Speaker 1: I want to say too, that our nation is yearning
for love and community, that people want to know how
we can live deeper and more meaningful lives. We have
been looking for those spiritual teachers in our life today
who can help us return to love and community. And
part of what is interesting about us as a country
is that the vast majority of people in this country
still say they're Christians. We know one of the heartbeats
of Christianity is the idea that God is love, that
we are realized more fully as spiritual beings through love.
So the question becomes, if we think this, if this
is at the core of our beliefs, why are we
not living it out in our actions? And that's the
kind of political and spiritual question, because I feel like
we have to attend to the needs of the spirit.
Speaker 2: Welcome Bell hooks to the word on words. This book
is called All about Love, New Visions. It's yours. I
count eighteenth book. That is a high achievement to be
an author with the eighteen books, and this one about
Love approaches the subject from fascinating perspective. You say at
the outset, maybe in the preface or the introduction, you
say that as a small child, you knew love and
then somehow was taken from you. You lost it, and
in trying to rediscover it, you found it was terribly
difficult to do. And that when you would talk to
people later on, and I'm moving ahead now, when you
would talk to people later on about your search for love,
people would say, you know, you really need to see
a therapist. But talk about because you write about it
so eloquently, talk about the need of children for love
if they're going to have it throughout their lives.
Speaker 3: Well, I start off this book saying that I felt
as a child what it was like to be loved
and to be recognized, and then I felt that love
move away, particularly talking about my relationship with my father,
which I think that lots of people feel that our
intimate connections with our mothers remain forever.
Speaker 1: But many, many adults have talked with me now about
their since as children, that they held their father's regard
in love at a certain moment of time and then
lost them. And I've been amazed at the number of
people that have come up to me after reading the
preface and said to me, that's exactly how I felt
as a child. But I couldn't tell anyone because we're
not allowed to talk about not being loved. In our culture.
We're made to feel that everybody knows love. I talk
in the book about all of these people who'll say,
you know, my dad beaten or mom did this, but
she really loved me. And a key chapter in the
book is the chapter on children, where I'm saying that no,
in fact, if we are being abused in any way,
we are not being loved. That love is amphithetical to them.
Speaker 4: Ladies and gentlemen. That was the legendary Bell Hooks. Y'all
know what's up, the voice of reason re energized. Shout
out to my big brother, Maurice Williams.
Speaker 5: Big mo.
Speaker 4: I'm re energized because we were able to give him
the piece he needed. We gave him the homegoing that
he needed. And of course I've been thinking quite deeply
and Bell Hooks was laying out some stuff, man, and
I'm just starting to see it totally different. You know,
in my psychological studies, I'm starting to see it totally different.
We have normalized needing, we have normalized detachment, we have
normalized craving. And even in the framework that she was
laying out you know about childhood and the parent, and
one parent can get away with a certain level of
abuse of even marginalization, minimization can get away with it.
But these are cultural archetypes mom versus you know, father
versus mother. But this topic that I have been working
on the heart of the matter. But so you guys know,
I've been on a tear against need, right. I said,
need is the original sin for me, and we've built
a whole intellectual architecture infrastructure around needing. You know, a
healthy relationship is when two people need each other and
they meet each other's needs, and they love equally, and
they share and they give, and it's back and forth.
Speaker 5: What if.
Speaker 4: This romanticized view right of intimate relationship can only work
with those who are somehow broken, who find the answer
in another Think on this for a second before I
really peel into the topic. Haven't you heard it before,
Like when you start to heal, when you start to
climb that ladder of spiritual elevation. Right when you start
to climb that ladder, you find that you are you
have less in common with those who are not on
the path. Now, for the spiritually evolved, everything is all
one for the spiritually unevolved. This is where loneliness creeps in.
So I have been thinking about this topic and it's
a banger. I want you to think. I want you
to listen and think with me. But the phone lines
are open. The number to die one eight hundred nine
twenty fifteen eighty. That's one eight hundred nine twenty fifteen eighty.
This is a non judgmental space. Your thoughts, your ideas,
your concepts, your pushback. You're pouring in whatever you want
to do, it will not be judged here. A lot
of people want me to push back against people who
say things that they disagree with.
Speaker 5: I don't do that.
Speaker 4: This is a platform for you to voice how you feel.
Tonight's topic the heart.
Speaker 5: Of the matter.
Speaker 4: You matter while you still matter, But will you still
matter once the matter is settled? Way, hold on, Zoe,
don't do that. You matter while you still matter. In
other words, while you're still catering to my wounds, while
you're still providing for my wounds. This is how when
we interface in love. Somebody has to fit me, Somebody
has to fix me. Somebody has to give me what
I think I don't have.
Speaker 5: Let me say it. Again.
Speaker 4: You matter while you matter the moment you cut off
the supply chain to the wound. Haven't you been treated
like you never mattered when that happened? When you stop
showing up for the wounds, right, the thing that they
now identify with you don't matter anymore? You matter while
you still matter? But will you still matter once the
matter is settled? You matter while you still matter, while
you're providing, while you're giving right. That's why you matter.
