A Double Down Digression: The Black American Experience
I'm wrapping up this digression with a double down on the Black American experience which will take a little time to unpack. For most of my life, I've had a lingering question gnawing at me about how I process communication. One night, I seeped into a deep meditation, and I asked my innate wisdom: Where does the pause/brain lock come from when a person asks me a question? Why do I ramble sometimes to get to what I'm trying to say? Why do I see pictures or have a feeling that I can't put to words? Is it because I'm not a good communicator? I sat in silence for a long while. Then an insight came to me: You are an excellent communicator, but you are attempting to communicate in a language that is not your mother tongue. I don't have the words to describe the feeling of loss and anguish that washed over me, followed by an even deeper sense of healing peace. When we have the courage to face the truth, the sting is temporary. What remains is the healing peace. I can feel my languages of origin, but I don't know what they are. Although I have improved over the years, this is why I sometimes pause when I'm asked even the simplest of questions. I need the time to process the feeling or picture and translate it into English. The mess that created the Black American experience is beyond the scope of this blog, but I feel compelled by Spirit to attempt to unpack enough to assist us in understanding the rabbit hole of trauma that we endeavor to heal.
My April 2022 newsletter featured a celebration of a selection of countries who achieved independence from various european colonizers. The image links to an excellent documentary on the history of the scramble for Africa which I highly recommend. If we consider what it means for a country to achieve independence, where does that leave America? If we consider slavery:
☥ The United Kingdom's Slavery Abolition Act became law in 1833.
☥ The United States of America's 13th Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, 32 years
after the colonizer from whom it fought for its own "independence."
So the abolition of slavery is not the same as achieving independence from colonizer rule. If we think back to my experiences with other Black cultures, Nigeria achieved independence from the British in 1960. Jamaica achieved independence from the British in 1962. Haiti achieved independence from the French in 1804. Cuba defeated the Spanish in the War of 1898, but the U.S.A. occupied Cuba until 1902. Where does this leave Black Americans?
Here's a snapshot of the unique layers of the Black experience in America:
☥ Unlike Blacks from the Caribbean or Africa, the speaking of our native language
(including a patois fusion), our ability to use our Indigenous names and practice of
African Spirituality/infusion of it into Christianity was strictly prohibited and literally
beaten out of us. In elementary school, I had to attend "speech class" for three years
because of my slightly southern accent. No one in my class had a speech impediment,
it was me along with the Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and anyone else who had an
accent.
☥ After Red Summer (1921), Black Americans were disenfranchised making it very difficult
for us to re-establish successful businesses. Black Americans were then forced into
ghettos in major cities and further disenfranchised. Many Immigrants, who couldn't set
up businesses in white neighborhoods, were permitted to do so in Black ☥ Immigrant
neighborhoods such as:
☥ Middle Eastern, East Indian Immigrants - convenience stores, etc.
☥ Asian Immigrants - beauty supply, nail salons, grooming/hair care products, etc.
☥ Italian Immigrants - pizza shops , etc. (interestingly enough, the Black guy who gets
kicked out of the pizza shop in Do the Right Thing is the super talented Giancarlo
Esposito, a Black Italian actor).
The video above dives into a few issues that is the other side of the coin of the large potholes I saw in Costa Rica:
☥ When investors/brick-and-mortar businesses come into disenfranchised communities
and take their resources or dollars, where do those dollars go?
☥ Do the business owners employ people from the community?
☥ Are the customers treated with dignity and respect?
☥ Do the Black People in these neighborhoods pay taxes to fund their own
disenfranchisement?
There is a more recent trend of African/Asian Immigrants who can afford to buy and rent property in lower income neighborhoods, which reinforces the fallacy that Black Americans don't have the business savvy to manage their own real estate. In Miami, Little Havana (8th Street) has a plethora of businesses that are owned by and serves the Cuban community. Beginning in the 1950's, I95 was expanded to run through the heart of Overtown (less than four miles from Little Havana) forcing thousands of Black residents to relocate/become homeless. Overtown is now in the process of disappearing as a Black community through gentrification. I also lived in Oakland, CA where gentrification has caused a community of Black People living in tents. I've watched white people ride by in their bicycles, unaffected by the scene and just waiting until the gentrification process is complete (which often ends in the renaming of the city/town).
