Tomorrow morning, millions of hardworking Black people will wake up and rise to face and deal with another day to go to work. Tomorrow, millions of us will start the same exact routine to help provide for and support our families. Tomorrow, countless Black folk will literally have to crawl out of their beds and deal with the physical ailments, severe aches, and numbing pains that have persisted and developed over the years of hard, stressful, and thankless employment. Before the sun rises in the east, many of us will leave our loved ones as they comfortably sleep in their beds, only to return under the bright night stars to check on them again as they rest from yet another day without seeing daddy or mommy because of the grueling work schedule.
I have been fortunate to continuously study and read amazing works of some of our brilliant Black psychologists who have outlined the mentally damaging effects of oppression, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and slavery. Genius Black doctors and thinkers such as Dr. Amos Wilson, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, Dr. Naim Akbar, Dr. Bobby Wright, Dr. Wade Nobles, Marimba Ani, Bobby Hemitt, Delbert Blair, and Wayne Chandler have given us sound and proven mental and social paradigms that exist within the psyche of our collective struggle to be a free and independent people once again. Black Mental health has become one of the most pervasive and prevalent topics to pay close attention to as we move into the 21st century. In some way, shape, or form, all Black people living in the geographical hemisphere of North America have been psychologically damaged to a certain extent. The psychological trauma actually begins at early stages in our life.
Dr. Amos Wilson teaches us that “around the age of three years, the child begins to become aware of his or her ethnicity and this awareness begins to have a very definite effect on many areas of the child’s personality including his self-identity, self-esteem, and self-confidence.”
As years go by, this lack of self-confidence that perpetuates is one of the determining factors of the development of The Mental Torture and Deterioration Syndrome (MTDS).
As you’re reading this article, this mental condition may directly affect you or the friends and loved ones that are in your social circle. This condition is Real!
Thirty-nine years ago, in 1995, I was blessed to write my first book entitled, “Black Power: Destruction of White Supremacy.” Within that book, there are (40) chapters on the power of Black women, health and nutrition, identifying levels of white supremacy, the intelligence of Black children, economic empowerment, urban emergency survival, integration, self-identity, Black political prisoners, European holidays, and MTDS.
This is a condition that has plagued us for centuries, but within my work, I decided to coin it and give it an actual title. MTDS is a condition that affects Black people who work at a certain job for an extended period of time. Within that extended period (10-30 years), the brain needs room, space, and opportunity to grow and expand. Ninety-nine percent of Black people work in an environment that has set up barriers to block genius and creativity. Over an extended period of time, the brain can actually deteriorate or remain dormant. This daily, yearly, non-creative state and self-complacency is actually mental torture.
Black woman, Black man, your ideas, your genius, your ingenuity, your visions must grow and be made to manifest. If you have made a conscious choice to accept this level of normalcy within your lifetime of committed and dedicated work, you are experiencing MTDS!
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