But will you still matter? Means something the matter circumstance
situation is settled. If you mattered because my wounds needed you,
who are you to me after healing cancels your assignment?
What happens when consciousness discovers that the thing around which
it's organized or it has an it has organized an
enormous amount of meaning never possessed the meaning that was.
Speaker 5: Initially assigned to it. One fifteen eighty. Get to your
phone lines.
Speaker 4: You meant something to me because you made me comfortable.
The moment you make me uncomfortable, you no longer matter.
Speaker 5: DC.
Speaker 4: Whatded people are asking, zoh I thought you would be
off today. Nah, nah, this work matters. I'm at my
brother's funeral, talking like this as I'm eulogizing him. I'm
talking like this to my family. Do you understand see
the way we set up in America? You matter when
you accumulate, when you achieve right, but does your spirit
matter without the achievement? It tells you we're a blind
society because if you haven't the societal bobbles and trinkets
and accoultrement. If you don't have those things, how do
I know you matter? We are a book cover society.
We're looking at the book cover. We're not turning pages
and trying to understand content that's in the book. Do
you understand that's why this topic is so poignant? The
heart of the matter, you matter while you still matter?
In other words, you have meaning while they're supply because
the supply matters matter material, what you're bringing to me,
what you brought to the table, the material of it,
whether it's psychological, emotional, financial.
Speaker 5: Do you see what I'm saying?
Speaker 4: Presence? That's the matter?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: You matter?
Speaker 6: I E.
Speaker 4: Have meaning while you still matter while the supply chain
is happening. But will you still matter have meaning once
the matter situation and circumstance I e. Supply chain as
well is settled.
Speaker 5: Tonight's topic.
Speaker 4: What if the person you swear you love became lovable
partly because something unresolved inside of you could use them.
That possibility cuts deeper than coincidence, compatibility, attachment style, or
the familiar claim that wounded people choose wounded partners. The
question reaches into the construction of love itself. Perhaps the
abandoned part of you found someone willing to chase.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna keep it one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: My brother was in a sixteen year toxic relationship with
someone who would chase him. Now, my people, we all
Southern folk from Chatanook, and we all showed a level
of grace and decorum and class. We allowed my brother's
woman to attend. She sat in the front pew, But
their toxicity enabled each other's toxicity sixteen years resulted in
cirrhosis of the liver and many other ailments. You matter
as long as the supply chain that means something to
me is coming. Do you understand what I'm saying? Do
you see I care for you because of what you bring,
what you do, how you show up in the way
my wounds need you. Perhaps the abandoned part of you
found someone willing to chase. The unseen part found an admirer.
The frightened part found a protector. The financially insecure part
found a provider. The self doubting part found someone willing
to believe enough for two people. The emotionally neglected part
found someone with a capacity to absorb pressure you had
never learned to hold with your own spirit and someone
or somewhere inside all of that relief, you said, I
love you. But is that love true? Is that love real?
But I want to know what part right of what
you loved.
Speaker 5: Was there?
Speaker 4: What was it? I want to know was it their usefulness?
Did you what part of them that you actually loved?
Was it their usefulness to what remained unhealed in you.
A partner can become important because their presence makes self
avoidance less expensive. Their emotional capacity can soften the tension
created by self neglect.
Speaker 5: I'm destroying myself.
Speaker 4: I'm killing myself, but you're still here pouring into me.
Speaker 5: Their reassurance can.
Speaker 4: Quiet self unbelief without requiring self belief to develop. Their
money can make fear easier to postpone. Beauty can purchase attention,
Charisma can purchase access. Status can purchase significance. Sex can
purchase reassurance. Patience can purchase another day before something buried
must finally be confronted. Every currency need not involve cash.
Sometimes one person's finance was Sometimes one person finances the
lifestyle while the other finances the wound. This does not
make human exchange corrupt. Love has always existed alongside need, interdependence, labor, protection, kinship, sexuality, resources, sacrifice,
and survival.
Speaker 5: When I come forward.
Speaker 4: The voice of reason, boy, I'm gonna keep this fire lit.
Your stay tuned.
Speaker 7: Doctor Tamabryan is a renowned psychologist, author, professor, and minister
who blends spirituality and social justice to help readers find healing.
Speaker 8: You're holding on to crumbs can keep you from the
feast you deserve.
Speaker 7: She is dedicated to helping people build healthy relationships.
Speaker 8: Perfectionism can be a form of.
Speaker 7: Control from trauma and overcome life's challenges.
Speaker 8: I do the right combination of things, I'll finally be chosen.
Speaker 7: Join us as we dive into her new book, Matters
of the Heart.
Speaker 9: Welcome, Thank you so much.
Speaker 8: It's good to be here.
Speaker 7: So, Doctor Bryant, you're a psychologist, author, professor, minister, Can
you share a bit about your personal journey that led
to the writing of this book.
Speaker 8: Certainly so relationships are a central point that people often
have questions about and issues about. I dedicate the book
to my mom, Reverend Cecilia Bryant, and last September she
died of breast cancer, and thank you so much and
for me, it's true that the grief is a reflection
of like this great deep love, and she loved fiercely,
to the point where one of my friends, when she
met my mother said, I wonder who I would be
if I had your mother.