In order to outsmart our monkey mind, we need to be wise enough to transcend our emotional reactions to the surface issues and dive deep into the ways in which society keeps us divided against each other. Too much damage has been done. As the people who pull rank have also been under the influence of psychosocial manipulation, we need to redirect our energies towards cleaning up the mess. Collective healing begins with humble self-awareness and a commitment to engage in the art of self-correction.
The deconstructionist approach is intended to critique or identify the error and weaknesses found in the typical approaches to education for [Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People] ... ☥ Deconstruction is the necessary first step towards the education of [Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People] who have already been miseducated by a European-American educational system. Since so much of our information (even the language that we use) has come to us through European systems, we must carefully scrutinize the information that we are using. ☥ It is critically necessary to realize that something is wrong with our training before we can even begin to address what is needed for our re-education. When we have been miseducated, we have been implanted with a defense of what has been learned. ☥ It may be possible to raise some occasional questions about the information that we have obtained, but it is extremely difficult for a person to acknowledge a rather comprehensive flaw in their learning experiences. It is like trying to appreciate the concept of color when one is genetically color-blind. ॐ ☥ Dr. Na'im Akbar ☥ From: 'Know Thyself'
We must ask ourselves, where did colorism, self-hatred, sexual perversion, Black-on-Black/Indigenous-on-Indigenous/Immigrant-on-Immigrant crime, etc. come from? Did the tragedy in Rwanda, Somalia, corruption in Nigeria, genital mutilation, hip hop music that disrespects women, etc. occur before or after colonization? If they occurred after colonization then why do we believe in its rhetoric? Anytime that we’ve seen Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People behaving in ways that are contrary to their cultural norms, we find a root cause that is connected to colonization.
Immigrants come into our neighborhoods and see the reality of the conditions without the historical context of Red Summer and the continual assault on the Black family, which runs the gamut, and includes but is not limited to the history of medical experimentation on Black Americans, crack cocaine and the prison industrial complex, cultural appropriation, white sponsored, demoralizing corporate hip-hop music, predatory white women, sex trafficking Black girls, targeting of Black males, funders who write grants that force struggling Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant nonprofits to compete for the same resources, the whitewashing of children's education, colorism, homophobia, the manipulative portrayal of Black People in the media (which is marketed worldwide), the low birth weight/infant mortality rate among Black women regardless of their socioeconomic background, the disconnection/disassociation of middle-class and upper-class Black People who work hard to escape the madness by disappearing into white neighborhoods only to eventually discover a more cunning and subtle form of racism, etc. If we juxtapose this with Black and other Immigrants who want to prove themselves worthy of/to America, we can see how the puzzle pieces of rank pulling, comparison, jealousy, competition, etc. come together. We can also see how this mess creates an ecstatic jungle of branches for the monkey in our mind to swing our way.
Because the issue of predatory white women continues to be ignored and represents an important category of branches for our monkey mind to grab, I'll share a few examples from my own life. I was at the space needle with a Black male family member. I immediately noticed a white woman looking at us. I looked back to say hello (and to encourage her to stop staring) but she looked away. Then she started staring again and continued to do so for the next 90 minutes. white women who behave like this are like a gnat in the face to me, but I refused to let her ruin my day at the space needle so, I simply ignored her. I left my family member to use the restroom, and when I returned the white woman was talking to him. I walked up behind her and she jumped with fright quickly stating, "Oh, oh I was just telling your husband about things to do in Seattle."
Somehow, it never occurred to her to approach us until I left the room. When she found out that the man I was with was not my husband/boyfriend, she quickly lost interest in us, walked away and never looked our way again. The next day, we had brunch at the revolving restaurant where a different white woman stared at us from a few tables away. This time I completely ignored her. When we finished our meal, we were informed that she paid for our brunch. When my family member thanked her, she engaged in conversation just long enough to realize that we were not married and practically walked away from us in mid-sentence.
