eventually comes to accept them. The constant taunting of negative propaganda unconsciously influences how many within the Black population perceives themselves, creating division and self hatred among ourselves. It also turns the collective frustrations and aggressions of Black people away from their white oppressors and turns them inward towards themselves thus literally mentally enslaving many Black people. 

Those Black people that do not critically think never notices their mental chains. Through the skillful sustained use of repetitive media subliminal propaganda programming white societies have created a prison for the mind's of millions of Black people. This is all possible because people are like computers, all you have to do is keep giving them certain information every so often and you can persuade an entire generation towards an implied objective. It doesn't matter if the information presented is untrue most Black people will act upon it because they have all been given the same misinformation about themselves.

 
"If you're not careful the media will have you hating the people that's being oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing." -Malcolm X

This psychological warfare system provides white societies with a more proficient method for controlling Black populations. For unlike the past blatant racist systems that Black people were easily able to identify and therefore develop counter strategies against, this system is not easily recognized nor comprehended by many of its Black victims. This psychological warfare program works so well in fact that it not only makes Black people more compliant with white dominance over their lives, it in fact makes many even prefer it.It is at the root of both the profound division and self hatred now afflicting so many Black people and is at the heart of internalized feelings of superiority that many whites possess.

"The oppressed will always believe the worse about themselves" --Franz Fanon

This is not some feeble minded premise nor is it some silly conspiracy theory. It’s the truth that they hide from us. Media social engineering is a real and well-crafted system that allows the white ruling class to control the masses and targeted populations. The white ruling class uses it to control the Black masses. It is a practice that they’ve secretly used for many years. The white media has always represented a tyranny of the white society’s power over Black people.

 
THE WHITE SOCIETY ALSO SOCIALIZES BLACK PEOPLE THROUGH MISEDUCATION:

The socializing of Black people begins during our educational development when our minds are young and most impressionable. White governed schools do not provide a racially affirming curriculum to Black students- as it does so for white students. They instead intentionally give Black students a marginalized version of their history. It's a marginalized version designed to instill the the myth of white superiority into your subconscious minds. 

It is a classroom setting wherein which the majority of the achievements and contributions made by Black people, throughout history, are systematically withheld from their educational development. Black students are taught from curriculums that primarily exalts the history and achievements of whites only, while marginalizes their own. For many Black people their schools are, in fact, the places where they first experienced the implications that there is something lesser about being Black.

 
This Black racially devaluing educational curriculum is being pumped into the impressionable young minds of generations of Black students --without being counterbalance by an equal amount of positive Black racially affirming information. Consequently, Black students must constantly resist the negative perceptions of being Black implicit in an educational curriculum almost exclusively dedicated to white ideologies, achievements, contributions and history. Furthermore, Black students are subjected to this demoralizing miseducation for seven hours a day from the age of five through eighteen. Clearly, considerable damage can be done to the self esteem of many Black students within such a large time frame.

The white educational system’s failure to adequately provide Black students with a racially affirming curriculum as it routinely does for White students is actually essential for maintaining white dominance. Because for a ruling class to maintain its position of social dominance over its oppressed population, they must condition the oppressed from a very early age to accept their own subordinate status and to adhere to the authority of the dominant society. 

To do so, the education given to the oppressed, from the time that their mind's are young and most impressionable, must be the type that denies them a racially and culturally affirming curriculum. When the suppressed minority population is denied a fully racially and culturally affirming education, even the brightest among them may have little, if any, hope of mentally extracting themselves from their assigned low, dominated position in life. This immoral practice is precisely what's being done to Black students.

During the educational development of Black students, they are literally being subconsciously conditioned to believe lesser of themselves and more favorably of whites. Black students are actually being socially engineered, during their educational developmental period, to adhere to white dominance over their lives. While white students are being miseducated to believe that they're inherently superior and are therefore suppose to rule over Black people.

White social engineering scientist describes this immoral practice as merely instilling a value system into the collective mind's of the oppressed that adheres to the infrastructure of the dominant society. Schools are tools of the government design to mold students’ character accordingly. Although white governments professes equality for all of their citizens, in reality they are unrelentingly committed towards the preservation of their nation's white dominance. This unrelenting commitment necessitates that Black students be socially engineered during their educational development to accept their subordinate status within a white dominant society. The white society will never give Black students an education that truly liberates them. They will instead always miseducate Black students to think in ways that serves white supremacy.

