It continues to amaze me just how outdated and selfish the Black community can be at times. As a strong, black man I’ve watched as so many of us seem to make the same types of mistakes that can be corrected by community help, but it rarely seems to occur. Learning lessons from the past and passing that knowledge on to the future is critical element of community growth that lacks in our community far too often. While there are efforts to ensure that young up and comers have this knowledge, far too often it’s substituted for street knowledge and culture, that while critical for understanding of history of self, is not as relevant as knowing the tools needed for a successful life. And there aren’t enough corners where the messages of how to survive and thrive are being embraced and passed down either.

I was watching a recent Facebook story where someone was gloating about how much they love their young nieces and nephews because they were all in the living room dancing and rapping lyrics to trashy rap songs. Why would you be proud of kids who aren’t even able to fully understand basic life but can flaunt and behave in gutter, street like behavior. Wearing their clothes like they street thugs instead of being presentable. Please tell me what fuckin lesson is being learned by this behavior? Some people may say, aww it’s harmless and innocent they’re just young. And there belies the stupidity and ignorance of the community. Where do you think lessons and impressions and personality is built in us. When we are young is when we are the most impressionable and spongelike. Knowing your culture and the history of where you come from is fine but be proud of them because they can correctly recite their alphabets, spell their names, do basic mathematics and reading comprehension.

A community that doesn’t invest enough in its young is a community that will suffer. Our community is so fractured from past pains, scars and divisions that today’s leaders are being put behind an 8-ball before they can get out the gates. I appreciate those who do the work to ensure that the next generation has more than the current. That is the way it’s supposed to be. Learn lessons and pass them forward. Teach those who don’t know what you do know so they can carry the baton once your time is up. Not learn what you know, make yourself successful then sit on it and let that wisdom die with you. Imprint on kids the importance of knowledge and understanding. Allow them to seek and obtain credible, healthy knowledge from those who will protect and grow them. Expose them to the ugly truths of life, while also giving them the talent and mental acuity necessary to combat these nasty realities.

What typically happens is procrastination and self-preservation over progression and evolution. How many parents really take time to explain life fundamentals to their children once they start to reach an age of understanding? Where do you see parents showing kids how to handle money and discussing the importance of credit, negotiation, budgeting and balance? It’s not enough to just let the teachers teach them these lessons. The reinforcement should come from home, and if not home then the community. Sowing back into the community could be financial, if you are blessed to do so, it can also be with your time and energy. It’s free to give back to the community. Organize free workshops for financial literacy. Provide free life counseling on managing money, expectations and influence. Talk about your struggles and successes with folks and do it with love and honesty and humility. Things that cost you nothing and can help generations of people.

I was watching Jennifer Lewis in a recent interview, and she said we have to start with love. I would amend that slightly to say we need to lead with love. When you do things from the kindness of your heart because it makes you feel good, and because you want to enrich someone else, it lands with the intended punch. When we as a community can love each other despite the skin tone, wealth gap, and education gap we are better as a collective. It disappoints me to see so many of us in conflict with each other because of the foolish and outlandish divides. We don’t collaborate enough, and we fail to do sufficient outreach. We are so strong minded in our belief of things we won’t accept views and perspectives that are healthy and natural alternatives. Stand on your beliefs always yet be open to receiving another view that has just as much logical reality as yours. More than one thing can be true at a time, and we keep missing that point.

African communities throughout history had been known for fierce loyalty and tribalism to be sure, but they were also known for community and providing for the whole and less fortunate as well. There was always the desire for growth, success and advancement, yet there was also the need to remember from where you came and promote the village not just yourself. In Black culture we’ve been so fixated on “equality” that we lose sight of the community and the ties that bind. We are so short sighted on financial stability, that lose track of the emotional, mental stability that is also needed. Don’t just teach financial literacy, teach mental, emotional, spiritual literacy. Teach how to manage relationships and how to build them. Display the ability to find common ground amongst differences. Community helps to provide that sense of belonging and acceptance. It promotes healthy, strong bonds. We need to embrace all of these things and once we do, maybe we can heal and truly reach the promise that King, Malcolm and others talked about.