Speaker 9: Wow.
Speaker 8: And so I know what a gift like a nurturing
relationship can be. And so trying to help people to
build that with themselves and with others, family, friends, romantic partners.
It's a protective factor in terms of our mental health.
Can help dealing with depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction. All of
the challenges are easier to face when we're not facing
them alone.
Speaker 7: To that point, you emphasize the importance of healing trauma
as the foundation for creating solid.
Speaker 10: Relationships, healthy relationships.
Speaker 4: Why is this so crucial?
Speaker 8: There are traumas that are like medical or natural disasters,
But when we have been harmed by another person. It
causes us, understandably to have those walls up to be
defended against future harm, to have difficulty trusting, trusting the
other person, but also trusting ourselves. So it's so important
that we your mind, body, heart, spirit, nervous system because
it affects our ability to be seen. Instead of constantly running,
sometimes we are chasing.
Speaker 4: Please say her name again, brother, doctor Tama Bryant cooking
with the rarest grease. I love her work, I love
her information, but I'm here to push it further. Connection
is not supposed to last forever. Connection implies this connection.
Oneness is the goal of relationship. Communion is the goal
of relationship. If the relationship still needs you could take
a developmental psychology class and it'll tell you your life is
better as you get older if you have have a
core group of you know, relationships like family, friends, you know,
co workers. Because the idea is you're never going to
be able to get rid of need. That's the idea,
We're always gonna need connection. That's how they teach human
beings are hardwired for connection. And I'm going to challenge that.
I'm not saying that the neuroscience is incorrect. But I
believe ancient traditions have already proved that the real separation
is from God, and that God exists within you, and
that because you haven't been trained to go in and
find source in yourself, you find source in another. And
when you find source in another without locating it within yourself,
you might run into something called codependency.
Speaker 5: Do you see.
Speaker 4: This person mattered to me because they stood in the
gap for my wound, But them standing in the gap
for your wound, did it prevent you from going on
the healing journey? This is a real question the heart
of the matter. Do you matter because of the matter.
Speaker 5: You bring to me?
Speaker 4: Ah, here we come, when we come forward, I'm opening
up the phone lines. I want to hear from everybody tonight.
The number to dollar is one eight hundred nine twenty
fifteen eighty. Let's get busy that.
Speaker 10: You understand who yourself is, so in order to be
able to reshape about it consistent with your self interest,
you got to know what's your interested me and you
had to know what yourself really is all about.
Speaker 4: We are living in en goronment, the delima.
Speaker 11: Of somehow understanding of identifying what our soul really is.
Speaker 4: Had to become a perplexing question. It used to be
a time that you didn't have.
Speaker 12: To convince black people they were black. It has not
become an option people can select to be black. Maybe
I'll be black, maybe.
Speaker 10: I'll be Republican, maybe.
Speaker 12: I'll be Democrat, maybe I'll be an immigrant, maybe I'll.
Speaker 10: Be this or that, because they didn't have a choice.
Speaker 11: We were in a reality that forced us to know
you black, when.
Speaker 3: You like it or not, you black.
Speaker 4: The realities of your rural world you live again, have
defined that for you, So there was no confusion.
Speaker 11: People may not have known as Francis Volcity spent all
of her career trying to help people know the forces
that were meeting us, that were creating those problems, that
somehow white supremacy doctrine.
Speaker 4: That was making it painful for us to be that.
Speaker 11: But we knew we were black on the plantations.
Speaker 4: We knew we were black being lich we knew we
were black post slavery. We knew we were black.
Speaker 11: And then lo and behold, we got this black man
in the White House, and we certain.
Speaker 5: So what am I doing tonight? You hear all my authors? Andy,
who was that?
Speaker 4: My friend you are doctor Naim Akbar in here cooking
with the rarest Greece. Yeah, that was palm oil. He
was cooking wet. I love it. Why am I doing
this tonight because I'm talking to folks who are saying
things about my brother and I'm talking about family. Oh
he made choices. He should have he should have did
something different. I had to remind you don't. Trauma is listen.
Trauma is like honey. It'll keep over time. If you
don't deal with that, it'll stay right there. I think
archaeologists found some honey in an Egyptian tomb and it
was still edible to three thousand years old. It can
go in there and get that honey and put it
on some toast and get some butter, and it's three
thousand year old Egyptian honey. Trauma like honey, it's not
gonna spoil. If you don't get in your spirit and
deal with it and sit with it and love on
it and nurture it, you gonna find someone to give
you the false illusion.
Speaker 5: I know. I'm sorry to say this.
Speaker 4: Right. See, when you think you matter because somebody shows
up to feed your womb, your wound, that's a false
illusion of mattering, because all you gotta do is turn
off the facet. Whatever material they might give you, security, money, presence,
whatever they're giving, whatever they're doing. If they turn off
the fawcet you back to square one. It's anight's topic
the heart of the matter. Sometimes one person finances the
lifestyle while the other finances the wound. This does not
make human exchange corrupt. Love has always existed alongside need, interdependence, labor, protection, kinship, sexuality, resources, sacrifice,
and survival. The danger begins when we cannot tell whether
another person matters because we encounter them nude, deeply psychologically nude,
or because something unfinished within us has calculated their value.
