Universally Speaking
Rahim Islam
Rahim Islam is a National Speaker and Writer, Convener of Philadelphia Community of Leaders, and President/CEO of Universal Companies, a community development and education management company headquartered in Philadelphia, PA. Follow Rahim Islam on FaceBook(Rahim Islam) & Twitter (@RahimIslamUC)
The physical environment of open and green spaces is absent or inadequate; well-groomed front yards and clean streets; functioning traffic and night lights, functional and usable recreation facilities and parks; high level retail and commercial corridors; increased employment opportunities for the neighborhood residents; access to healthy food and a health delivery system; high levels of arts and other community amenities; partnership with the police and fire departments to support the feeling of safety; high crime levels that infiltrate poor neighborhoods; low-to-no dependence on public assistance and public housing; and quality educational opportunities starting from pre-school thru post-high school.
All of these issues have traumatic ramifications on children living in poverty.
While the physical environmental trauma is off the chart, what takes place in these homes is more devastating to our children, including but not limited to: Discipline for many children equates to physical abuse (beating our children is commonplace in our community); sexual abuse – because there are so many “step” fathers around our children, we have a disproportionate level of children being sexually molested; ongoing and positive communication with our children, especially our babies (children need to know that they are loved, which must be communicated frequently); children with access to adult and pornographic content on television (children who are exposed to this type are traumatized and are more damaged going forward); children with parents in prison some for very long stays (visiting or not visiting the father can be a traumatic experience); use of alcohol and drugs even if its so-called “recreational” which I believe is also detrimental to our children (the trauma of children seeing this use and the ramifications of that use that they must navigate); and the new phenomenon of “sibling” management.
I refer to sibling management as the ability of our children to manage the dysfunction of families that have children with different fathers, but the same mother and often different last names, and the need to navigate and attempt to build upon the relationships between the children of these men (fathers).
In many of these families, I’ve seen young mothers with 3-4 children and the same number of fathers, and many of these homes remain fatherless.
Unfortunately, with many of these mothers being so young, the likelihood that they would become pregnant again is high unless she has had a medical procedure that would prevent her from having more children (so this problem is likely to become more complicated).
Many children are lost in this pyramid of dysfunction.
A whole host of abuses take place in these type of environments with many children suffering from lost identity and emotional abandonment.
How does a child manage the injustice that takes place with the father of one sibling doing more for his child than the other?
How does the child manage the transfer of love that was once with the sibling’s father but is now towards another man (child or no child)?
How do children manage the relationship between each other when it is clear that their differences are sometimes magnified?
Different discipline strategies for different children; different educational expectations based on the family lineage of the siblings; children that are sick and/or diagnosed with mental and physical disorders; these and many other issues challenge families under so-called “normal” circumstances but these issues are extreme in families with high levels of poverty and siblings from different fathers.
This issue is likely to continue because with the state of “manhood” and “male hood” of our Black men.
How many men can truly handle this situation as the new father?
How many men can, not only emotionally and financially, take care of their own children?
How many have the capacity to take care of other children?
How many men can adequately manage this situation?
If you take a mother with four children with four fathers, that man will be challenged on multiple levels, starting with many of these mothers not seeing or benefiting from functional relationships with men. Their ability to support a man as a woman has been compromised.
This is further challenged by the inability of our men also not seeing or benefiting from functional relationships with women.
So a man who inherits this type of family is very unlikely to be successful. Guess what?
Who loses and who continues to lose, our children.
After the emotion and newness of a relationship wears off, the real work begins and how many men are really prepared for such responsibility?
Many children are lost in this pyramid of dysfunction. Our children are damaged during these experiments and are also damaged when they dissolve. A whole host of abuses take place in these type of environments with many children suffering from lost identity and emotional abandonment.
With so many families and their siblings having different fathers, the management of this for children is extremely traumatizing depending on the mental and social stability of the adults involved (what I’ve seen and heard is that some of the most challenging and complex behavior is exhibited during this process).
While all of the issues referenced above are extremely traumatizing to our children, our boys are impacted more mainly because our boys are taught to “suck it up”and “get over it” because they’re not to demonstrate any emotions.
The Black male’s “manhood” is constantly being challenged by the fear exhibited by the White controlled establishment due mainly to our history in this country.
To say that history has been a hostile existence is a very big understatement. During the enslavement of our ancestors, our people suffered tremendously. The torture, while pronounced and horrific, our men endured while being targeted and methodically whipped, beaten, hung, and murdered, sometimes as entertainment, is incomprehensible.
I cannot begin to describe the atrocities inflicted on Black men by White slave-owners.
Why do you think that race relations remain so fragile today?
The Black male is feared by White men, because like the children of our ancestors, the children of the slave-owners were also affected by the American institution of slavery (there are psychological scars that White people inherited, one is fear of Black male).
That deep-rooted fear of the Black male comes from inheriting the guilt of what their ancestors did to our ancestors. “Oh here he goes again with that slavery talk.” — yes, because IT ABSOLUTELY MATTERS.
I’ve tried to connect our history in this country with our current levels of poverty and also our severe levels of psychological hurt. Who and what caused the hurt?
What was the motivation and/or justification for this treatment that is now in our DNA? I say that what happened to us can only be describe by a maniacal level of fear coupled with hate and jealousy, while others say it was just an economic issue.
To say it’s just economic, is to attempt to justify this period and literally takes a whole people off the hook (responsibility) and it becomes a distraction masks the real issues and motivations for the capture, permanent enslavement, torture and killing of our ancestors.
All my adult life I’ve been hearing about achieving better race relations in America.
