A Post for Black Men Who Need To Cry

My brothas....

We've been fooled into believing that we should take the weight of the world on our shoulders without grief...

We had to endure the raping or our women during and after slavery and the dismemberment of our families and simply stand by and say nothing...

Jim Crow made us submit publicy to the constant humiliation of time and again having our manhood stripped away from us..Whether we were 10 or 100 we were always a "boy."

Civil Rights came and a new tomorrow was promised...We went from the plantation to corporate America only to find out that racism disguises itself quite effectively...

Those of us who haven't been as fortunate to make it up the ladder still have to endure the awkward stares if we walk into the wrong store...or the clutched purses of white women who simultaneously LOVE your stereotypical mandingo-ness but FEAR you because though you have a BIG BLACK DICK your BLACKNESS makes you predisposed toward the criminal element...

And when we get home from wherever life has lead us that day...battered and bruised AGAIN we simply lay our heads on our pillows, suck it up, and get back out there...

We've been taught that being emotional is a sign of weakness and detrimental to our survival...So after we run out of cheeks to turn we take all of our bottled up rage and unleash it on ourselves...our wives...our boyfriends...our children...our communities...When perhaps all we needed to do for a moment was stop and cry...

Weep for yourself...For all the times you wished that SOMEONE had the compassion and the heart to weep for you...

Weep for every cab that passed you as if you were invisibile..Weep for every person that said you COULD NOT, SHOULD NOT, and WOULD NOT be who are...Weep for every time your anger has been dismissed as simply an unfounded culturally ill-formed complaint...Weep for every mother who's had to see her son or sons destroyed by that anger...Weep for every son, father, brother, uncle, nephew, grandfather, godfather, and step-son who HAS been destroyed by this anger...

Brothas...if we don't cry for anything else...we must CRY to save our own lives..

In many of us lies a tearstorm...if we don't find ways to let the grief go it will ultimately destroy us...

Without this release I truly believe there can be NO peace...

PEACEloveandeternity...

Q