To Whom It May Concern

African Americans majoring in African American studies are subjected to countless factual accounts of suffering, murder, rape, torture, molestation, mutilation, lynching, and other unspeakable acts of violence that were committed against African Americans. The study of the history of people of African descent in America consists of constant repetitions of these violent acts. The feelings brought on by the field of study may cause feelings of hopelessness, depression, and thoughts of suicide. The question is raised, can majoring in African American Studies and/or being a racial activist drive a person to suicide? In 1938 Charles Prudhomme hypothesized that the suicide rate for African Americans would increase as they assimilated into the dominant culture (Joe and Kaplan 2001). Although lower than the suicide rates for European Americans, suicide for African Americans is rapidly increasing, particularly for males. In 1970 the rate was 7.9 per 100,000. It increased to 10.9 per 100,000 in 1997 (Poussaint and Alexander, 2000) during period directly following the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements that paved the way for integration and increased assimilation into the dominant culture. In addition, Black studies programs began at several universities, giving the false impression that there was an acceptance of African Americans in the United States and the legitimizing of our history. According to Poussaint and Alexander (2000) stress related illnesses and self-destructive behaviors of African Americans are due to racism from the legacy of slavery. There is an increased chance of attempted suicide after “a confrontation or perceived victimization” (p. 22). They further state that social problems, particularly ones that seem to be unsolvable such as poverty, and unemployment can lead to a sense of hopelessness that can increase the possibility of suicide. Urban youth who know someone who was murdered are two times more likely to commit suicide while those who witness a stabbing are three times more likely (Joe and Kaplan, 2001). Those who have attempted once are at a greater risk for subsequent suicide attempts (Lyon, Benoit, O’Donnell and Getson, et al, 2000). It is, however, possible to make the study of African American history and the work of an activist empowering instead of destructive. Learning the history of the culture can lead one to feel a sense of pride that comes from being a member of a people who survived what few cultures could. Learning about people who progressed from years of being slaves to being doctors, lawyers, professors, teachers, and business people, to name a few, can be empowering. They moved from no education to masters and doctorate degrees. Once slated to be extinct by the 1920’s they continue to survive and advance. What decides which direction a person majoring in African American studies will chose? Is there a way we can help to assure a positive direction? There is a need to recognize, study and understand the effects of being a part of this field can have so that solutions can be developed. There is a lack of studies of the effects and the results of the effects of majoring in African American studies and being an activist. I hypothesize that the results of the studies would demonstrate that there can be intensive, possibly disastrous effects on African Americans who major in the field. There is also a need for awareness of the effects not only on the student, but also on the teacher, so that studying African American history and culture can be empowering instead of destructive. The following is a fictitious suicidal letter based on the feelings that may be experienced by those who major in the study of African American history and issues. To you who have discovered the shell I leave behind, plain brown and now still, and to the few with tears to shed and to the ones who ask why, I leave this explanation. I wish it were simpler for you and apologize for its length. If I was simply having problems or if my heart were broken from a fallen love, you could say, “Ah, poor thing. Why didn’t she get some help?” and then return to your life. But my story is long and deep. Many times I have asked, cried, begged for your help. Perhaps you did not know how to help or you did not hear. I think more that you did not understand the depth of my pain or the exhaustion of my struggle. After reading these pages you still may not understand. Even now that causes me to cry out in agony. It wasn’t you alone who shut your eyes. Nor do I blame you for failing to save me from taking my life. I have journeyed through this pain long enough to know that you do not recognize it and may not still. But you at least deserve an explanation for the coldness of this form that has hopefully been found with eyes closed so that no one must look into their faded darkness. I have chosen not to be politically correct as I have had to live. As I will not be here to hear the judgment that is placed upon me, I do not care. It is this caring that has helped to bring me to this place, or to this time would perhaps be more accurate. By now you may not even be caring of the language that I