That's a fact. And a problem
Brief Notes on Black Mental Health
by Chitown Kev
Last night, I was all set to do a column on a very different subject when an Al Jazeera story on the death of 17-year old Lennon Lacy in Bladenboro, North Carolina popped up on the Overnight News Digest that literally made me cringe.
When a black teenager was found hanging from a swing set by a belt that was not his own one morning late last summer, the first thought by his friends, family, and community was that it wasn’t a suicide. Lennon Lacy, they believe, was lynched.
Now, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched a probe into the death, which the coroner in Bladen County, North Carolina, initially ruled a suicide based on evidence his family says is circumstantial: that he was distraught over the recent death of his uncle.
“It’s nonsense. Yes he was depressed, but he was grieving just like his other siblings,” said Rev. Gregory Taylor, a family friend who gave the uncle’s eulogy the day before Lacy’s body was discovered in his hometown of Bladenboro. “In the African-American community where we deal with grief openly and emotionally, doesn’t mean we are clinically depressed.”
As a Gen-X'er, I have to confess that it simply seems...surreal that stories of the possible lynchings of black folks are increasingly in the news in the 21-century and in age where a black man sits
and works behind the desk in the Oval Office. To be sure, spectacular lynchings are a part of black American history that I need to know but black American lynchings as current events? It's still hard to wrap my mind around that one.
But the possibility of 21-century black lynchings is only peripheral (though not unrelated) to the other cringe factor in this story.
(Let me emphasize and state here and now that I trust that with the Rev. William Barber and the North Carolina NAACP and now, the FBI, investigating the Lacy case, that there may be a ten-alarm fire behind the smoke outlined in the Al Jazeera article.)
Another statement by "family friend" Rev. Gregory Taylor also induced a cringe.
“In the African-American community where we deal with grief openly and emotionally, doesn’t mean we are clinically depressed.”
While Reverend Taylor may be correct about this specific case, his statement also contains an element of the stigmatizing of mental health issues among many black folks that sounds all too familiar to me.
The Suicide Prevention Resource Center has issued a number of fact sheets on suicide among varied racial and ethnic backgrounds in the United States including African Americans. Some of their findings include:
*Suicide was the 16th leading cause of death for Blacks of all ages and the 3rd leading cause of death for young Black males ages 15–24.
*Black rates can differ by ethnicity. One study found that among adult males, Caribbean Blacks had a higher rate of suicide attempts than African American Blacks.
On the other hand, another study found that among adolescent males, African American Blacks were approximately five times more likely than Caribbean
Blacks to attempt suicide.
*Orthodox religious beliefs and personal devotion have been identified as protective against suicide among Blacks.
*Increased acculturation into White society, which can include loss of family cohesion and support, leads to increased risk for suicidal ideation and suicide attempts.
Those are simply some of the highlights in the SPRC report that stuck out to me; the entire report is well worth the read. I did not like the fact that the SPRC report did not include any bullet points about LGBT status, although that information is
readily available.
In terms of overall mental health, this fact sheet from The National Alliance on Mental Illness contains additional data including:
*Culture biases against mental health professionals and health care professionals in general prevent many African Americans from accessing care due to prior experiences with historical misdiagnoses, inadequate treatment and a lack of cultural under
standing; only 2 percent of psychiatrists, 2 percent of psychologists and 4 percent of social workers in the United States are African American.
*Across a recent 15-year span, suicide rates increased 233 percent among African Americans aged 10-14 compared to 120 percent among Caucasian Americans in the
same age group across the same span of time.
*Somatization—the manifestation of physical illnesses related to mental health—occurs at a rate of 15 percent among African Americans and only 9 percent among Caucasian Americans.
*Programs in African American communities sponsored by respected institutions, such as churches and local community groups can increase awareness of mental health issues and resources and decrease the related stigma.
Clearly, there are multiple factors to deal with here including access to affordable health care, racism and white privilege within the general society
and within the medical community, and the stigmatization of mental illness within black communities.
There are probably some here at Black Kos who are far more qualified to write about this issue than myself.
However, as a black gay agnostic who has contemplated (and, yes, attempted) suicide in the past and who has had issues with drug and alcohol addiction and as someone who has not and cannot (by and large) turn to the religious black community for help, this is an issue that is simply personal and one which I cannot write about in any objective way.