 
To further socialize the minds of Black people to think in ways that benefits white societies, white historians rewrote the history of the African slave trade to favor themselves. Their revision intentionally makes the white invaders appear more humane, and shifts the blame of the African slave trade more greatly upon native Africans. The history of the African slave trade taught to African American students deliberately hides the brutal massacre of countless African Warriors that died in battle trying to rescue their captured love ones from the slave ships. As the African warriors charged the beaches the ship's crew shot cannons and countless of bullets into their bodies. Leaving thousands of blood soaked Black bodies laying on beaches.

The number of Africans that died in battles fought against the white invaders far exceeded, many times over, the number of any African's that may have assisted in the slave trade. The hiding of these fierce battles and massacres is deliberately done to perpetuate the lie that most Africans were merely sold away.

 
To further convey the falsehood that most African slaves were sold away by other Africans, several white artist were hired to create pictures of Africans selling their fellow Africans to the white invaders. Reproductions of those drawings and paintings can still be found within America's school text books today. Therefore, every time that an African American students reads about the African slave trade those pictures are placed between the texts subliminally conveying the message that it was the Africans that wronged you and not the white invaders.

Furthermore, to believe that the greedy white invaders ( they that bloodily brutalized our Black ancestors during slavery here in the U.S.) went into Africa with weaponry advantage [of guns and cannons] but rather than maximizing their profits, they instead shown kindness, and mercy by purchasing most of their slaves is absolutely preposterous. Because such a claim totally contradicts over 500 years of demonstrated behavior by whites in regards to Black people and making profit.

Moreover, critically think, and ask yourself this question: If Africans owned all the natural resources of gold, diamonds, oils, minerals, and animal skins, fur, and wine, and Western money had no value in Africa, what then could the white invaders trade to get MOST of the slaves?

What possible commodity did the white invaders have that was of such great value, and they possessed in such high abundance that they could give to the Africans in exchange for over 60 millions of Black people? And why wouldn't the greedy white invaders maximize their profits by using their weaponry advantage of riffles and cannons to steal most of their slaves? However, yet through miseducation millions of African people globally have been socialized to perceive the details of the African slave trade in a manner that benefits the society. 

The white society socializes Black people unrelentingly. This isn’t some feeble minded conspiracy theory. There’s an immense concern of massive unified Black retribution that secretly exists amongst white nations that have brutally oppressed Africans and grossly exploited Africa’s natural resources for over five hundred years. There’s also an unrelenting commitment towards the preservation of white social dominance over Black people. This immense concern of unified Black retribution and unrelentingly commitment towards the preservation of white social dominance over Black people have always resulted in the white society deploying many nefarious schemes against Black people that serves this concern and agenda 

There are presently white men that specializes in psychiatry, and propaganda - that works unrelentingly behind the scenes manipulating the collective minds of the Black masses to think and behave in ways that protects and serves the interests of the white society. These men govern our minds, molds our opinions and shapes our perceptions in ways that serves the system of global white supremacy. It’s the hidden truth that white oppressive forces don’t want we Africans to ever learn.

Don’t embrace the “Anti Woke” movement. It’s deliberately designed to indirectly stifle our long awaited Black awakening 

Millions of Black people are finally waking up from a real life legitimate generational psychosis from reality deliberately created by slavery, colonialism, and ongoing miseducation. To impede and convolute this long awaited Black awakening, white propagandist have deliberately attached the term WOKE to many idiotic ideologies. This makes it acceptable to attack Woke culture in a subtle indirect attempt to delegitimize the legitimate Black awakening that's now happening. Black people we must not allow the anti awoke sentiments to deter us from our true legitimate Black Awakening.

Our core problem, as Black people, is that most us can’t see that our minds are being systematically manipulated to think in ways that serves white supremacy. The African slaves of the 21st century are not those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot unlearn the many mentally enslaving lies they've been taught by whites.

Black Man's Perspective: The Fourth of July 2026 on the Occasion of America's 250th Anniversary

by Kenny 'Cinque' Anderson

Today as a senior Black man white America wants me to forget about its racist, terrible history and just unconsciously celebrate its 250 years of so-called democracy. They want me to have a flag in my hand; a sparkler, a hot dog, and a program full of fireworks.

They want me to stand shoulder to shoulder with them, eat barbeque and sing about the land of the free, the home of the brave, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, yeah a total bunch of hypocritical bullshit!

I ask you straight-up: 250 years of democracy for whom? In the words of the Black nationalist patriot Malcolm X, indeed I do not write to you today as a Democrat or a Republican. I do not come before you as an American in the way that word is meant when spoken with pride and comfort.

I come before you as a Black man whose people have lived in this land for over four hundred years and who, of the 250 being celebrated, have only been permitted to vote and to claim the protection of civil rights for 62 of them.