An older white woman who met me at a workshop engaged me in conversation and then became my client. She was well educated/travelled and had worked on social justice issues for most of her life. After a short time, she said that she wanted to introduce me to a successful Black man with whom she thought I was compatible. They had worked together 25 years ago, so she has known him for most of his adult life. I was definitely not interested in a long distance relationship, but she was a spiritual person, and I was intrigued by how well she sold his qualities of integrity. She came to me every week for some sort of holistic health care (which I was grateful for because I had just started my business), and though I appreciated her enthusiasm, I have firm boundaries with my clients. I found myself constantly redirecting the conversation away from him and towards her health during sessions. She was so cunning, calculated and crafty that it took me a while to realize that she was obsessed with him. Because she was too old for his taste, there was no way for her to stay in his life -- unless she could be connected to him through someone like me. In retrospect, I realize that there were a number of red flags that so gradually and subtly surfaced, that I didn't recognize them as red flags at first.
When I went to her house to drop off a few plants from my herb garden, I was stunned to the point of being dumbfounded. I noticed a Jim Crow caricature in her home. I couldn't respond, but she quickly justified it by saying that she has a collection of them to preserve so that people will remember the Jim Crow era. She then walked me down to the basement where she had at least 100 Jim Crow coon caricatures. From the moment she saw me, I was a target to be used for her benefit, and she was willing to put a lot of skin in the game to get what she wanted. I felt like porky pig turning from a dunce to a dope to a sucker. After the experience was over, I needed a lot of self-care. It took me a while to forgive myself for missing the red flags (with her and with what turned out to be the worst relationship that I've ever had) and recover from the manipulation.
A dear Black male that I've known my entire life showed up with a biracial baby to an event. I was surprised because I had never known him to have any interest in white girls. However, my high school experiences should have indicated the possibility. I met his girlfriend and was immediately disheartened. The next time I saw him, they had another baby, and I talked to the girlfriend about birth control. I was concerned because they were very young and he hadn't gone to college because of the first child. When the third child was born, she nonchalantly told me that birth control didn't work for her. She had the signs of a sexual narcissist, but there wasn't much that I could do from the outside except pray for the light of truth to shine upon him. After the fourth child was born, she started getting restless and left for good before the youngest child turned six.
I watched this Black man raise the children by himself. He told me that she would come around every once in a while which upset/confused the children so he told her to stay away. Whenever the kids saw me they would hop in my lap and lay on me which broke my heart because I knew that they were wanting the type of nurturing that comes from a mother's love. Then, he met a Black woman who helped him comb the children's hair and offer support. I could tell that she loved him, but since he already had the financial responsibility of four children, he had no intention of having any more. He was devastated when the Black woman died unmarried and childless a few years ago of heart disease. Was it because she had an unhealthy diet or did she die of heartache? The mother of his children ditched the responsibility of raising them and is currently with another Black man.
We now have enough context to tell a story that speaks to the heart of a pain that Black women carry in secret - mainly because no one seems to care. My love for Frederick Douglass is complicated. His achievements as an orator, abolitionist and freedom fighter are undisputed and fills me with a sense of pride and deep gratitude. In this post, we will briefly examine a lesser-known story. Anna Murray Douglass was the first wife of Frederick Douglass. Anna was born free. Frederick (at the time his last name was Bailey) was enslaved. They met and fell in love. Anna worked as a domestic to save up money to help Frederick escape to New York. They changed their name to Douglass and moved to Massachusetts. Together, they had five children. Anna supported Frederick in every way including financially supporting the family before his career took off and running the household while her husband travelled for long periods of time, hosting abolitionists and assisting escaping enslaved people through the Underground Railroad. The rest should be history. However, there is a twist to this story that is rarely discussed. I will share a few highlights.