It’s nonsense and won’t happen because it will require the White man to acknowledge his White privilege that he has acquired through his belief in White supremacy.
Where did this hate of the Black male come from? It can be found in almost every American institution.
For decades, it was communicated and taught that the Black man isn’t wholly human (he might look human but he’s an animal because he has no soul).
You can whip him, beat him, torture him, and you can even kill him, but you want to avoid this because he is valuable property. There was no sin applied to the slave owners because our ancestors were considered nothing more than chattel.
This was supported by the one of the biggest institutions in America, Christianity. During that period and even today, Christianity portrays God as a White man, his son a White man, and everything in heaven as White – the biggest trick every played – but equally portrayed the Black man as inept and a curse of the devil therefore worthy of a deep-seated hate. Oh I forgot, even though our ancestors lived under these conditions for more than 300 years, this shouldn’t have any impact on their children today!
The HATE is just as alive today as it was then; it just looks different and it’s just as traumatic to Black males.
Black men and Black boys feel this hate like the heat on a hot day and because it’s not discussed and suppressed, the trauma that the Black male experiences is absolutely hostile.
Another American institution which has been extremely hostile to the black male is mass media.
The Black male is portrayed as being super strong with a super strong sexual appetite, lazy, shiftless, not trustworthy and dangerous.
American media continues to portray the Black male in the most negative way possible, which has created a heighten sense of fear of the black man.
Coupled with the historical treatment of blacks, this psychology is toxic and the fear has not disappeared but grown and morphed from one generation to another.
Just think for a minute: If you caused tremendous harm against someone and you never even acknowledged it let alone made any attempt to repair it, wouldn’t you be in a constant state of fear?
I remember seeing someone that I beat up when we were children and hoping that he had forgotten or at least forgiven me (I felt some kind of way. I experienced a little fear).
How many examples do you need to see? Blood was spilled to end slavery in America but that wasn’t enough because those that had the power to implement their hatred reinvented chattel slavery through economic slavery so that many of our ancestors suffered through the accumulation of debt (sharecropping) and outright physical terror (KKK), Jim Crow laws and segregation.
Did those who practiced these brutalities against our ancestors become suddenly healed?
Absolutely not! If they had, then why was every right that our ancestors fought for met with resistance, anger and extreme hatred from the white community?
How could our ancestors live under these extreme conditions for nearly 300 years without it having an effect on their descendant? The FEAR is just as alive today as it was then it just looks different and it’s just as traumatic on Black males and Black boys.
There have been ongoing attacks against Black men in the media.
I don’t know what your thoughts are but when a Black man is on the wrong side of a legal issue, he is castigated for months by the media.
The media acts like a pit-bull on a bone and the Black man is the bone.
I don’t know what happened with Bill Cosby, I just feel the coverage is just over the top.
Many of his projects, being considered, have been canceled and I even heard that they were contemplating charging the White-owned publisher with criminal charges for failing to put any negative stories in Bill Cosby’s autobiography (you know the venom is extreme when they go after White people who benefited from a Black person).
Look at the Ray Rice situation too. Again, I’m not condoning the physical abuse that he caused his wife, but I have never seen such a national outcry and they don’t want to see this family survive (the wife has pledged to stay with her husband).
They want to absolutely destroy this man! What happened to the concept of repentance and correction for a big mistake made by a young person with death being the unofficial penalty?
I wouldn’t be surprised if the parents of Ray Rice weren’t brought up on criminal charges for birthing him.
How about Marion Barry? When he died, we were privy to hundreds of hours of non-stop castigation of this man and his character.
Smoking crack notwithstanding, this man was a hero for Black people in Washington, D.C., but the media wanted to make sure that his heroism be buried with him and that those that don’t know and are a product of the media’s B.S. would believe this slander.
Anybody that has done crack and watched the tape of Marion Barry taking a hit of a crack pipe, knows that that man was no crack addict and a victim of a some sort of sting, orchestrated by a woman and very poor judgment. Marion Barry, was a true Black man. Why? He proved his commitment to our people by gaining office and doing something for our people. He loved our people and built a life of service to our people.
That’s why the people elected him even after his troubles. Our people are no fools.
They knew the real Marion Barry and I can say that I loved that man and his fearless leadership which is what the hateful media was attacking.
The legacy of slavery is the emasculation of the Black man especially if the people remotely give him “leadership” status.
Malcom X stated that the American media institution is the most powerful weapon on earth. Why?
Because the media has the power to make a wrong thing right and a right thing wrong.
I remember the Michal Vick situation and how over the top the punishment he received was for dog fighting.
I don’t believe in dog fighting, but this situation pricked a nerve in the White community and they retaliated.
With all of the killing of unarmed black boys by police officers, where is the human concern?
It proves that White America still believes that dogs are more important than black men.
The whole thing was a travesty. The recent Ferguson situation speaks to this directly.
If you believe the armed police officer’s testimony, he feared for his life by the unarmed teenager and therefore he shot twelve times ultimately hitting him ten times.
I listen to many of the talk shows and many of the Black pundits couldn’t wrap their minds around this and called the testimony lies.
Under normal circumstances, I guess that would be true.
The type of fear of Black men he inherited, coupled with what he has learned, is lethal — at least for Black men.
What is really going on here brothers and sisters? What’s really at play with these examples?
This is clearly about the emasculation of not only those individuals, but the emasculation of the Black male and the attack against Black leadership.
These things and more continue to traumatize the Black community and specifically the Black male.
This traumatization is REAL AND PERCEIVABLE.