Frankly, one of the reasons that I applaud The Black Church is because of the essential role that the Church has played and continues to play in addressing the psychic needs of black people within this racist society.
The racist outpourings, racist police killings, and, yes, possible racist lynchings and many other things that have occurred since the election of the 44th President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, affects so much more the black body; it also affects the black spirit, the black psyche, and the black soul.
Attacks on the spirit, psyche, and soul can, for long periods of time, remain hidden until it is too late.
Simply put, black folks need the churches in our communities more than ever. Our communities also need quality mental health facilities and practioners. And, most importantly, the churches and the mental health facilities/practioners need to be on the same page.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Unfortunately in America, equal protection of the law, doesn't extend to equal enforcement of the law. Tampa Bay Times: How riding your bike can land you in trouble with the cops — if you're black.
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If the tickets are any indication, Tampa residents must be the lousiest bicyclists in Florida. They don't use lights at night. Don't ride close enough to the curb. Can't manage to keep their hands on the handlebars.
In the past three years, Tampa police have written 2,504 bike tickets — more than Jacksonville, Miami, St. Petersburg and Orlando combined. Police say they are gung ho about bike safety and focused on stopping a plague of bike thefts. But here's something they don't mention about the people they ticket:
Eight out of 10 are black.
A Tampa Bay Times investigation has found that Tampa police are targeting poor, black neighborhoods with obscure subsections of a Florida statute that outlaws things most people have tried on a bike, like riding with no light or carrying a friend on the handlebars.
Officers use these minor violations as an excuse to stop, question and search almost anyone on wheels. The department doesn't just condone these stops, it encourages them, pushing officers who patrol high-crime neighborhoods to do as many as possible.
There was the 56-year-old man who rode his bike through a stop sign while pulling a lawnmower. Police handcuffed him while verifying he had, indeed, borrowed the mower from a friend.
There was the 54-year-old man whose bike was confiscated because he couldn't produce a receipt to prove it was his.
[OCTAVIO JONES | Times]
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A site hosting posts from officers past and present confirms our worst fears about the NYPD Salon: “The worst elements of the department”: New York cop blog is home to some of the most vile racism on the Internet".
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Week after week, racist posts appear on Thee Rant, a blog for current or former New York City police officers: African Americans are called “apes;” a retired officer says one of the blessings of retirement is not having to work the Puerto Rican Day parade, with its “old obese tatted up women stuffed into outfits that they purchased or shoplifted at the local Kmart store; a Middle Eastern cab driver berated by an officer is termed a “third worlder” who should have his “head split open.”
And week after week, the department’s top officials are, at once, embarrassed and powerless.
“It’s very disturbing stuff. Outrageous stuff,” said Stephen Davis, the chief spokesman for the NYPD. “We see it. It’s a problem.”
At the heart of the problem are the limits the department faces in what it can do.
“Monitoring these things is challenging,” Davis said. “There are privacy issues involved. We can’t go and peel back email names and tags and try to find out who these people are.”
The issue of the blog, started by former NYPD officer Ed Polstein in 1999, has gained notoriety most recently after a white South Carolina police officer shot a black man to death. Shortly after a video of the officer appearing to shoot the fleeing man in the back went viral on the Internet, Thee Rant blew up with comments.
“Cop looked good in his stance,” read one post.
Polstein, who did not respond to requests for an interview, has said previously that anyone wishing to post on the blog has to provide proof that they are a current or former member of the NYPD. But whether they are, and how many have signed up, are among the many mysteries surrounding Thee Rant. The blog says it garners 120,000 page views daily.
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More than 300 people have been arrested in South Africa in connection with a wave of violence against immigrants from other parts of Africa, the minister of home affairs says. BBC: South Africa anti-immigrant violence: Hundreds held.
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In Durban on Saturday, President Jacob Zuma told a group of people displaced by the violence that the unrest went against South African values and that he would bring it to an end, but he was jeered by some in the crowd who accused him of acting too slowly.
Migrants, mostly from other African states and Asia, have moved to South Africa in large numbers since white-minority rule ended in 1994. Many South Africans accuse them of taking jobs in a country where the unemployment rate is 24%.
Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini has been accused of fuelling the attacks by saying that foreigners should "go back to their countries". However, he says his comments were distorted.
Official data suggests there are about two million foreign nationals in South Africa, about 4% of the total population. But some estimates put the number of immigrants at five million.
