A Source of Mental Anguish

Academia has played a fundamental role in providing me with bourgeois etiquette, an alienating form of communication to navigate white systems. Since beginning of pre-school through graduate programs I have been exposed to amerikan indoctrination and the poison of neoliberalism. From a young age, bourgeois etiquette and neoliberalism were instilled as a prerequisite for survival in this dystopian society. In the beginning, it was instilled in me that bourgeois education was a necessity if I was to end the generational poverty my family has endured. At the onset the weight of the world was placed on my shoulders, a weight of mental anguish. A mental anguish that takes the form of anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and alienation from self. There laid a responsibility to overcome these systems of oppression so that my family may finally have a house, a false sense of financial stability, and the opportunity to pursue their respective creative endeavors, and a life without toiling for those who smile at us, who act kind, all the while their existence creates our depressed reality. A reality all too common for colonized people within the imperial core.

Growing up in a rural white community, I experienced the extremes of poverty from extended periods of homelessness to lack of food and utilities. Yet, I was surrounded by white people who had, from water-front properties, stable homes, to the newest video games, clothes, and vehicles. With a lack of political consciousness, one could only logically deduce that if one is wealthy then one must be doing something right; and if one is poor then one must be doing something wrong. Expectedly so, those with wealth were white, and those without were of color. Using this flawed deductive reasoning, growing up I tried to emulate those who had what I wanted, which required constraining my identity. I claimed to be prideful in my Blackness yet, at the time, was a victim of white perception.

Through my progression in academia and white professionalism, an increasing anxiety began to overwhelm me to the point of medication. Taking all the perceived necessary steps (e.g., obtaining a bourgeois education) to liberate myself and my family from the inescapable poverty, striving for economic ascension, grave internal contradictions were formed. My pursuit for a higher bourgeois education began at a rural community college, then onto a small local predominately white university, to an ‘elite’ graduate program at the University of Southern California, and then a social justice program at Arizona State University. Through this journey, at all these institutions, I found few to be like me in these environments. I’m a poor Black person, who has stolen, lied, and schemed to survive, from an area of roaches, addicts, and prostitutes in the rural slums. These are the people that I have the most in common. Although growing up in this environment is not ideal, it was home, the chaos was comforting. There was no community for me in academia, how could there be, as I climbed the academic ladder I began to stray further and further from home, further from the people that I shared a common experience with. I was now amongst people with maids, people who were covering thousand-dollar bar tabs, people who were travelling and seeing the world. People who couldn’t relate to the reality behind their wealth. At one point, at University of Southern California I was sleeping in the stairwell when I reached out to financial services. The financial aid representative I was dealing with began crying when I was explaining my situation. I was a little annoyed, I appreciate the empathy but, get it together. This isn’t anything new to me, I needed material assistance not tears. It was as if they were so disconnected from reality, stuck behind the gates and walls that separate the rich from the poor. Bearing the burden to change this generational curse of poverty. I was forced to create a false self, a self that fitted the mold of colonial capitalism, for the sake of survival. I found myself trying to talk and dress in a different manner, refrained from growing my hair, engage in activities associated with wealth (e.g. golfing) all for the sake of ‘professionalism.’ In the bluntest analysis, I was whitewashing my identity for the chance of opportunity. For the chance of a better future for my family and me. It was a dehumanizing period. It was through radical racial and class consciousness, that I found my identity, I found the cure to the poisonous neoliberalism, I removed the blinders of amerikan indoctrination. It was through political education, which was the most liberating experience, that I was absolved of mental anguish to the point of no longer taking medication.

Escaping the insufferable double consciousness, an experience of “always looking at one’s self through the eyes” of a racist white society and measuring oneself by the means of a nation that looked back in contempt.[1] I have released myself from the slavery of white thought. W.E.B. Du Bois described the wishes of a Black person in the amerika as the wish “to make it possible for a [person] to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.”[2] While that wish is noble, it is impossible for even a genie to grant. The Black identity and Amerikan identity are irreconcilable. The amerikan identity and its’ dreams are a product of white thought, an unachievable product for those of Blackness. One can never achieve or be because its existence is predicated on the subjugation of Black bodies, labor, and minds. Equality cannot exist in such a setting. “To put it another way, […] Black people in this country form a colony, and it is not in the interest of the colonial power to liberate them. Black people are legal citizens of the United States with for the most part, the same legal rights as other citizens. Yet they stand as colonial subjects in relations to the white society.”[3] Those of Blackness who appear to obtain the products of white thought, never truly do, as they themselves are products of the neoliberal puppeteer meant to inspire complicity and provide a fallace hope. It is the greatest betrayal to the colonized collective, to convince the people that Blackness can co-exist with Amerikanism. For me, trying to co-exist and ascend through whiteness was a source of mental anguish.

[1] Du Bois, W. (2021). The Souls of Black Folk. New York, NY: Chelsea House.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Carmichael, S., &; Hamilton, C. V. (1992). Black power: The politics of liberation in America. New York: Vintage Books.