So many people out here playing games with other people's
lives because their wounds have an insatiable appetite. Then the
heart of the matter will change if it's about that.
Do they matter because you love them, or do they
matter because they are in service to your wounds? Or
even deeper, do you only love them for the service
they provide unto your wounds? And if their service to
your wounds help make them lovable to you? What happens
when healing makes their service unnecessary? Does it mean you
use them this whole time. The abandoned part no longer
needs chasing, the frightened part can now withstand uncertainty. The
neglected part finally receives its own attention. I'm here to
tell you self realization. Self actualization is the death of
psychological needing. But because western thought and clinical psychology does
not deal with spirituality, they cannot say when you heal,
and I don't mean when you maintain a wound when
you're the maintenance man for the woman. I'm saying when
you heal, need dies too. When we come forward. If
you think I just got started, you be right here
we go now.
Speaker 6: I'm not telling anybody to jump out and act foolish.
I'm not telling anybody to disrespect.
Speaker 9: White people, to call them.
Speaker 6: Names, because that's fear.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 6: What we need to do is to sit back and
say we are afraid to go further, because that is
the truth.
Speaker 9: And as long as there is fear, you will not
pull together the behavior that is going to mean a confrontation.
Speaker 6: As long as there is fear, there's not even going
to be self respect, because the brain understands that if
you're moving towards self respect, if you're really moving towards
self respect, if you're really moving towards pride, that anybody
who says you can stand up, anybody who says your
little children cannot develop will have to be stopped.
Speaker 13: Doctor Francis cris Welson, Come on, doctor Francis chris Well said,
I'm talking to my folk tonight, because I was talking
to my folk last night. I can't judge somebody who
processes differently than you. I had to let my family
no and my two oldest brothers.
Speaker 4: You guys heard me talk about them before on this
station several times. Eighteen nineteen months ago, we had that
major fire and both of those guys went mia. We
found them at different times in different conditions. But when
we were children, my mother was twenty seven years old
and had a nervous breakdown and had to go to
the hospital. My brother resented a great many of my
uncles because he felt like and grandmothers and aunts and
everybody on my mother's side, because he felt like y'all
could have came and helped us, but instead, all of
my mother's children, including myself, went into foster care, except
for the two oldest. They went to juvenile Hall. Well
what was the equivalent of juvenile hall. They suffered a
great many atrocities. My brother's father was on heroin. He
left the family after marrying.
Speaker 5: My mother.
Speaker 4: Left the South and went to Harlem. My father was
no better. He was abusive.
Speaker 5: Do you understand My brother was traumatized.
Speaker 4: And broken. And I had to tell my sisters because
not both of them, but one of them in particular.
You cannot judge your brother because you did not share
the same experience your family, your father and your grandmother
came to get you. You did not really experience with
the two oldest brothers experienced. My oldest brother, Anthony, was
being held captive in an abandoned house.
Speaker 5: Where he was being forced to.
Speaker 4: Do all manner of things right. And one of the
things was turn on you know those heaters that you
used to have to light the heater, and he was
being forced to turn on the heater a house heater,
turned it on. The whole house blew up with him
in it. This is my oldest brother, in his teens.
Speaker 5: He survived DC.
Speaker 4: Listen. I had to tell my sister, you cannot judge
these men who survived to this point. You know, I
want the route I went and I did this, and
I but that's you. Maybe the trauma we all all
experienced was on a spectrum. Maybe theirs was on the
far end of the spectrum. So there's no way you
can process for him or process as yourself within him.
Don't put your decision making skills on this brother. This
is not an excuse for the brother. Yes, the brother
was a co creator of his own demise, But at
the same time, that same brother protected you from the streets.
Like I told my family, I said, you are brother.
Oh was forced into the fatherhood role when he himself
did not have a father. His father had left and
in a lot of ways, his mother left because she
had been on psychotropic drugs ever since the nervous breakdown.
But he had to stand in the gap for all
of his siblings, even his older brother. He had to
stand in the gap for him the heart of the matter,
That's what I'm saying. Why wouldn't he go to somebody
that was toxic, that's all he knew. Why wouldn't he
go to somebody that was fractured when that's all he
knew when he himself was fractured.
Speaker 14: You see, listen to the topic. Listen the heart of
the matter.
Speaker 4: You matter. While you still matter as long as you
can do for me, you matter. But will you still
matter once the matter is settled? If you mattered because
my wounds needed you, who are you to me after
healing cancels? Your assignment? Were many times I would approach
my brother with other family members who survived alcoholism, and
I would go to them and we would do interventions.
And my brother, who a deeply private and quiet and
he was a gentle giant, did he do you understand?
He balked every time someone who could give him security,
someone who could give him escape it.
Speaker 5: It was just.
Speaker 4: It was like, honey, it was something he couldn't resist.
And I was trying to tell him, you got the strength.
You got us through it. Brother, You got us through it.
You protected us.
Speaker 5: Do you understand?
Speaker 4: I had to educate the sisters and the brothers and
the cousins.
Speaker 5: I can't believe Mo was acting like that.