President Jacob Zuma visited a camp for those displaced by he violence
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Police brutality in the Southern Hemisphere. Over 100 people were leaving a building when police charged at them, causing squatters to retaliate and set fires inside. The Guardian: Brazil police force squatters from intended Olympics luxury hotel.
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An operation to remove squatters from a building planned as a hotel for the 2016 Olympic games erupted into chaos on Tuesday as Brazilian police stormed in and squatters set the structure alight.
The more than 100 squatters had agreed to leave of their own accord, but as they filed out of the imposing former apartment building, police in riot gear charged, sparking pandemonium. Squatters set two fires inside the building, and firefighters battled flames as police chased some of the squatters and their supporters through the streets.
“It didn’t have to end this way; they were already leaving,” said Joao Helvecio de Carvalho, an attorney with the state public defender’s office. “The police’s use of force was disproportional ... They didn’t need to act in that way.”
Dozens of squatters, many of whom said they’d recently been evicted from another building in downtown Rio, slipped into the building in Rio’s upper-middle-class Flamengo neighborhood a week ago. More people arrived throughout the week, and an attorney’s organization at one point counted more than 300, including 70 to 80 children, though many left after a judge ordered the building vacated.
The occupation normally might have gone largely unnoticed in a city where an overheated housing market has effectively priced many of the poorest residents out of their homes. But it attracted attention because the building, owned by popular Rio soccer club Flamengo, was leased a few years ago by Brazil’s then-richest man, Eike Batista.
Women are held back by police during their eviction from a building they invaded about a week ago in the Flamengo neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photograph: Silvia Izquierdo/AP
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Why is TV’s ’90s reboot boom ignoring all the great black comedies of that era? Vulture: Why Is TV’s ’90s Reboot Boom Ignoring All the Great Black Comedies of That Era?
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If you're starting to feel bombarded by the ’90s nostalgia set to invade TV over the next few years, you’re not alone. Already in 2015, reboots have been announced for The X-Files, Full House, The Magic School Bus, The Powerpuff Girls, Coach, and, if Showtime gets its way, a David Lynch–led Twin Peaks. Meanwhile, horror-film franchise Scream will be rebranded as an MTV show. None of this should come as a surprise. BuzzFeed can generate millions of clicks off milliennial-centric recycled topics like “32 Pictures That Will Give You Intense Elementary School Flashbacks,” Tumblr is clogged with '90s nostalgia porn, and fashion staples from that decade are back in style (see: Kylie Jenner’s nude lip-liner). To put it plainly: We’re all suckers for that “warm-and-fuzzy feeling [we get] at the mention of certain titles,” as Vulture’s Josef Adalian described the phenomenon.
But what if you get the warm-and-fuzzies for the black sitcoms of the '90s — a golden era that featured a record 18 such shows on the major networks? So far, black TV viewers have been left out of the (mostly) celebratory tweets that follow each new reboot announcement. The programs confirmed to come back — or close to getting a remake, as is the case with Fuller House — are visibly vanilla in both casting and style.
The exclusion of black sitcoms from the larger conversation about great ’90s television isn’t a new insult. While fans of Friends held viewing parties in honor of its debut on Netflix streaming, black viewers are still waiting to do the same for, say, The Wayans Bros. or Moesha. To date, Netflix offers none of the critically acclaimed black sitcoms from the ’90s (and most other decades) in the U.S. through its streaming service. The best you’ll find is The Bernie Mac Show, which aired in the 2000s. Some of this may be due to difficulties licensing the material, but it's hard to believe that's the sole reason these shows have been overlooked. Their exclusion suggests to the generation who'll likely grow up on Netflix that these shows did not matter in the first place.
Photo: Maya Robinson and Photos by ABC and NBC
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
I purchased and built my first crystal radio with an ear-set with funds gifted to me on my birthday in March of 1963. I was eight years old. It took a couple of weeks before the components arrived in the mail; and I set out to put the thing together. The radio was small and fit in the pocket of my coveralls, while a thin cord snaked its way to my left ear. We lived on the farm in Philomouth outside of Corvallis; and I had many chores to do before the bus picked me up for school. That radio kept me linked to the world while I milked the farm's only cow, slopped slop for the pigs, fed the geese and chickens, collected eggs and churned butter from the cream of that only cow.