Sixty-two years out of two hundred and fifty. That is not a nation with an occasional stain on its record. That is a nation whose default condition, for the overwhelming majority of its existence, has been the legal, systematic exclusion of Black people from the very democracy it now asks us to applaud.

Do the arithmetic yourselves. Two hundred and fifty years of a republic. Two hundred and forty-six years of that republic touched by slavery, by Black Codes, by Jim Crow, by lynching, by disenfranchisement enforced with fire hoses, dogs, nooses, police, and the law. Sixty-two years of anything resembling the franchise being secure.

And even that sixty-two is not truly secure because in this very anniversary year, a right-wing authoritarian president who built his political career on stoking racial grievance is actively working to gut the Voting Rights Act's remaining protections, purge Black voters from rolls, dismantle the civil rights infrastructure built on the blood of marchers, and roll back the enforcement mechanisms that made those sixty-two years possible at all.

So when they ask me to celebrate two hundred and fifty years of democracy, understand: I am being asked to celebrate two centuries of systemic racial oppression, economic exploitation, social degradation, physical debilitation, and psychological exhaustion, followed by six decades of contested and now endangered inclusion, presided over today by a man actively trying to shrink that number further. This is not democracy triumphant; this is democracy on trial, with the defendant currently in the White House.

A Government That Has Never Stopped Fighting Black Freedom

Look honestly at the record, not the mythology. Every single time Black people in this country organized to free themselves, the government of the United States federal, state, or both moved to crush it.

The Underground Railroad was met with the Fugitive Slave Act, federal marshals, and bounty hunters empowered by Congress to drag free Black men and women back into bondage.

Reconstruction, the one brief moment when Black political power flourished, was abandoned by federal compromise in 1877 and replaced with a century of state-sanctioned terror that Washington chose not to stop.

The Black freedom movement of the twentieth century was met by COINTELPRO, a federal program that wiretapped, infiltrated, slandered, and helped assassinate Black leaders — Martin Luther King Jr. surveilled as a threat, Fred Hampton shot dead in his bed by police acting on FBI intelligence.

And when Black Lives Matter (BLM) rose in this century to say simply that our lives should not be extinguishable with impunity, it was labeled an extremist threat by federal law enforcement, its organizers surveilled, its protests met with military-grade force. From the Underground Railroad to BLM, the pattern is unbroken: when Black people organize for their own liberation, the American state treats that organizing as the danger, not the conditions that produced it.

Fighting Their Wars, Denied Our Rights

Black men have bled for this country in every war it has fought, from Crispus Attucks falling first in the Revolution, to the tens of thousands of United States Colored Troops in the Civil War, to the Harlem Hellfighters who spent more days in continuous combat than any other American unit in the First World War, to the Tuskegee Airmen, to the men who served two, three tours in Vietnam.

And in every one of those wars, they came home to a country that would not let them vote, would not serve them a meal at a lunch counter, would not sell them a home outside a redlined district, and in some cases lynched them still in uniform. A man good enough to die for democracy abroad was not good enough to exercise it at home. That contradiction is not incidental to American history. It is a through-line.

And when a Black man tried to protest that very contradiction not with a rifle or a riot, but by silently taking a knee during an anthem, on his own time, on a football field, he was cast as unpatriotic, blackballed from his profession, and turned into a national villain by the very apparatus of power he was peacefully confronting.

Colin Kaepernick knelt so that this country might look honestly at how it treats Black lives at the hands of police. For that, he lost his career. Meanwhile the conditions he knelt to protest have only worsened. That is what this country does with peaceful Black dissent: it destroys the messenger and preserves the message's target.

The Ledger of a Nightmare, Not a Dream

They speak of the American Dream. I am speaking of the American record, and the record is a ledger of disproportion that never seems to close. Black men are killed by law enforcement at a rate that dwarfs our share of the population; not occasionally, not anecdotally, but as a documented, persistent pattern stretching from slave patrols to today's police departments.

Behind that present-day statistic stands a historical mountain of terror: thousands of Black men and women lynched across this country, often with photographs sold as postcards, often with law enforcement standing by or leading the mob.

That terror did not simply end; it transformed into a system of mass incarceration that now holds Black men in cages at a rate unmatched anywhere on earth relative to our numbers, feeding a prison system that itself sprang from the very language of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery "except as a punishment for crime."

Black men are last hired and first fired. We carry the highest unemployment. We are overrepresented among the poor and the homeless in a country wealthy enough to end both. We suffer chronic illness and die earlier, not from some genetic inevitability, but from generations of environmental neglect, medical mistreatment, and stress that accumulates in the body like sediment.