Love and respect

Being mistreated, talked about, abused and ashamed can have a lasting effect on you as a person. It affects your mental health, your emotional well-being, and your physical fitness. So many times, when you struggle with your self-esteem it doesn’t take too much to throw you off. Whether it be family, or friends, lovers or just fuck buddies, and even the occasional opp that just wants to see you doing bad, the words, and actions of others can impact how you feel and see yourself. Gathering that understanding that you are who you are, and that you are grade A quality is something that’s either instilled in your early on, or you learn it for yourself through time, trials, and bullshit that happens. For me, it was the combination of it all that helped me get to the point of today.

The honest truth about me is that I’ve struggled with my self-confidence for years. Regardless of how many times I’ve been told I’m attractive, or my body looks good, I am much more easily rattled by the insults, or the putdowns than I am reassured by the compliments. The actions of people mentally, emotionally, or physically abusing me have left scars and damage that is still being healed. I didn’t receive enough support and reassurance earlier in my youth and young adulthood to properly know how to disregard and ignore the fuck people. I think, more than anything, the fact it came from those who were supposed to be my biggest support, lovers, family and even close friends, it stings a lot more. It hovers over you even longer, because you didn’t that the friendly fire would come.

As time passes and I’ve truly had time to learn myself more, I don’t feel the need to prove myself to anyone anymore. Yes, I get nerves and have thoughts creep into my mind about my qualifications for things in my life, be it personal or professional. Most times, I reassure myself that I am that guy. The more I feel reassured within myself, and no lie, the more those I care about give my flowers, the more I evolve into that man I know that I’ve always been. It’s taken a lot of tears and dark days to get to this point. I used to think that in order to be seen as legit and A1, you had to have it all together. Job, car, place, money, looks. As I’ve evolved in life, having a combination of those things are more than enough. The truth is that when you start with you and you grinding on your come up, everything else is always magnified in your favor. You can simply do nothing at all, and it will be enough because what you’re currently doing is plenty. Catch that if you understand.

The crazy thing is even in my evolution I still feel the nerves and have the shreds of doubt linger in my mind. I still question myself at times, wondering if I’m really good enough for some of the interactions I have and for some of the accomplishments that I achieve. I at times struggle accepting my flowers, because I fear the other shoe dropping, but I’ll talk in conversation about how it’s the other shoe that drops, it’s just reality and the challenges that comes along. Yet, I listen to others as we talk, and I marvel at how resolute they are within themselves. I’m amazed at how grounded they are in themselves, how the belief in who they are, and their character overpowers the negativity and critiques that come at them. Younger, older, same age grouping, that determined belief in themselves is something that I still yearn too fully master. Not on the part-time basis that I do now, but on a full-time level that I see others on. I am believer though, that when you surround yourself with that kind of company, if you are in tune with energy and the vibes, it can’t help but to rub off on you.

My story of evolution is one that I’m sure is familiar to many. You go through things, you learn shit, you fail, you succeed and all the while you’re building yourself. Believing in yourself will always start with you, but truly it begins with those who nurture you and start to instill those things inside you. Someone recently told me; they don’t care what anyone says about them that’s negative. They know who they are and what they are, and that’s all that matters. As long as they know the truth. It doesn’t hurt that physically they fit what almost anyone looks for in a guy, personality wise, they have the ideal mix of outgoing and fun, and reserved and quiet. Hearing that they like the way I move, made me smile, offered reassurance of the changes I’ve gone thru and yet, I was more satisfied with myself because the compliment came from me doing nothing at all, just being who I am, which is more than enough.

So many people don’t really understand that it means to have to survive being Black. More than that, being Black and gay, or Black and trans. Now this is not to minimize the plight of White people, because there are groups of Whites who struggle as well, but this is America and Black survival is so complex and stressful that adding the additional complexity of being gay makes it ten-fold more difficult. Most people don’t realize that once most Black men or women come out to their families they are disowned in many ways. Sometimes mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents disown them, leaving them to fight for survival on their own. Often times at ages that most of us are not really prepared to be out here on our own in this world, and you wonder why there are so many gay and trans men and women who are having sex for money. Often times it becomes an early means of survival that can become addicting if you have the right look, a big dick or a fat ass.

The truth of the matter is that we do what we have to do in order to survive because you never know who you can really trust. You don’t know who will help you because they have a genuine good spirit, versus someone who helps you because they now have power in some rights over you, they can get something out of you because they helped you. And if you’re thinking that I’m being negative or pessimistic, live in this community and you will understand that it happens more often than not. That’s a part of what causes so much distrust among the gay community. So many niggas prey on vulnerable and unexperienced gay, lesbian and trans people to the point that everyone looks sideways at each other, until proven otherwise.