Helen Pitts, a white abolitionist from New York, was hired as a clerk to work in the office of Frederick Douglass. When Frederick travelled, Helen and another white woman named Julia Griffiths accompanied him while his wife Anna stayed home and ran the house. Both white women eventually moved in to the Douglass estate. Julia would occasionally write letters criticizing Anna as a keeper of the Douglass home. In one of her letters she wrote, "Poor Fellow! The quiet and repose he so much needs are very difficult for him to attain in his domestic circle." After the two white women moved into their home, Anna fell into a deep depression. She died of a stroke in 1882, and in 1884, Frederick Douglass married Helen Pitts. In 1895, Frederick Douglass died suddenly of a heart attack. Helen Pitts inherited his 21 room estate. However, his will was eventually ruled invalid due to the lack of legal witnesses.
There are layers and levels to this story that are beyond the scope of this post, but it reminds me of the story of a Black woman I've known since I was a teen. I thought it was unusual for this white woman to constantly be hanging around the Black woman's husband. The Black woman told me that the white woman was harmless. She had been around the family for a long time and worked for him, sometimes for free. The short version of the story is that the Black woman found out about the affair when the white woman got pregnant. At the time, the Black woman was raising two children with her husband and financially supported him while he established his career. Five years after the white woman had the baby, she left the Black man and moved on to another Black man.
The Black man finally saw the truth and deeply regretted his mistake, but it was too late. He realized that he truly loved his wife and tried to reconcile with her, but she moved on. She was eventually and happily married to an Indigenous man of Mexican descent. When I saw them together, I loved the way they treated each other.
I share these stories because they represent some of the invisible assaults on the Black family that will not be a part of a social justice movement, get press or have a nonprofit established to fight for its cause.
These are the invisible branches that the monkey in our mind swings from. The saddest part of telling these stories is the realization that I have so many of them to tell.
Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant Men (BIIM) are easy prey for narcissistic white women because skin color self-consciousness causes an array of complicated social issues (that begin in early childhood), including feeling the pressure to conform to white culture to fit in socially, professionally/to get promotions, etc. which contributes to the subtle chipping away at their self-esteem. These white women (who have been heavily marketed as the standard for beauty) take advantage of this self-consciousness by using sexual attraction to stroke the BIIM's egos and string them along. Their egos blind them to reality which often plays out in social situations with Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant Women.
Whether or not these white women are attractive, compatible or even care about the men is of no consequence. During one of my family reunions, a few of my Black male family members brought white girls as dates. These girls looked like they just fell out of a pig pen, but the Black males were proudly parading them around like they had just won the lotto. None of them seemed to notice these white girls were scoping out the other Black men at our reunion. The elders in my family were so confused by this that some of them pulled me over to the side and asked me if the males were on drugs. I've watched BIIM walk right past drop dead gorgeous, compatible BII Women to talk to, date or marry the homeliest of white women. It's as if the BIIM who fall into these traps have gone blind. The pressure to conform is tantamount to an inception (performed without putting the person to sleep), creating a social norm where the only criteria for choosing a woman is "white" and "a vagina."
I've seen the effects of this inception play out many times in the behaviors of BIIM, especially in business social situations with wealthy white people. I was at an exclusive event that catered to billionaire real estate investors. I could count the number of Black ☥ Immigrant People in attendance on one hand (no Indigenous People were present). I was there to teach Qigong and stress management. During the dinner, I was placed at a large table where a brown-skinned Indian man was sitting. He tensed up when he saw me approaching. By the time I found my seat at the table, he had placed his elbow on the table, leaned into his hand and twisted his body so that he wouldn't have to look at or talk to me.
I felt sorry for him because I realized he had no idea that he was not loved or respected any more than I was at the event. Somehow he hoped that he would earn some points by only socializing with white people and that no one would notice his brown skin which was as dark as mine. On several work occasions, Black men have said to me that we should "break it up" so that white people don't get nervous watching Black People congregate.