Every category by which a society is judged to be caring for its people health, wealth, safety, longevity, freedom from cages, Black men lead in the wrong direction. That is not misfortune. That is design, maintained by policy, upheld by inertia, and now, under this administration, being actively deepened rather than repaired.

No Dream, Only a Nightmare Renewed

So again I ask: what to the Black man is the Fourth of July, 2026? It is a fireworks display over a house still on fire. It is a milestone measured in centuries by people who have only been allowed to stand fully inside its promise for the length of a single long lifetime and who are watching, in real time, an authoritarian racist president and his MAGA movement shorten that lifetime further.

It is a celebration of "democracy" that has spent two hundred fifty years defining, again and again, who counts as fully human within it, and has never once stopped resisting the moment Black people tried to answer that question for ourselves.

I do not stand here asking for inclusion in someone else's dream. I stand here asserting our right to determine our own future politically, economically, culturally spiritually; independent of whether this nation ever finishes reckoning with what it has done.

We do not need their permission to organize, to build, to protect our own, to educate our children in the truth of this history rather than the mythology of it. Self-determination is a rejection of America; it is a refusal to wait on a country that has shown, for two hundred fifty years running, precisely how long it is willing to make us wait.

Let the fireworks go up, let their anthem play, I will not pretend the democracy mountain has been climbed when I can still clearly see, from where I stand, the white supremacy shackles at its base and a racist fascist president Donald Trump at the summit today trying to successfully roll the whole Black nation back down toward them.

Yes, this is what the Fourth of July 2026 means to this Black man, no different in essence that it meant to Frederick Douglass in his famous 1852 speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”, as Douglass remarked:

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy; a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”

Why Patience Is Critical for Black Male Unity

“We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.” – Malcolm X

Patience as a character trait involves self-control, emotional regulation, along with the ability to maintain a steady, stay the course, and positive attitude when facing challenges and adversities.

Patience also means suppressing annoyance, or the urge to retaliate when provoked by the mistakes or shortcomings of others. Relationally, patience in this sense may be the most important ingredient in Black male unity because unity is not created among perfect people.

Yes, unity has to be created among imperfect Black men tainted by internalized racism who choose to stay connected despite differences. Indeed, many efforts at Black male unity fail because patience runs out like the case of the aftermath of the historic Million Man March.

Patience Helps Us Navigate Differences

Black men are not a monolith, we differ in politics, religion, class, education, geography, and generational experiences. Some brothers embrace Pan-Africanism, others embrace Christianity; others embrace Islam; others embrace secular humanism. Some are conservative, others are progressive, and some involved in gangs. 

Without patience, disagreement becomes division; patience allows us to say: "We do not agree on everything, but we can still work together on what matters in the case of common racial discrimination."

Patience Counters Internalized Division

For centuries, racist oppression rewarded division among Black people. Enslavement, segregation, mass incarceration, economic exclusion, and media stereotypes all created pressures that often encourage mistrust. 

As a result, some Black men approach one another defensively. Patience allows us to overcome those learned patterns; it helps us build trust slowly and intentionally.

Patience Creates Space for Healing

Many Black men have never had safe spaces to process pain - some express pain as:

*Anger

*Withdrawal

*Distrust

*Hyper-competitiveness

*Emotional distance

Without patience, these behaviors can push Black men apart; with patience, brothers can recognize that beneath the hard exterior may be a wounded spirit seeking connection.

Though patience is necessary in Black male relationships, however patience is not about tolerating consistent lack of accountability and continuing irresponsibility. 

Patience Strengthens Leadership

Strong Black male leadership requires patience; a community organizer must be patient; mentor must be patient. Yes, a Black father must be patient; an elder must be patient. Leadership is not about commanding people it’s about developing people.

Patience allows leaders to invest in long-term growth rather than demanding immediate perfection.

Patience Protects Collective Progress

Historically Black freedom movements rarely advance in a straight line; there are setbacks; there are disappointments; there are disagreements; there are mistakes. Patience helps Black men remain committed to the larger mission despite temporary frustrations.

Without patience, every disagreement becomes a breakup; with patience disagreements become opportunities for growth.

Patience Is Not Weakness

Some Black men mistake patience for passivity; patience is not weakness; patience is disciplined strength. Patience is the ability to remain committed to a goal despite obstacles.

Patience is the ability to stay engaged when emotions urge retreat, it is the ability to continue building when circumstances tempt destruction. Patience does not mean accepting disrespect, abuse, or injustice; it means responding thoughtfully rather than reactively.