Speaker 4: I said, I can because I saw what he did,
what he went through, what happened to him.
Speaker 5: I saw that. I saw that with his other brother.
Speaker 4: My oldest brother leaves Los Angeles after a major earthquake,
moves to New York. He goes to New York, and
every day while he's in New York, he's being gay, bashed,
abused every day. And he stayed there for a few years.
He stayed there, and then one day he calls me.
I think it was ninety four. The people in New
York beat the man so bad. They beat him up
every day. They stole his family photo albums, pictures of
us as children. They stole the photo albums in New York.
One day he couldn't take it no more. He said, Bro,
can you send for me? Can you bring me home?
I said absolutely, I'll bring you home, and when we come.
Speaker 5: Forward, I will tell you how me and Big Mo
met him.
Speaker 4: Come on, man, legendary doctor Amos Wilson. I'm playing all
black clinicians and philosophers and authors tonight because my family
is a black family that is probably no different than
many other black families out there.
Speaker 5: We've all endured hardships.
Speaker 4: My brother was laid to rest yesterday, and he was
called to be something that he had not fully embodied
within himself, but he did it anyway. When my sisters call,
I'm going to buy a new car, come with me.
He's the one right I will go check out the car,
check the oil, kick the tires, test driving. If my
mother's boyfriend was tripping, he's the one. If somebody was
trying to jump his little brothers, he's the one. But
inside he was not the one to himself.
Speaker 5: Do you understand.
Speaker 4: Your partner can't matter because they pacify your wound. Is
what I'm talking about tonight. So back to my story.
My oldest brother, who was still with us, by the way,
he came to the funeral to support his little brother.
Speaker 5: He goes to New York.
Speaker 4: Because we had an earthquake here and he was frightened.
Speaker 5: He thought it was over, so.
Speaker 4: He goes to New York. He is abused in New
York almost every day because he's an openly homosexual man.
Speaker 5: Right, so almost every day they stole everything from him,
robbed him. Every day.
Speaker 4: He was I guess. He had a job as a waiter.
He was making some money. But he loved New York,
the city, he loved the energy, he loved the scene,
the village and all of that, right, but he was
harassed daily and abused and beaten. Now, he survived a
gas leak in a house in Tennessee that blew up
with him in it. He survived that, He survived the
Alden Park projects. He was the first one to move
to southern Califia, Fifornia of our family convinced our mother
to come join her grandmother and uncles and cousins and family.
And this is how we get to Altadena. Well, that
earthquake scared him up out of here and he shook
it and went to New York until the beatings got
so bad.
Speaker 5: He called me.
Speaker 4: And he said, can you bring me home. At the time,
I was working for Loud Records. I was the West
Coast director of an R for Loud Records Loud RCA,
And I was like absolutely. I bought him a ticket
and he came home. When he comes home, it's me
and his protector. We go to see him Big Mo.
Me and Big Mo go to see Anthony. We go
see him staying with our sister. He comes to the
door and he's got on you remember that shirt that
Jennifer Beale was wearing in Flash Dance. He got one
shoulder out. He got on the Flash Dance shirt with
the shoulder out. He's got on electric blue eyeliner. His
hair has done a certain he got on leg worms.
Me and big mole thought it was our sister. Cassandra asked, hey,
where's Anthony? It was him, but we embraced him and
loved oni anyway, right, damn, glad to have you back.
Glad you made it back. Bro, who thought we lost you? Okay?
Do you have the folk albums?
Speaker 5: Nah?
Speaker 4: They stole the photo albums. Oh lord lord, they done
stole the photo album So we loved on him and
we protected him from that moment on, or so we thought.
We living in Pasadena, one day, he goes to the
Pasadena Mall. He's being harassed in the Pasadena Mall because
he's gay.
Speaker 5: This man has been so traumatized. It's my oldest brother.
He's been so traumatized.
Speaker 4: That instead of running to the security guard and say hey,
these guys are harassing me, he jumped off of the
second story. Jumped off the second story, landed on his face,
and his knee knocked out, all of his teeth, broke
his knee cap. Because he was abused early on and
throughout his life.
Speaker 5: He's still alive today.
Speaker 4: We saw him, you know, yesterday, loving on his little
brother who protected him.
Speaker 5: Trauma is not something.
Speaker 4: That goes away if you don't go in and if
you've lived through the type of trauma that my two
oldest brothers, which I've been talking about, have lived through.
If you don't get some help, psychologists, clinicians, psychiatrists, if
you don't go sit with somebody, right, you can only imagine.
If I say relationship is a mirror, you can only
imagine what those mirrors are gonna look like. And I
had to tell my sisters we all come from the
same dysfunction. Don't think his dysfunction is not yours because
it expresses itself differently, or yours is not his because
it expresses itself differently.
Speaker 5: Don't think that.
Speaker 4: The marriage. That's why I keep saying, marriage don't matter if.
Speaker 5: You're not healing.