use as long as I get to the reason so that you will be able to complete the paperwork, close the chapter and go on. Even with my skin now an ashen tone, it is obvious that I am or was a woman of color, an African American, a Black woman, a sista!, a girlfriend!, a Negro, a Negress, a descendant of slaves, former slaves, and from rich African kingdoms. Less obvious is my being a descendant from people without color, Caucasians, European Americans, whites, slave owners, enslavers, brutal people from Europe who I have never known and who have displayed no interest in knowing me. I dutifully learned their collective histories during the many years that I was forced to receive what was said to be a well-rounded, accurate education of history. So I feel that I have given them enough of my time, mind, and energy, enough of my life. As I think about it, it is due to this side of my ancestry that I have taken my life. How can I blame you in your ignorance, you who I have never met, when it was my hand that accomplished this deed? There is really no one else to blame. I am now, I pray, at peace; a peace I have never known in life. Now you may be demanding of me an explanation, direct and honest, since you now feel accused and responsible. You are weary of the tales of how black skinned people suffer, do without, are treated as unequales and on and on. Yet have you ever thought of what I have lived because of your racism, your ideas, the treatment I have had to endure from you? I cannot wholly blame you, not personally, because I do not even know you. And you are, of course, not responsible for the choices I have made nor the direction my life has taken. You did not force me to dig so deeply into history that I covered my ears, screaming the suffering of millions of ancestors who wanted to be heard, who wanted everyone to know that even in death they could not find rest. Rest can only come when their stories have been heard. They rushed at me to tell them but it was too much for me, so much all at once that I cried out with them. I ran leaving them still in their disturbed darkness. Though it was not my will, I had to go back. It was my destiny to hear them, to help them, to attempt to free them. But they had to slow down. They had to talk to me one at a time of lost sons and daughters, of longing to find fathers and mothers, of rapes and sales and laboring hard in the fields. They could not just tell of their lashings but held me down so I would feel each blow while staring into the twisted face of the one doing the deed. My back bled. My voice was gone from ignored screams. My eyes were drained of tears. I, as they had, eventually stopped begging for mercy, for there was none in the eyes of the one who unleashed his fury on my back after having risen from laying between my legs. So they sat with me on a small patch of grass in the shadow of a tree. The sparkling cool river ran at our feet. I could see others waiting their turns in the distance, fearful that they may again frighten me off before their stories were told. They spoke, looking down or off into the distance, as if I would not believe the horror that had been their lives and that the peace they were promised in death did not come. They felt, truly believing that I could carry their stories, that I would tell them to those still alive. Then maybe they would find rest. Some reached out their cold hands from tattered dress and shirt sleeves to touch me for emphasis or to be sure that I was of the living. When they were done, they would gracefully rise as if a burden had indeed been lifted. They would leave, only to have another quickly take their place. One stayed longer than the others. Her dark face had a familiarness. “Great-grandmother?” I whispered in my heart. From her the story was the hardest, my flesh and my blood, the one responsible for my existence. For her I had my own questions, knowledge I needed. I explained to her that I did not want this calling – that it was too hard – too painful to carry so many voices and so many hundreds of years. Finally she stilled me with a gentle touch of her hand. I laid my head in her lap as she stroked my hair, promising to give me what strength she could. Her shining black face had known no smiles. She could not save me as she could not save herself or the children she bore her master. So now you see me as insane, claiming to have talked with the spirits of those long dead. Perhaps it was a dream or only a description of how one may feel majoring in this study of Black lives in this rich country. Let me put it in more acceptable terms for you so you will understand how one is “called”. Fight if they will, they must eventually follow the path that has been laid for them, fighting and kicking as I have done. In the end there is no resistance. We continue the struggle for rights to a full life in the United States. There is no top to this mountain that we must climb, only continuous rough terrain with always the possibility of falling. There are those who believe that we should forget our past, our history, our ancestors, who we are, where we are from, our experiences, and our accomplishments. I was told by supporters that if