Patience Creates Unity

Unity is the final result of the entire process; light produces understanding. Understanding produces respect. Concern produces patience; patience produces unity; unity does not mean uniformity.

Black male unity does not require every Brother to think alike, vote alike, worship alike, or live alike. Unity means recognizing a shared destiny despite our differences. It means understanding that the advancement of one Black man contributes to the advancement of all Black men.

Black Male Unity means choosing cooperation over unnecessary conflict; it means seeing another Black man's unselfish success not as a threat but as a victory for the collective.

Black Men’s Health 2026: Are You Strong Enough to Fight Back?

 By Jeff Thomas | Publisher, Black Source Media | An Owner, WBOK 1230 AM & 107.1 FM

I want to ask you a direct question. And I need you to be honest with yourself when you answer it. If the political situation in this country required you to march the way our fathers and grandfathers marched could you do it? Not a social media post. Not a retweet. An actual march. Miles of pavement. Hours on your feet. The sun on your back and nowhere to sit down. Could you do it?

Because the men who changed this country did exactly that. The Black men and women who boycotted the Montgomery bus system in 1955 walked miles to work every day for 381 consecutive days. In the Alabama heat. In dress clothes. Because they had no other choice and because they understood that their bodies were instruments of resistance. 

The men who marched on Washington in 1963 some of them walked from as far away as New York and Philadelphia. They did not Uber to the National Mall. They put their feet on the ground and they moved. I am asking whether the Black men of 2026 are capable of doing the same. And I am asking it because the political moment we are living through may soon require an answer. 

We Got Comfortable And It Is Killing Us

Let me be honest about something that we do not say out loud enough. The progress Black Americans have made the financial stability, the home ownership, the cars in the driveway, the restaurants on every corner has come with a health cost we have not fully reckoned with.

The men who marched in Selma were, by most measures, poor. They worked physically demanding jobs. They walked because they could not afford cars. They ate simple food because that was what was available. Their bodies shaped by necessity were instruments capable of sustained physical resistance.

We gained resources. We gained convenience. We gained the ability to drive to a store that is four blocks away. We gained fast food on every corner and processed everything in every grocery aisle. We gained the sedentary desk job and the streaming service that keeps us on the couch. And in gaining all of that, many of us lost the physical capacity that our fathers carried without thinking about it.

The numbers document what I am describing and I want you to look at them as a before-and-after, not a comparison to somebody else. In 1960, the overall obesity rate in America was approximately 12.8%. By the mid-1990s it had nearly doubled to 22.5%. Today, 39% of Black men are obese and 63% of Black men over 20 are overweight or obese. That number did not exist in 1960. The processed food environment that drives it barely existed. The men who marched in Selma and boycotted Montgomery were not carrying that weight. Most of them could not afford to.

Type 2 diabetes was comparatively rare in mid-century Black America. The condition is driven heavily by diet, obesity, and sedentary lifestyle none of which characterized Black life in the 1950s and 60s the way they characterize it today. Today, Black adults are up to 60% more likely to have diagnosed diabetes than a generation ago, and are 3.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with end-stage renal disease and 2.3 times more likely to face diabetes-related amputation. These are not inherited conditions from the civil rights era. They are conditions we have developed in the decades since.

The chronic disease crisis Black men carry today is largely a product of the decades after the civil rights movement. The processed food environment that drives obesity and diabetes did not exist at scale in the 1950s and 60s. The sedentary lifestyle enabled by cars, desk jobs, and convenience culture was not the reality of working-class Black life in Montgomery or Selma. We built this crisis in the decades of relative comfort that followed the movement and we have the capacity to reverse it the same way we built it, one daily decision at a time.

In 2023, the average life expectancy for Black men was 70.3 years. In 1960 it was 60.7 years. So yes we live longer, but many of us live those additional years in bodies compromised by preventable chronic disease. The question is not just how long we live. It is whether we are strong enough to act when action is required.

Are We Actually Worse Off Than in the 1950s and 60s?

That question deserves an honest answer. The data is complicated but the honest answer is: in some ways, yes. In 1960, Black men lived to an average of 60.7 years. In 2023, that number is 70.3 years a gain of nearly ten years over six decades. On that measure, we are better off. The elimination of legal segregation improved access to healthcare, education, and economic opportunity in ways that extended Black life.

However and this is the part that does not get discussed enough the chronic disease burden on Black men today is in many respects worse than it was in the civil rights era. Obesity rates among Black men have increased dramatically since the 1960s. Type 2 diabetes was significantly less prevalent in mid-century America across all racial groups because the processed food environment that now drives it did not yet exist at scale. Hypertension rates have remained stubbornly high despite decades of medical advancement.

