Black Men Sharing a Self-Reflection For Us to Think About

 by Kenny Anderson

As a practice I engage in reflection that entails both specific developmental self-reflection and general memory reflections.

Regarding the later I often reflect on 2 critical points older Brothers highlighted to me when I was a young teenager.

First, I remember older Brothers schooling us Black male youngsters telling us to never say we didn’t have work to do or that in the future stating we’re unemployed.

Their point to us was that how can Black folks be out of work when we suffer from racial oppression and there is so much full-time freedom 'self-determination' work to be done!

That as young Brothers we can always ‘should’ volunteer to better the Black community and we can always ‘must’ engage in personal development ‘self-work’ to become responsible, build character, and increase capabilities.

Second, when we departed from these older conscientious Brothers they would say “take good care of y’all selves young bloods,” their departing encouragement was more than about safety and fitness, it had an implied emphasis point for us not to engage in dumb shit and recklessness ‘self-harm’.

I want to cite this about self-care and Black men, in keenly observing us for many-many years; I’ve seen that too many of us don’t take care of ourselves including self-abuse; too many of us take care of material things more than our own health resulting in disproportionate illnesses and suffering.

As Black men too many of us live 7 days a week living in a rush working, raising families, or hustling in the streets to adequately take care of ourselves. Psychologically, subconsciously too many of us as Black men don’t believe we are worthy of self-care.

Indeed from then and now ‘self-work’ and ‘self-care’ are critical points of practice in Black self-determination that prevents irresponsibility, dependency, neglect, decline, deprivation, disease, and premature deaths.