I once understood Roxane Gay to say that we will not get our country moving in the right direction until we "fix white women." When I examine the levels of harm caused by narcissistic white women that have directly and indirectly affected me, my family, friends and associates, I have to accept that Roxane's statement reflects a much deeper and systemic set of social problems that have emerged from colonization and seems to get progressively worse with each generation. I've personally experienced white women aggressively attempting to corrupt my thoughts and actions in virtually every area of my life.
These predatory behaviors continue because our society rarely holds white women accountable for engaging in sexual narcissism or even rape, as was demonstrated in the movie 40 Days And 40 Nights. In that movie, a white man was raped and the movie never called it out. We live in a society that glorifies the insolent behavior of white women, promotes narcissism and shames, silences or targets those who speak up about it. If predatory white women never receive feedback about their behavior, what opportunity would they have to heal so that they could stop creating and perpetuating harm?
A confident Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant man knows himself, faces his fears, is focused on fulfilling his potential, goes for the woman he wants and is excited by her confidence ☥ intelligence. That's the man/mate we love ☥ pray for and they are an endangered species. As an example, I once dated a Black male scientist who graduated Summa Cum Laude from Carnegie Mellon and was still intimidated by my intelligence. I noticed that he kept mentioning that I was smart as if he was offended that I could match his intelligence even though I didn't go to an ivy league school and knew very little about his field of expertise. He gave me a refresher course on chess (I had only played once as a child) and was highly upset when I almost beat him during our first and only game. Our relationship fell apart shortly thereafter. The whole situation was completely baffling, because I was not competing with him. I was just trying to learn. Relationships are not about competition, they are about ☯. Not wanting anyone to be as smart as/smarter than you is a tell-tale sign of fear, insecurity and unresolved trauma. I used to get upset when I saw Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant men with white women. However, because white women target BIIM who are trying to prove themselves worthy by acquiescing to white social norms, they were helping me to more easily identify which men were using a made up perception of status to present themselves as a confident ☥ self-assured man without doing the real work of unapologetically going for what he wants while being connected to the truest part of himself.
Why We Fight Each Other
Although I covered some of the emotional triggers that fuel this topic in the How To Demystify ☥ Heal Our Emotions blog, there are underlying root causes important enough to include in this digression. Fighting each other can include but is not limited to Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People who:
☥ Commit crimes against each other
☥ Publicly defame each other
☥ Deceive/hustle each other for our financial benefit
☥ Disrespect each other publicly or through hurtful private actions
☥ Lie to/manipulate each other
Let's take a deeper dive into the now infamous Will Smith slap of Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars. What makes this event so troubling is our public perception of Will Smith as the good guy and our deep love for both celebrities. However, as I mention in my 411 On Mental Health interview,
unless we cultivate and utilize our mental health self-care tools, an unforeseen situation could cause anyone at anytime to be capable of anything.
Upon review of the video, I noticed a passive-aggressive energetic signature underneath Will's smile at the time that Chris Rock delivered the joke about Jada. Passive-aggressive behavior has historically been one of the few ways that Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People could resist the actions of their colonizers without being beaten, jailed or killed. One of the side effects of this behavior is suppressed anxiety which most people mistakenly think that they can keep in check. Unfortunately, Chris Rock's joke seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back for Will Smith. I've watched various people attempt to assassinate Will Smith's character and polarize our community, but we all have a dark side. I'm not excusing his behavior or ignoring the fact that the restorative process needs to happen. I'm asking us to see ourselves in that behavior as a cautionary tale. When Will slapped Chris, I felt like he slapped me, and that sting hit me so hard that my Kamitian (Ancient Egyptian) ancestors felt it. I’m still processing the event which is why I strongly assert that we stay out of the situation ☥ send love ☥ light their way ☥ give our two brothas time to process ☥ heal ☥ work it through in their own time. Imagine how hard it is to heal with the press in your face/instigating the public. My job is to affirm a space of love ☥ healing for my brothas. I invite you to check out the video below to learn more about our dark side.
