Our Black Wound

Our Black Wound can be defined as the source of our pain, it's the origin of how we have coped with being Black in a society that hates us. Obviously, our individual Black Wound is individual and unique to us, it’s from a personal experience that shaped our world view and formed our personality, our compensation for our defect, being born the wrong color. Our individual Black Wound was inflicted by our families, our communities, and our personal experiences in life. Our collective Black Wound originated in slavery. Our collective Black Wound was inflicted by society. Our collective Black wound is based on centuries of the false belief that we are inferior.

It's hard to identify our own wounds. We can barely identify our own coping mechanisms to deal with our wounds, it's virtually impossible to identify our wounds themselves. We've been told that not being a perfect person makes you a bad person. There is no such thing as perfection but the belief that perfect can be attained and that it's our choices, it's our inherent stupidity or unattractiveness, or it's . . . our Blackness that keeps us from being perfect, that belief that we aren't perfect and it's our fault that we aren't and that we are worthless unless we are perfect - that is the belief that keeps us tied to suffering.

Our Black Wound, in our mind, is the experience, event, the circumstances that first let us know that who we are as a person is not good enough, that the skin we come in is not Grade A. We don't have to have just one Black Wound but we carry those wounds with us for our entire lives, festering, infected, untreated, and malignant.

It's almost impossible to identify your Black Wound by yourself. The part of your brain that sees your own flaws and fuck ups, it has been told time and time again that you're born a sinner, that you are a piece of shit just for taking a breath. That belief, the belief that we are inherently bad people, distorts the mirror so to speak, it creates and image of perfection for us to behold. It’s not that we are unable to see our own flaws, we have been socialized in a society that thinks glamor and the perception of perfection give a person more value. So when we look in the mirror, metaphorically, what your subconscious mind allows you to see is someone who is right and good and perfect, and everyone else who doesn't "look" (i.e. think, believe, love, party, vote, pray) like you is wrong. It's a piece of cake to readily identify everyone else's wounds, society has taught us to name everyone else's flaws and faults and failures but that mirror is really foggy when we look in it.

We have to identify our Black Wound. We have to identify the way in which we cope with that internalized hatred and shame. Do we only date white people? Do we make sure we speak proper English in front of white people to make sure they know we aren't . . . one of those niggers? Do we just give up trying to better ourselves and rot in complacency because we can't imagine that we deserve better than the fucked up life we have been given?

There are a million ways we use to cope. Some brothas lie, cheat, and make a million and two babies to hide the fact that they don't know how to ask for love, they can't say that they're afraid, they can't admit to feeling weak. Sistas readily embrace being objectified and used by men as a sign of empowerment to keep from feeling objectified and used by the perpetrators who want nothing more than to hurt and violate us. Too many of us bust our asses working on the corporate plantation, convinced that it's the measure of our security, identity, and relative importance in life if we get a good performance review at a job we hate; that we need that pension and that paycheck to be valuable human beings in life. We bust our asses to make rich white people richer review while we are barely surviving. All those behaviors are coping mechanisms for the Black Wound. It's time to heal the Black Wound. It's time to clean and dress it so that we can become healthy.

We have all kinna Black Wounds and coping mechanisms to hide them. What we need are treatments to heal our Black Wounds. We need medicine. We need therapy. We have to face and accept that all of us have Black Wounds because we live in a society that has historically hated our melanin.

And, unfortunately, for those of us who are champions of karmic justice and retribution, you cannot have a white wound. It is impossible for you to have an emotional wound associated with your whiteness when whiteness is fallaciously revered around the world as being superior. Do you understand how being able to feel safe and secure in your skin, knowing that you can go anywhere in the world and people will respect you for no other reason than the color of your skin is something that Black people simply can’t do.