Speaker 4: Right, It's just a piece of paper, it's a social contract,
it's a business. It don't matter unless you're using relationship
for what it is for, and that is to see
into yourself. And once you see into yourself, if you
don't have the capacity to work it through with yourself,
go get help. Go get help. Do you understand a
partner can become important because their presence makes self avoidance
less expensive. This is what happened to my older brother
moe someone who would enable his weaknesses. He was a
co creator of the mess.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: Their emotional capacity can soften the tension created by self neglect.
Their reassurance can quiet self unbelief without requiring self belief
to develop. Their money can make fear easier to postpone.
Beauty can purchase attention, Charisma can purchase access, Status can
purchase Significance can purchase reassurance. Patience can purchase another day
Before something buried must finally be faced. Every currency need
not involve cash. Sometimes one person finances the lifestyle while
the other finances the wound. This does not make human
exchange corrupt. Love has always existed alongside need, interdependence, labor, protection, kinship, sexuality, resources, sacrifice,
and survival. The danger begins when we cannot tell whether
another person matters because we encounter them deeply or because
something unfinished within us has calculated their value to us.
Speaker 5: Then the heart of the matter changes.
Speaker 4: Do they matter because you love them or do you
love them because they are service to your wounds? And
if their service to your wounds.
Speaker 5: Helped make them lovable?
Speaker 4: What happens when healing makes that service that they provide unnecessary?
The abandoned part no longer needs chasing what happens to
their role in your life? The frightened part can withstand uncertainty.
The neglected part right finally receives its own attention. Self
unbelief begins surrendering its authority. Financial dependency changes, beauty loses
some of its leverage. Status stops functioning as borrowed significance. Listen,
the internal pressure your partner wants relieved no longer requires
the same release. Now the matter has been settled. Will
they still matter to you? Once the matter has been settled?
Perhaps healing does not merely change how we relate. It
exposes who have been participating in the definition of love itself?
What is conscious choosing? What is fear based?
Speaker 5: Choosing?
Speaker 4: What is deprivation?
Speaker 5: Choosing? Gosh? Was it a wound?
Speaker 4: Recognizing the person most capable of keeping its world intact?
Speaker 5: We gotta get to it.
Speaker 4: The voice of reason is on fire tonight. I'm sharing
my heart a little bit. Let's get it. When I
come forward, I'm gonna keep cooking.
Speaker 8: You talk about the impact of American chattel slavery.
Speaker 15: They go, well, how do I understand? How do you
connect slavery with contemporary African American behavior. I said, how
can you not three in thirty nine years of trauma.
This is a kind of pushback you get when you
talk about slavery. Well, I I wasn't there, I didn't
do it, and that was a look at how long
ago that was, you know. But what made it unique
from any other form of enslavement the length of servitude,
the treatment of the enslavery, the rape, the pillage, the
destruction of people. Europeans systematically turned the capturing, shipping, and
breeding of other human beings into a business that would
become the backbone of an entire economy. The other myth
is that slavery ended and the playing field got level,
And that's just not true because after slavery came the
multitude of lynchings, all the way up through George Floyd
three into thirty nine years of trauma, was there any
therapeutic assistance? Nobody showed up. You've been harmed, and that
requires more than medicine and talk therapy. That requires justice.
Healing cannot happen without justice, you know. Malcolm X said,
if you stick a knife nine inches into my back
and you pull it out three, that's not progress. Even
if you pull the knife all the way out, that's
not progress. Progress is healing the wound, and America hasn't
pulled out the knife. I believe that we are the
pupil of the eye surrounded by a sea of white.
But it is a pupil that contains the site. It
beholds what is before it.
Speaker 4: That's scriptural. That is what the greatest fear is. You
already know Legendary Dorsey High Zone, doctor Joy degru In
the seventies, my mother moved into a place called Alton
Park Projectston County, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Sit back, let me paint
the picture. You turn off the lights, and the kitchen
starts moving.
Speaker 5: Moving.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, that's when the mice and the rats and
the roaches and all of that stuff starts coming out.
As soon as the lights go off, they come out.
Speaker 5: You understand.
Speaker 4: Took her five years to get her kids back.
Speaker 5: From foster care.
Speaker 4: The projects were already doing its damage on the kids, right,
just the nature the environment of it. But then poverty.
The projects are what projects experiments socioeconomic depravity in that place.
My mother wanted us out of there. She got us
out because of my older brother Anthony. We all moved
into his one bedroom apartment on six sixty five West
Altadena Drive, Apartment twenty three. You understand.
Speaker 5: Cut.
Speaker 4: Two years later, he jumps off of a second story
balcony in the Pasadena Mall and me and Moe go
to the hospital, the very hospital. Moe dies in the
very hospital. My daughter is born in the very hospital.
My mother died in We go to Huntington Hospital.
Speaker 5: To see Anthony, and.
Speaker 4: The first thing MO said was, Man, I know you
don't want to hear this, but you probably should have
let them beat you up because you hurt yourself more
than they ever could. And even then I was in
my early twenties, I had to wear with all to say, no, Mo,
you know what he'd been through. You can't give him
that kind of advice. He was terrified, and when you're terrified,
you do anything.
Speaker 5: So he becomes terrified for the rest of his life.
Speaker 4: In the two thousands twenty ten, I think it's twenty
seventeen eighteen or something like that, he gets an apartment.