Self-Awareness → Healing
It is imperative that we become more self-aware so that we can slow down long enough to connect with our innate intelligence when we feel emotionally triggered and choose a response that serves our highest good.
This is a skill that requires a daily self-care practice. For example, reading this blog and understanding it intellectually will not prevent self-sabotaging behaviors. However, if we study, interact with this blog and participate in the healing exercises as a part of our self-care routine, we will become more self-aware and prevent self-sabotage.
Without presuming to know Will's real story (which is truly none of our business), let's dive a bit deeper into the root causes of his emotional reaction to help us understand why we fight each other.
Birth Of A Nation, the first non-serial movie that was made in America, was about the Ku Klux Klan riding into town to save a helpless white woman from a Black male rapist (portrayed by a white male actor wearing makeup). It was based on a book called The Clansman, which I read in college. Both the book and the movie were passive-aggressive attempts for white men to maintain their double standards of behavior, dissuade miscegenation, promote racial segregation and attempt to control the behavior of white women by flipping their narrative through the media. When it was created, there was never an intention for Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People to be a part of the motion picture industry. The level of resistance that Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People face in this industry is particularly high because media is the most powerful form of influence over the public's perception. Without daily self-care, what a celebrity has to go through in order to achieve and maintain the status of someone like Will Smith is tantamount to living in a pressure cooker.
Add to that the public scrutiny of his personal life and we have an emotional time bomb that could go off at any moment. Will Smith' s lack of self-care left him vulnerable to self-sabotage of the worst kind for his career. Furthermore, it is a reflection of embedded social programming, inherited from slavery and colonization, that trains us to knee-jerk react with violence. Colonizers love to see us fighting because it distracts us from recognizing ☥ transcending the programming that set up the dynamics.
What we don't talk about is the reason why this incident would have never happened if Jim Carrey told the joke.
Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People fight and hurt each other because we can do so with less or sometimes no repercussions. It is as if we a have a subconscious desire for others to know that we are in pain, so we make them the buffer for our suffering through our substandard behavior.
It is a deep-seated passive-aggressive cry for help from our community when we don't know how to heal. Our community tends to absorb each other's pain, because we can't stand watching one of us lose all that they've worked to achieve. But this is not the way to heal our communities and enable them to thrive. There is a big difference between restorative healing, in which we speak and hold ourselves accountable to correction, and public fighting, which publicizes our unresolved trauma. Colonizers love when we fight each other in public because it fuels their emotional addiction to pitting us against each other and provides them with an excuse to intervene/present themselves as superior or “the solution.” A suggested way forward would be for Will Smith and Chris Rock to take some time to process and heal their emotions, and then engage in restorative practices to heal their relationship with each other privately. If Will takes the time to connect with his innate wisdom, he'll receive empowering solutions to guide his next steps. Attempting to resolve the issue publicly is a reflection that their actions may be driven by public perception/pressure instead of their inner wisdom and that inner healing/self-care has not yet occurred. Let's send positive energy their way, step back from judgment, allow a long time (it could take years) to pass for healing ☥ growth to take place and claim that the highest good will emerge for everyone ☥☥☥ Let this situation also serve as a wake up call for us to take the healing of our minds ☥ emotions seriously.
Restorative Questions From The International Institute For Restorative Practices (©2016 IIRP Graduate School)
When we feel that harm was done, IIRP trains us to ask these questions and give the person who has caused harm the opportunity to respond without interruptions:
☥ What happened?
☥ What were you thinking of at the time?
☥ What have you thought about since?
☥ Who has been affected by what you have done? In what way?
☥ What do you think you need to do to make things right?
IIRP offers the following restorative questions to help those who have been harmed by the behavior of others:
☥ What did you think when you realized what happened?
☥ What impact has this incident had on you and others?
☥ What has been the hardest thing for you?
☥ What do you think needs to happen to make things right?
Check out the video above to learn more about IIRP.