The men of the civil rights movement were physically conditioned by a life that demanded physical activity. The men of 2026 are physically deconditioned by a life designed for maximum convenience. We live longer on average but many of us live those additional years in bodies compromised by preventable chronic disease. The question is not just how long we live. It is whether we are strong enough to act when action is required.

The Medicine That Could Help Is Not Getting to Us

Here is where the health crisis intersects directly with the political one. The new generation of GLP-1 medications Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro represent one of the most significant advances in the treatment of obesity and Type 2 diabetes in medical history. These drugs are producing results that were previously unimaginable. For Black men carrying the weight of hypertension, diabetes, and obesity, these medications could be genuinely life-changing. Black men are not getting them.

Instead, the medical system continues routing Black patients toward older, less effective medications metformin, sulfonylureas, insulin while the new generation of drugs that could reverse the metabolic crisis in our community goes largely un-prescribed in Black neighborhoods. This is not an accident of biology. It is a pattern of undertreatment that the medical establishment has applied to Black patients for generations. The best available option has historically not been the option offered to us.

The barriers are structural. Insurance status. Lack of access to routine specialist care. Out-of-pocket costs that can exceed $1,000 per month without coverage. A medical system where Black patients are less likely to be seen by physicians who prescribe these medications aggressively. A research and marketing infrastructure that did not center Black patients when these drugs were being introduced to the market.

Only 2.3% of Americans who qualify for GLP-1 medications actually receive them. Black men who have among the highest need are at the bottom of that already small percentage. A drug that could add years to a Black man’s life and restore the physical capacity he needs to show up in this political moment is sitting in a pharmacy he cannot access. 

They Are Also Changing the Rules on Protest

Now I want to connect the health crisis to the political moment directly because that connection is the whole point of this piece. The political shift in this country is not only affecting our healthcare, our voting rights, and our economic opportunities. It is also targeting the most fundamental tool Black Americans have ever used to demand change: the right to protest in the streets.

Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, 41 new anti-protest bills were introduced across 22 states in the first months of the year alone compared to a full-year total of 52 in all of 2024 and 26 in 2023, according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law tracker. More than a dozen states have already passed restrictive protest laws. Louisiana has active protest legislation as of May 2026.

These laws do not use the language of racial suppression. They use the language of public order and riot prevention. They create new felony classifications for blocking traffic during a demonstration. They add rioting-related offenses to RICO statutes, meaning a protest that turns chaotic even if you personally did nothing wrong could expose you to federal organized crime charges. Some bills would revoke the tax-exempt status of organizations whose leaders are convicted of protest-related offenses. One bill, introduced in August 2025, would create an affirmative defense for drivers who run over protesters in the street. Read that again. A legal defense for running over protesters.

The criminalization of protest has always fallen hardest on Black communities. The anti-protest laws of 2025 and 2026 carry race-neutral language but land in a racially specific reality. Black men who show up to demonstrate face a legal environment designed to expose them to maximum criminal liability for minimum acts of civil disobedience.

This matters for your health in a direct and practical way. A man with uncontrolled hypertension who stands in the summer heat for four hours risks a hypertensive crisis. A man with poorly managed diabetes who skips meals and overexerts himself risks a dangerous blood sugar event. A man with gout who marches on pavement for miles is physically incapacitated before he reaches the end of the route. And a man who gets arrested at a protest and has uncontrolled chronic disease faces those conditions in a jail cell with limited medical attention. The political fight requires a healthy body. Right now, too many of us do not have one.

The Montgomery Model: What Physical Resistance Actually Required

Consider what the Montgomery Bus Boycott actually demanded of its participants physically. For 381 days more than a year Black men and women in Montgomery, Alabama walked to work, to church, to grocery stores, and back home again. Many of them walked five, eight, ten miles per day. They did this in Alabama heat, in work clothes, carrying the demands of their jobs and their families alongside the demands of the movement.

They did not have fitness apps or gym memberships. Nevertheless, they had bodies capable of sustained physical effort because their daily lives demanded it. Domestic workers walked to white neighborhoods to clean houses. Laborers worked on their feet all day. The physical conditioning of necessity prepared them for the physical demands of resistance.

In 1963, men and women from across the country converged on Washington for the March on Washington. Some walked from New York. Some rode buses. Some came by train. However, when they arrived, they stood for hours in the August heat and listened and marched and refused to leave until their voices had been heard.

That is what political resistance required of a body. It required endurance. Cardiovascular capacity. The ability to regulate temperature in extreme heat. The ability to stand, walk, and sustain physical effort over extended periods without medical emergency.