Anthony does I'm going to tell you what sent him
back into the streets of homelessness.
Speaker 5: When I come forward, mighty welcome back. Can you hear me.
Speaker 16: Hey, this is exciting. Can't imagine how happy I am
that doctor Curry is here. So all right, So, instead
of reading to you doctor Tommy Curry's biography, which is
included in the conference program, I want to briefly say
a few words about the relevance of his academic work today,
particularly his latest book. Let me be emphatic. You must
buy and read The Man Not Raised, Class Genre and
the Dilemmas of Black Manhood. Why because it is one
of the most important books I have read recently. With
The Man Not Curry did not just author the twenty
eighteen winner of the American Book Award, but he also
inaugurated an entire field by the name of Blackmail Studies,
which is described as follows. Blackmail Studies is an interdisciplinary
yield dedicated to exploring the various developmental trajectories and the
vulnerabilities racial, sexual, economic of black men and boys in
the United States and abroad. To give you a sense
of the book's significance, The Men Not signals a paradigm
shift or a scientific revolution, to use these terms from
Thomas Kuhn's in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn argues
that scientific revolutions or non cumulative developmental episodes in which
an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part
by an incompatible new one, are inaugurated by growing sense
that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in
the exploration of an aspect of nature to which that
paradigm itself had previously led the way. In both political
and scientific development, the sense of malfunction that can lead
to crisis is prerequisite to revolution. In his book, Curry
shows us that the paradigms of feminism and post structuralism,
or what he labels theory with a capital T, have
ceased to function adequately in the exploration of black male vulnerability.
On the one hand, feminism as a paradigm is premised
on the primacy of sex over race, which results in
a commonly held assumption among theorists that black males are
somehow privileged along the axis of patriarchy because of their maleness.
This assumption, of course, denies the historical facticity of slavery
Jim Crow and the New Jim Crow. It also denies
any empirical evidence to the contrary, that is, experiences of
black male vulnerability. Curry's conceptualization of black males as man
knots accomplishes at least two things. One, it delinks black
maleness from the construct of patriarchy, which, in the context
of the US is specifically a function of white supremacy.
For Curry, black feminism internalizes some of the racist logics
of first wave of feminism, like the ideological fantasy figure
of the black rapist. Curry contests black feminism, particularly intersectional theory,
as a paradigm, not because he doesn't believe in the
equal rights of women, but because of feminism's inherent anti
black male logic, an inherent logic to racialized capitalism in
settler colonialism. Two, the concept of the man not names
the reality of sexual violence that black males have been
facing since the time of slavery to this day. Curry
shows that black males in the US, although positioned as
super predators in the political unconscious, are actually vulnerable to
different kinds of violence, which render them generically disposable because
they are raised bodies that are neither sexed nor gendered. Consequently,
black males are not entitled to being victims of rape
or domestic violence. For instance, I know these are provocative arguments.
Paradigm shifts or scientific revolutions are always provocative in a
good way. I think so. In response to Curry's critiques
of black feminism, I hope that in the near future
will see the establishment of Black female studies as a
field dedicated to studying black females as woman nuts. Black
males and black females need to be in solidarity together
in their struggle against white supremacy and racialized capitalism, which,
as a matrix of domination is dividing and conquering Blacks
inside and outside of academia. Solidarity amongst blacks, as instigated
by their common experience with structural racism and super exploitation,
is a manifestation of what Angela Davis calls an intersectionality
of struggles. Now, please give a very warm welcome to
doctor Tommy Curry.
Speaker 17: First, I'm so happy to be here. It was a
long flight, so forgive me for for being slightly jet lacked.
Speaker 5: UH.
Speaker 17: Let me begin by saying that the paper that I
want to deliver today at at limit of a hominy, UH,
is about the threshold, is about the proximity that racialized
males have UH to the construct of the human Uh.
I am interested in the violence that de natures and
distorts racialized male subjectivity, if we could even call it that,
or rather the position that these entities hold within Western
patriarchal societies. And I think that our ignorance of this grouping,
of this position, this artifact in societies that ranged across centuries,
stops any real decolonial or critical lens and how we
actually aspire to a better society. So, throughout the various
literatures that comprise disciplines, the stories of racialized males, conquer men,
and boys are told by their deaths. Theorists have been
trained to look upon these bodies with an intuitive understanding
that rotty mal flesh is the natural consequence of racism, racism,
and xenophobia, so much so that racialized melness holds a
symbolic reference to death. The horrors of violence imposed upon
these bodies of lesser men, however, inspire no actual outrage
or calls for theory.
Speaker 5: They just happen.
Speaker 17: The disproportion of homicide by police, strangers or intimates sound
no clarions. Lesser men die and their corpse have become normal.
The images of flaccid male bodies mutilated frames and flesh
become placeholders for racism, xenophobia, and the police state, so
much soul that there is a syndemity between death and
the least powerful male body within our cultural schemas, little
else about the male victim of violence is thought to
be asked. Our theory is beyond its corpse. Sexual victimization, dehumanization,
and economic ostracism are rarely comments of Hubon and the
man not race class genre in the Dilemmas of Manhood.