After I graduated from college, I was dismayed by the lack of opportunities in the television industry. I interned for PBS and they offered me a job, but it was part-time and with a low salary. I LOVED working as a PBS TV Producer, but I had a sick family member that needed help and my family continued to struggle financially. I was torn between doing what I loved, and paying the bills. I felt like pursuing my dreams, but was overwhelmed with feelings of guilt over familial responsibility. It was at this point that one of my best college buddies, who was in therapy for a similar issue, introduced me to the concept of co-dependency. He gave me a book that shook my foundation because I had studied psychology for so long and couldn't believe that I missed it. He helped me to recognize a blind spot that had been flying under my radar. It was as if I were a fish that had been swimming in a pool of co-dependency my entire life. I wasn't sure how I would find my way back to the ocean, but I knew that I wouldn't find peace until I cultivated the courage to make the journey.
The Jealousy Monkey ☥ A Prelude To Invisible Ways Of Fighting Each Other
One of my early mentors was an Italian woman and the mother of another one of my college buddies. We became fast friends during the planning of his wedding, and she took an interest in helping me to fulfill my potential. She found an opportunity at a health insurance company that included video production as part of the job description. This was the beginning of my entrance into the insurance world and of extreme workaholism. My boss was a very accomplished Black woman who put me in charge of a team of six field reps. However, my department had eight major functions and four of the reps were constantly on the road. I received no training or mentorship and recognized immediately that one member of my team needed to be terminated. It was a hellacious welcome to the corporate world, but I discovered that I was a natural born leader. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I worked, my talents were not appreciated - for reasons that shocked me.
In addition to my boss, there were two other directors. One was a white woman, and the other was a Jamaican Black woman, who was exceptionally beautiful. I admired all three women, who were incredibly accomplished. They had amazing jobs and picture-perfect families. I was the rookie with no experience, but I managed to captivate the entire office with my personality. I was humble, about the work, had no ego in the game and no time for pettiness which earned everyone's respect and drove the three directors insane with jealousy. Their monkey minds had run amok and driven them into their dark side. Because I was responsible for training and marketing, I had to develop close relationships with everyone in the department - and they preferred working with me over their supervisors. The directors did everything they could to sabotage my work and progress. I felt like I was back in high school. They were frustrated because they couldn't turn anyone against me, and I leaped over the obstacles that they threw my way. The workload was incredulous and after 21 months of their immaturity and games, I was burned out. I learned two important things about myself:
☥ I don't do petty office gossip.
☥ I need a job where I can work from home.
A white man approached me at an event and recruited me to work with his insurance brokerage. They needed a Black person to service the Black community. All their reps were white except for me and a Latinx male from South America who managed the Latinx communities. Unlike my previous job, these owners trained and mentored me and even supported my desire to work from home. I enjoyed being a remote worker and quickly rose to be the #2 rep in the organization. I learned so much at that job, particularly about the art of manipulation to make a sale. I couldn’t understand why there was such a focus on manipulating the customer, because I easily closed deals by listening, being honest and focusing on meeting the needs of the community. I ignored the manipulation part, writing the sales techniques off as a "white thing."
In retrospect, I made the connection between slavery being the business that built America and the sales techniques used by marketers to coerce the public into adhering to the social norms that we have today.
It wasn’t until I resigned to relocate to New Mexico, that I realized that the owners were skimming off the top. My last check came directly to me from the insurance company instead of the brokerage. I was stunned to see the amount of money I was supposed to receive. The owners attempted to get me to send the money back to them, but they abruptly stopped pursuing me when I informed them that I verified the amount with the insurance company. I was floored. How much money did they take from me and the other reps? This experience inspired me to dive into the root causes of sabotage in business and eventually led to the creation of the Transformational Leadership From The Inside Out video, blog and journal series. This type of professional sabotage tends to play out in more invisible ways within Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant communities. Let’s take a look at a few examples.