The strongest frequency the radio picked up during those early morning duties was a station that broadcast local news, early morning weather and farm reports; and the conservative, baritone intonations of Paul Harvey ("... this is Paul Harvey... good day!"). I attended Saint Mary's Catholic School in Corvallis; and like many Catholics of the day ( and even now, not so surprisingly), photographs of JFK were prominent at home and school.
There was something about Harvey that bugged me as an eight year old. His halting, yet dulcet vocal delivery were pleasant enough, but the content of his broadcasts grated. Later that year, after the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young school girls; Harvey attempted to diminish the tragedy by explaining that no matter how brutal the murders were, they were to be expected.
Murdering four black school girls was an expectation in America? Even as an eight year old, I knew that wasn't and shouldn't be correct.
A year later, a Great Uncle helped install the antennae for the short wave radio he gave me. I could now listen to the BBC, music from Paris and New York; and I discovered Studs Terkel in Chicago.
Though both Terkel and Harvey broadcast from Chicago, they were worlds apart. Terkel's interviews with Bob Dylan and Mahalia Jackson still resonate in a deep seated radio tape loop in the middle of my cerebelum.
We never owned a television in Oregon, reception being poor or non-existent where we lived. When we moved to Southern California in the summer of 1965, when my father began a 35 year professorship at Cal State Fullerton, we purchased a television shortly after settling in. Later, we purchased one of the first generations of color televisions. I would match the news from the three broadcast networks with that of the BBC, that I listened to on the short wave radio, (it was a big argument about dismantling and moving the antennae from Oregon to California, but my dad prevailed on my mom that is was a good idea). I began to triangulate information before I even knew the word. It just seemed the prudent thing to do.
As a child, I couldn't get enough information. It remains the same today. With each new technological advancement, the ability to gather info increases; and I anticipate it strongly. With events unfolding in Syria, Iraq, Iran and elsewhere, with social networks in the forefront, it is proved that change need not be exacted by the barrel of a gun, but by the wide distribution of information.
We don't need a hotel heiress or government lackey to set the tone for when and how we get our information.
All we need is the ability of the word to travel the ether.
Total Information Awareness
“This bubble had to be burst, & the only way to do it was
to go right into the heart of the Arab world
& smash something.” The hotel heiress, snapped
flashing her bum in a Bahamas club.
To go right into the heart of the Arab world,
they claim their device can trigger an orgasm:
flashing her bum in a Bahamas club
on a boozy date with her new bloke, Nick Carter.
They claim their device can trigger an orgasm.
American officials who spoke on condition of anonymity
on a boozy date with her new bloke, Nick Carter,
say he confessed under torture in Syria.
American officials who spoke on condition of anonymity
without touching a women’s genital area
say he confessed under torture in Syria.
“There’s no explanation why. We’re just not saying anything.”
Without touching a women’s genital area,
I take it all seriously. I am withdrawing from all representation.
There’s no explanation why. We’re just not saying anything
to make this objective absolutely clear.
I take it all seriously. I am withdrawing from all representation,
but he was in the special removal unit.
To make this objective absolutely clear,
the development of counterterrorism technologies—
but he was in the special removal unit.
This had profoundly shocked the commission,
the development of counterterrorism technologies
with the flick of a switch. Women get turned on.
This had profoundly shocked the commission.
No one detected any radical political views.
With the flick of a switch, women get turned on
to a new business model that only pretends
no one detected any radical political views.
I take it all seriously. I am withdrawing from all representation
to a new business model that only pretends
to give consumers more control. In fact,
I take it all seriously. I am withdrawing from all representation
that she refused to be photographed in body paint
to give consumers more control. In fact,
he was handcuffed and beaten repeatedly.
That she refused to be photographed in body paint
constitutes an integral goal of the IOA.
He was handcuffed and beaten repeatedly.
There’s no explanation why. An information whiteout
constitutes an integral goal of IOA
while Justice turns to Syria’s secret police.
There’s no explanation why. An information whiteout.
Forebodings of disaster enter into box scores
while Justice turns to Syria’s secret police,
constructing systems to counter asymmetric threats.
Forebodings of disaster enter into box scores
to achieve total information awareness,
constructing systems to counter asymmetric threats.
This bubble had to be burst, and the only way to do it was
to achieve total information awareness
& smash something. The hotel heiress snapped.
-- John Beer
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