I know that life and while I’m not proud of the things that I had to do, I did them in order to survive. I’ve slept with guys so I could have a roof over my head to sleep under, because I was living out of my car for a period of time. I’ve slept with men for money in order to get things that I needed. I entertained the idea of having a sugar daddy, but I could never bring myself to do it because, I didn’t want to feel like I was owned by someone else. There were many times I slept with a guy and had a fuckuationship because I needed to secure a safe place to sleep. And I’ve this same story so many times from other people I’ve talked to. I had one friend tell me that he was put out of his momma’s house when he was 18 because the man she married didn’t approve his lifestyle. Do you understand what that does mentally and emotionally to us? To tell your child you have to get out of my house because some basic ass man said they can’t accept who you are. You put a man over your own blood.

And to those parents who put their kids out of their house because of the bible, you deserve to have your ass whipped. Please read in the bible to me where it says that you should disown your child because of their sexual orientation? So, you force a child, who is not ready for the world, to have to figure out how to survive with no preparation. And we wonder why so gay LGBTQ+ people struggle with mental health and acceptance and love. You wonder why we do anything we need to so we can survive. It is directly linked to the fact that once critical members of our family turned their backs on us, we had to do whatever necessary to survive until we could establish a more “traditional” way to handling life’s challenges. So, before you judge that gay person who keeps fucking for money or whatever they do, understand that the root cause of that, most times not all, is that they were forced to figure out their survival at an age that they weren’t prepared for it. Or life hit them in a way that they had no resources to pull from, so they used what they did have, their body, to make a living.

I honestly can’t explain why I feel like this all the time, but with so many friendships, relationships, situationships, people love to wait for me to do everything and then bitch or complain when I put some responsibility on them. Who the fuck really thinks that any real relationship is healthy if you don’t have consistent, equal communication? I will understand why people want to deal with folks, but you don’t want to be responsible for playing your part in the relationship. I do not accept the excuses of living a busy life, because believe me, my life isn’t just a piece of cake, but I know how to make time for the friends and important people in my life. It’s really not a hard thing to do, if you ask me. It’s something that if you really care for someone, you will make sure you make the effort necessary to let them know you care.

I’m also going to honestly say that the shit hurts too. It feels like I’m living in a time period that I don’t fit in when it comes to talking and communicating. Most people want to just do their own thing and come and go out of people’s lives whenever they feel it’s convenient for them, when in reality, the truth is it’s a fuck ass way out of having to be a real and responsible friend or lover. It makes me feel very unappreciated and that’s such an awful feeling to have. For me, I feel like if I chose to be part of your life, I owe it to you to make sure we have regular conversations. That doesn’t mean that we gotta talk every day or every other day for that much, but it does mean that we should be talking regularly enough that I’m not wondering why the fuck do I have your number in the first place.

These feelings take on even more significance when you’re a best friend or lover and the only time I can talk to you is if I text or call you first. Again, understanding that if you have kids your time is limited. If you take care of family or you have a career that demands your time, you may not be able to have routine conversation, but again that should not prevent you from communicating. I will never understand someone who says they want you, but you don’t have time to talk regularly if I’m not initiating the conversations. How can you want someone, but you can’t make time for them? Talking and making time for the people you care for are the things that are free in life to do. It’s also something allows for them to know that you are interested in them.

The worst thing that you can do is to let someone feel like they’re in it alone. It has a tendency to make that person feel smart or not important to you. The second worst thing that you can do, is to give a bunch of bullshit ass excuses and make it seem like they should always be understanding, while you take no responsibility for your lack of actions. The third worst thing you can do is ignore the concern they are expressing to you. When you do that, you’re setting yourself up for things to end on a sour note. People don’t seem to understand that most times, when someone is telling you about something they don’t like that you’re doing, or they’re telling you how what you’re doing, or not doing, is making them feel, that is their way of showing they still care about what you do. Which also means that they still care about you as well. Once that person stops talking and telling you about the situation, that usually means they’ve come to their own conclusion about things, and you might not like how it ends up.

I’m not sure who told people to start acting like they don’t have to do their part, and do it consistently, but it’s causing so many relationships and friendships to come to an end. No one likes to feel like they’re being fucked around with. So, stop the fuck shit and act like you want the friendship or relationship that you claim you do.