Invisible Ways That We Fight Each Other
☥ Blocking/sabotaging each other’s success - The cultivation of trust is essential for
Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant communities to thrive, but colonization has made it
difficult for us to trust each other. We spend our time playing “tit for tat” (which
continues cycles of abuse) instead of eliminating the root causes and establishing
benchmarks for trust for personal and professional relationships. Through self-
discipline/awareness and strict adherence to setting ☥ enforcing healthy boundaries,
we can train ourselves to trust, and we can train others to be trusted.
☥ Fighting to fight instead of fighting to win - I first heard this term from a Black male
youth leader in Detroit, and I thought it was the greatest insight that came out of the
convening. I once heard a CEO of a Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant nonprofit
organization say, “If we do our jobs correctly, we’ll be out of a job.” I am still processing
and healing from hearing such a disempowering comment from a brilliant “Phillis
Wheatley” leader, who has the power to create change in Black ☥ Indigenous ☥
Immigrant communities, but is motivated by preserving their career and social status.
Instead of fighting to fight or fighting to win, we can redirect the monkey in our mind
away from scarcity by focusing our efforts on co-creating strategies grounded in
abundance so that we can empower and serve the highest good of our communities.
☥ Organizations established to garner resources to market the problem instead of
providing solutions - Some of these businesses can raise exorbitant amounts of
money (which is often spent on luxurious fundraisers) to promote the illusion of a
commitment to social responsibility and fuel their egos, which is never satisfied. The
leaders are willing to do whatever is necessary to protect their social standing, even at
the expense of the people they are attempting to serve. This includes capitalizing on
and commissioning research studies that document and promote failure in Black ☥
Indigenous ☥ Immigrant communities.
The invisible ways that we fight each other can be so deeply embedded in our psyche that it often takes concentrated devotion to self-care to awaken, heal and break free from its control over our thoughts and behaviors. The concentrated devotion is necessary because we are unaware that we have become emotionally addicted to a temporary jolt of satisfaction that comes from secretly feeling as if we are better/smarter/more successful than someone else. The jolt is a trap. Fulfillment that no one can take from us comes from tapping in to the truest part of ourselves, not from one-upping someone else. Though it is beyond diabolical to study the psyche of Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People to subconsciously turn us against each other, self-awareness offers us an unstoppable counterstrategy. The way out of this cycle of manipulation and abuse is to become increasingly more self-aware so that we can identify and heal from our emotional addictions.
In order for Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People to recover from hundreds of years of colonization, racism and oppression, we must learn how to demystify ☥ heal our emotions so that we can break this cycle of abusing each other. This is another invisible set of branches that the monkey in our mind swings from, and it is particularly damaging because it often does the work of colonization without the presence of a colonizer.
So now we can see some of the root causes that would give rise to a Black male (who is a 20th generation African in America) feeling insulted for being mistaken for an African. I can only imagine how absurd this must seem to the energy that created all of us. We are the products of an exquisite and masterful self-loathing divide and conquer strategy that continues to create and perpetuate harm globally. What a mess indeed. It's no wonder that the monkey in our mind is a howler. That said, there were a few a shining stars at my high school. One such star was a Latinx male. We used to work together and would always take our breaks at the same time to get into philosophical debates. His favorite line was, white people are sneaky and they do things to pit us against each other, but we have to be smarter than that. Us Blacks and Puerto Ricans, we have to stick together!
He was the first person that I talked to who was able to see through the layers of social conditioning. I initially understood what he was saying superficially and even thought he was overzealous, because in my early childhood neighborhoods, we did stick together. But when I moved to Miami, I realized just how insightful he was.
As it turns out, the South presents a more honest and visibly recognizable form of racism.
What is art of self-correction, and how do we put it into daily practice? In Part III, we'll learn how release the "trash" in our mind and other empowering strategies for outsmarting our monkey mind.
Copy/Paste Version Of A Full Citation Example:
Hubbard, P. S. (2020, September 27). How To Outsmart Our Monkey Mind ☥ Part II. PHYLLISHUBBARD.COM. <https://www.phyllishubbard.com/post/how-to-outsmart-our-monkey-mind-part-ii>
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