I am asking, plainly: can the Black men of 2026 do what the Black men of 1963 did? Can we put our bodies in the street the way our grandfathers did? Or have we eaten and driven and sat our way into a condition that makes us physically incapable of the resistance our moment may demand?

What Getting Healthy Actually Means in This Context

I am not talking about getting a six-pack. I am not talking about the gym selfie or the fitness influencer or the wellness retreat. I am talking about functional health the kind of physical capacity that allows a man to show up when showing up matters.

Get your blood pressure under control. If you do not know your numbers, find out this week. Go to a pharmacy, a community health center, a doctor whatever you have access to. Doctors call high blood pressure the silent killer because it produces no symptoms until it produces a crisis. Know your number. Manage it. Do not leave it unattended while you tell yourself you feel fine.

Get your blood sugar checked. Prediabetes affects millions of Black men who do not know they have it. Unmanaged diabetes is not just a long-term risk it compromises your immune system, your circulation, your energy, and your capacity for physical effort right now, today.

Start moving. Not dramatically. Sustainably. Walk a mile. Then walk it faster. Then walk two. Build the cardiovascular baseline that protest and life requires. The men of Montgomery walked because they had no choice. We have a choice, and too many of us are choosing not to.

Talk to your doctor about every available option including GLP-1 medications if you qualify. Do not assume these medications are not available to you because you have seen them advertised to a different demographic. Ask directly. Push for access. Know your rights as a patient. And if you encounter barriers, document them and contact a patient advocacy organization.

Eat differently. Not perfectly differently. Reduce the processed food. Reduce the sodium. Reduce the sugar. These are not radical acts. They are basic interventions that directly affect blood pressure, blood sugar, weight, and cardiovascular function. The diet that is killing Black men in 2026 is a diet of convenience, and convenience has a price we are paying with years off our lives.

The Bottom Line

This country is changing in ways that may require Black men to take to the streets again. The voting rights are being stripped. The congressional districts are being redrawn. The protest laws are being tightened. The social safety net is being cut. The healthcare is being made less accessible. The machinery of rollback is running and it is running fast.

Our grandfathers responded to a similar moment with their bodies. They walked. They stood. They marched. They absorbed heat and hostility and legal threat and they kept moving. That physical capacity was not an accident. It was the product of lives that demanded physical endurance.

We have to rebuild that capacity deliberately. Because it will not come from convenience. It has to be chosen. A man with uncontrolled hypertension, diabetes, and gout is not equipped to protest in the streets. He is certainly not equipped to march across states to Washington. The political fight requires a body that can show up and show up for hours, in heat, under pressure, without medical emergency.

Get healthy. Not for your doctor. Not for your wife. Not for Instagram. Get healthy because the generation after you is watching to see whether you are capable of doing what your grandfather did when it mattered most. The question is not whether the fight is coming. The question is whether you will be strong enough to stand in it.

About the Author Jeff Thomas is the Publisher of Black Source Media and Owner of WBOK 1230 AM, New Orleans’ premier Black talk radio station. He writes Sundays on politics, power, and the civic life of Black New Orleans and Louisiana. His opinions are his own and he stands behind every word.

Poem To Black Women

Black Woman I Been Trying to Tell You But You Aint Listening

I am an old-head wise Black man now.

Gray in my beard, history aches in my body,

war and stress inside my chest.

I've lived long enough

to watch presidents change,

songs change, Ebonics change,

technology change, and

still see the same white hand of

racial oppression resting heavy on

the necks of Blacks in America.

I've watched little Black boys

grow into tired Black men

before they even turned thirty.

Watched dreams dry up

like rivers in Mississippi heat.

Watched prison buses

ride through our neighborhoods

like school buses used to.

And all these years

I kept trying to explain something

to my sisters. Not because I resent them.

Lord knows I loved them.

Loved Black women enough

to survive some of the coldness

that came from them.

But many times

when I tried to speak about racism,

about what this country does

to the Black male spirit,

I was met with suspicion

instead of understanding.

As if I was the enemy.

As if the Black man

invented the hardships we face

instead of being born inside it too. 

I tried to explain

that a Black man denied power

is a man denied part of his manhood.

Not because masculinity means domination,

no - but because every man needs the

ability to provide, to protect,

and to progress; to stand

upright in dignity

without white systems

constantly placing boots on his back.

America studied the Black man

like white hunters’ study deer.

to break his confidence.

Destroy his image.

Turn his pain into pathology.

Turn survival into criminality.

Turn frustration into “toxicity.”

Turn unemployment into laziness.