I helped one, changed one mind, or got one person to a least think, then I was successful. Yet it was those who I could not reach, whose eyes burned into mine with disdain, who remained deep in my memory. You have not had to live as I have lived. You have not had to think as I have had to think. You can shop without being followed. In airports your bags are not dusted for signs of gunpowder, even though you have never in your life touched a gun. You do not know the complete list of what are considered to be weapons when questioned at the Canadian border. Your food has never been spat in before being served to you in restaurants. You are waited on in stores, never skipped over or ignored as if you are invisible. You don’t have to think that at times being invisible would make your life simpler. I studied. I read. I listened and I watched. I took in the history, trying to numb the feelings but being thrown into the dark pit of tar. It is the fate of an artist to go too far to understand. I have tried to accomplish my calling to the best of my ability, but it has proven to be too much for me. As my words rolled off deaf ears, I have tried not to let the stern faces and folded arms affect my mission; though at times I was haunted by those piercing blue eyes. The hardest to bare was the fear in the eyes of the blond haired children as my brown body merely walked past. The continuous frustration of not being heard, believed, understood, or taken seriously has taken its toll. The miles I have traveled to go so short a distance only to lose much more has taken its toll. I should stop now, but you – you must always know why, have it totally explained so you don’t have to think. So I am forced to continue with this intense pain. Give me a moment to close my eyes and calm some of my spirit so I can go on. After a news event of the murder of a Black man while in jail or in prison or at a traffic stop or the mistreatment of a black child or yet another unsolved rape of a black woman or child, or if I am denied yet another service, talked down to, or have my success labeled as “ Well, I guess they have to fill their quotas,” I began to look for a place in the world that I can live safe and free. My mind scans the world’s countries to find one that is not tainted with prejudice and fear of my dark skin, golden brown, shiny and soft. There was a call, or another call, of another hate incident at another university and I reach for a bottle of pills that I don’t have or didn’t have until now. I have been saving them to have just enough or maybe one or two extra. There is no room for failure in this ending for I am too tired to try again. It seems that with this constant work of equality and equal rights that we are still taking unsteady baby steps, one forward and two back. We are always looking up the steep jagged mountain, never seeing the last peak. There is no end to this work. There is no time to lay down the weapons of war. There is only falling back into the trenches while bullets fly over head, taking a breath, two breaths with eyes closed and chest beating. Then we reload and jump back into the line of fire. Have I explained a reason to help you to understand? I have noticed during my short life that people insist on having everything explained to them quickly and shortly. They do not want to have to look anything up or feel any quilt, sorrow, or pain. I do not offer any apologies as I have had to for my entire life, as I am tired, just tired. It is because of you that I have over compensated, over tipped because you believed that I wouldn’t tip you. Tired from over smiling muscles so you wouldn’t fear me; from being overly honest making sure that you saw I could be trusted as you glanced out of the corner of your eye, as you never tired of following me through stores; as you crossed streets and danced away from me in your speech because you feared the darkness of my skin interpreted as darkness in me. When our enslaved ancestors were so down trodden that no word or touch could help them, they would let it be known through the singing in a slow moan, “Sometimes I feel like a mother less child, a long way from home, a long way from home.” I cannot count the many times I moaned so low. My death will be quick and sweet, as the suffering I have lived with has been too much to add to. All I long for is relief. Do not cry for my death, but shed tears for my life. I will wander through a dense darkness to the river that so many have crossed over. I will take hold of the thin rough black hand reaching out for mine, younger and light brown. She will say to me “It’s alright, Baby, Great-grandmother understands,” and I will be at peace. References Joe, S. & Kaplan, M.S. (2001). Suicide among African American men. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 31, 106-121. Lyon, M.E., Benoit, M., O’Donnell, R.M., Getson, P.R. (2000). Assessing African American adolescents’ risk for suicide attempts: Attachment theory. Adolescence, 35, 137, 121-134. Poussaint, A.F. & Alexander, A. (2000). Lay my burden down: Unraveling suicide and the mental health crisis among African-Americans. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.