I attempted to show that not only does this erasure
of racialized men have an origin in the social cultural
organization organization of Western patriarchies, but also the philosophical anthropology
of Western men.
Speaker 18: I'm sorry for this foul weather.
Speaker 2: There it is.
Speaker 10: Shall we go on.
Speaker 18: With what we were talking about yesterday? I don't think
we finished it. We were talking about human relationship. We
were it was a dialogue between us about human relationship.
A dialogue is not a one sided affair, but both
of us are taking part in the discussion, in the exploration,
in the understanding together. And again, if I may point out,
what we are talking about demands his serious mind, a
mind that is really committed to the finding of a life,
a way of living that is totally different, that has
real meaning for living, and so on. So we were
yesterday morning talking about human relationship and what is involved
in it and what place has intelligence in relationship. That's
what we were trying to explore together yesterday. Most of us,
I'm not talking I'm just laying the cards on the
table first. Most of us in our relationship depend a
great deal on another.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna stop him right there, because that's what I'm
trying to get to.
Speaker 5: I mean, tonight has been.
Speaker 4: An exceedingly powerful show. You already know I love Krishna
Ja Krishna g Krishnamurti, and he starts right there need.
Speaker 5: Dependency. Before we came forward, I was telling a.
Speaker 4: Story about how my brother, my oldest brother, my brother
they're Anthony.
Speaker 5: Became homeless.
Speaker 4: And I was telling you about how he jumped off
the balcony, and how he was in New York and
how he's abused and of course me and Maurice would
always be here to support him and protect him to
the best.
Speaker 5: Of our ability.
Speaker 4: Well, he had gotten Section eight and all of that.
He got an apartment over in Rosemead. But he never
told us what was happening to him in that apartment
until after he abandoned his apartment. You know, we would
go visit him from time to time. He told us
what happened. People were breaking into his apartment, people who
lived in his apartment building. Do you see how this
ties into Tommy Jay's work, Doctor Tommy J.
Speaker 5: Curry.
Speaker 4: The man not he's not even a human being, can't
even be seen. My older brother Moe, who passed on
Thursday last Thursday, experienced the same kind of life, just
a little differently different expression. But people in his own
building was breaking into his apartment and stealing his stuff,
stealing his furniture. And again, this is a traumatized man.
I don't think he's ever sat down with a therapist.
So he decided, Okay, I'm leaving, I'm gonna be homeless.
You guys have heard me talk about him a couple
of times on the radio, homeless. He was homeless or
houseless for four years until he got a new place.
Speaker 5: Right. I'm sharing all of this.
Speaker 4: Because if you take in context my entire discussion tonight
with all of the world renowned authors and clinicians, Belle Hooks,
doctor Joy Degrue, Tommy J. Curry, doctor Amos Wilson, Francis
cres Welson, Naim Akbar. You take in all of the
speakers and the narrative that they're painting broken people crash
into each other, no infrastructure for healing. And I'm saying
all of that to say there's no plateau in America
for black people to sit on and say we good
right here, which means just because you're at a particular
space in life, don't judge someone else, whether they're your
family or not. And it's always at a funeral where
sometimes the ugliness pops up.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: Do you see what we've been through? You were in
no position to judge. I would have did it this way,
I would have did it that way. And that's why
I created this topic tonight. The heart of the matter
my brother who was forced and I'm talking about the
one who passed Maurice, who was forced into the Hercules
role when he was still listen to what I'm saying.
He's this dude, never lift weights. He was built like
Karl Malone six' two six three two twenty just naturally,
musk but internally he was still a, fractured broken boy
with no guidance from his. Father then somebody turned around
and say he should have did better with his. Life
he made bad. Choices you as his family should never
twist your mouth to say that if you understand the
context that created. Demand and yet he still showed up.
Speaker 5: To the best of his.
Speaker 4: Ability he can't show up to the best of your.
Expectation he can only show up to the best of his.
Speaker 5: Ability do you see this is why this show is so.
Speaker 4: Important i'm going to have these conversations, unapologetically, fearlessly, Right
i'm going to have this.
Speaker 5: Conversation.
Speaker 4: RIGHT i love the way that clip broke Down Tommy jay's,
Work Doctor TOMMY. J curry when he talks about how
black men and black, women and he was, like maybe
we create the woman's, studies, right the woman? Not you
have the man not in the woman Not because in this,
society you're invisible unless you. Are it's, carnivorous socially carnivorous
as the system needs you to. Be you gotta eat
up others in order to get to the, top and
then you gotta fight. People do you understand that's what
this culture respects? You guys hear me say it all the,
time The Great Christiana. Murthy it is no measure of
health to be well adjusted to a sick. Society we
spend a lot of time trying to adjust and climb that,
ladder and we wind up stepping on through negative evaluation
our own people that don't add up to a system
that wasn't authored by.
Speaker 5: Us do you?
Speaker 4: Understand, Listen I'm Sooe, williams the voice of. REASON i start,
conversations it's really up to you to finish. THEM i
hope you guys enjoyed tonight's. TOPIC i love, Y'ALL i appreciate,
y'all And i'll be back next week with four slappers.
Deuces