Turn trauma into personal failure.

Then they whisper in the Black woman’s ear:

“Your man is the problem.” And too many believed  

it not all Black women. Never all.

But enough to wound generations.

I watched educated sisters

quote white institutions

more than they listened

to the cries of Black men

living under racial siege.

I watched Black boys

called “dangerous” at six years old,

then grow into men

who carried invisible funerals

inside themselves. Funerals for 

opportunity. Funerals for tenderness.

Funerals for innocence.

Because racism ain’t just economic.

It gets inside the nervous system.

Inside the bloodstream.

Inside the mirror. It makes a Black

man question his worth

every single day

in a society that profits

from his humiliation.

And when a man hurts long enough,

he changes. Sometimes he gets angry.

Sometimes distant.

Sometimes numb.

Sometimes self-destructive.

Not because he was born broken,

but because oppression

is psychological warfare. White 

supremacy don’t just attack the body.

It attacks identity. And I spent years

trying to explain this

without sounding bitter. 

But how do you speak softly

about centuries of spiritual assault?

How do you calmly explain

that many Black men walk around

with invisible emotional shrapnel

lodged in the soul? I wanted Black women

to understand that many Black men were never 

taught healthy emotional language

because survival became our first language.

Our fathers carried stress

like wet cement on their backs.

Many of them never hugged us

because nobody hugged them. 

Many worked themselves into graves

trying to prove they were men

in a country determined

to call them boys forever.

And somewhere along the line

too many conversations between us

became accusation instead of healing.

The Black woman saying:

“You need to do better.” The Black man saying:

“You don’t understand what I carry.”

And white supremacy sat 

quietly in the corner smiling

while we argued over the symptoms

instead of the disease, that’s the part

that broke my heart most. Watching us fight each

other while the system kept feeding

off both of us.

Because Black women suffer too.

Lord knows they do. I seen my mother clean 

white people’s homes with swollen feet

and tired eyes. Seen Black women carry families

through impossible conditions.

Seen them survive abandonment,

poverty, violence, disrespect,

and the loneliness

of always being “strong.”

But somewhere in this American nightmare,

many Black men and Black women

stopped seeing each other

as fellow survivors as

started seeing each other

as opposing political camps. And that ain’t natural.

That’s engineered. A divided people

are easier to control. A Black man disconnected 

from his woman is easier to destroy.

A Black woman taught to distrust her man

is easier to be emotionally manipulated. 

A divided people cannot build nations.

I wish some sisters understood

how racism humiliates Black men publicly

while demanding we privately remain unshaken. 

That’s a hard burden.

To be feared by police,

mocked and attacked by the media,

discriminated against at work,

over-policed in neighborhoods,

under-protected in society,

then come home

and be told your pain

doesn’t matter.

Some brothers broke under that weight. 

Some became angry.

Some became absent.

Some chased material things

trying to rebuild stolen dignity.

Some hid in addictions.

Some became emotionally unreachable.

And yes, some hurt

Black women deeply. I won’t lie about that.

Truth got to stand whole. But I also know

many Black men died emotionally

long before anybody noticed

they were bleeding internally.

I know brothers

who never heard the words

“I appreciate you.” 

Brothers who only received 

attention when they failed. 

Brothers who spent their whole

lives trying to prove

they were worthy of love

in a society that trained everybody

to suspect them first.

And now in my older years,

I no longer want war

between Black men and Black women.

I want understanding, I want us to finally admit

that racism damaged all of us differently. That the 

Black woman’s wounds are real.

That the Black man’s wounds are real too.

That neither healing nor

self-determination can

happen through blame-game.

I want Black women

to look at Black men

with deeper historical compassion.

And I want Black men

to stop drowning silently

behind pride and emotional fear.

Because we are all tired, tired of funerals.

Tired of prisons, tired of broken homes.

Tired of survival without peace.

Tired of carrying America’s racism

inside Black relationships.

I am an elder Black man now. And after all 

 these years, I still believe Black men and 

Black women belong beside each other

not beneath each other.

I still believe

our love can survive

if truth finally enters the room.

But truth requires courage. The courage to admit

that white supremacy

did not merely chain Black bodies—

it strained Black intimacy,

distorted Black identity,

and turned wounded people

against one another.

And until we confront that honestly,

we will keep inheriting pain

that was never ours to begin with. 

So listen to me now

while I still got breath in my lungs. 

The Black man is not the root

of all Black suffering.

The Black woman is not the enemy.

The real enemy

has always been the system

that profits when we forget

we're supposed to struggle and 

heal together.

 - Kenray Sunyaru