Black males at a Florida barbershop get real about why brothers don’t seek help.
BY JENISE GRIFFIN MORGAN
FLORIDA COURIER
They’ve heard it all of their lives. Big boys don’t cry. Suck it up. Be strong. Be a man. – This story originally appeared in the Florida Courier on Feb. 27, 2014.
Those cultural teachings passed down to African-American males for generations remain intact today even as statistics show that Black men often don’t deal with what’s ailing them – physically and mentally. They commit suicide at about five times the rate of Black women and suicide is ranked the third-leading cause of death for Black males between 15 and 24 behind homicides and accidents.
Mental health was the topic of discussion for a group of Black men ranging from their 20s to 50s who meet regularly at Shear Excellence, a black-owned barbershop in Tampa.
They usually chew the fat on everything from politics to the destruction of the Black family nucleus.
On a recent Friday evening as the barbershop’s owner Donald Mitchell polished up his last fade, the men delved deep into the subject of mental health. It’s an uncomfortable subject they’ve never tackled even though recent headlines have highlighted a number of brothers living with serious mental illnesses, which includes major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Form of weakness
“As Black men, we were raised to be strong and taught that if we cry as little boys, that is not becoming,” said Willie Lucas, a married father of three who participates in the regular conversations at the Tampa barbershop. “In the back of our minds, we accepted that as a form of weakness so we dealt with it the best we could. ‘Don’t worry about it.
You are a man, it will get better, don’t give up, pray about it.’ I think in our culture, it has just became ‘normal’ behavior.”
Darrell Sterling, 32, said that culturally Black men are taught not to show mental weakness.
“We have a lot of negative influences in our culture that teaches us that we need to be hard, we need to save face, we need to be tough, we need to carry around a pistol, have your pants sagging, that’s all inclusive to being a man,” noted Sterling, a case manager for Salvation Army. “Mental health is something that we shy away from because we don’t know a lot about it.”
“The way it may be perceived in the community or to your homeboy, is, it may be perceived as he is being weak or soft because he has to go see a shrink or a psychiatrist or a therapist,” Sterling continued. “But at the same time, I understand that individuals do have chronic mental health issues and individuals have to go get treatment.”
Hurting and pretending
Major Alston, another one of the regulars at the barbershop, said oftentimes “we as Black males don’t talk about feelings, we don’t talk about things when we are hurting. We don’t talk about things that are very emotional and oftentimes we don’t get treatment.”
But if you go into other communities, individuals are getting treatment and they are taking antidepressants to help them cope, Alston said.
“It’s kind of pop culture now. Folks talk about it around the water cooler,” Alston said. “Nowadays there are really no negative connotations to taking antidepressants; it’s like everybody is taking them but for some reason in our community this stuff isn’t talked about.”
For Black men, telling people how you feel is a sign of weakness, Alston continued.
“We would much rather pretend that everything is okay when we are really suffering and hurting,” he said. “Some of that in our community steams from not having a nuclear family. A lot of us don’t have wives in our community. Someone we can confide in and talk to. Someone who can analyze us at home and say ‘something is not right.’”
Not too deep
The men at the barbershop said they likely would not seek mental health treatment unless ordered to do so. They jokingly referred to barbershop owner Donald Mitchell as their therapist, the person they talk to about various issues in their lives.
Mitchell, 45, a married father of two, has owned the barbershop for about 14 years. He acknowledges that the brothers who visit his shop share some personal details but often don’t get real deep.
During the Friday night discussion at the shop, Mitchell and his two barbers – Jay and Tevin Coney – both in their early 20s – mentioned several young Tampa men who had committed suicide over the past year.
Mitchell said he was “very, very surprised’’ to hear about the suicides. He talked about a young man in his 20s who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. “He had gotten into some trouble but didn’t have a history of trouble. He heard the police were looking for him. He didn’t want to go back to jail.’’
The barbershop owner admitted that his customers talk to him about a myriad of issues but not one has admitted that he needed professional help.
“I’ve never had one to say anything about being depressed,” he remarked. “They never call it depression. That may be what it was but they never have called it that. … For some reason, we just feel as though we’re supposed to be strong.’’
Focus on home life
Admitting that you’re hurting, he said, “doesn’t mean that you are not strong.’’
Sterling, who also is a former mental health crisis counselor, said the importance of mental health is often not taught in the Black community.
“We don’t address it in the home and parents don’t know how to identify it and that can cause a lot of issues,” remarked Sterling, who said mental illness runs in his extended family.
Lucas, who works in law enforcement, added that if “Mama is not home and Daddy’s in jail,’’ it creates an unstable environment for a child.
“Being able to communicate and have parents to go home to, a grandma to talk too, we had people in the home, whether you opened up or not, we still had those folk there,” he said. “Grandmothers now are 30 years old. How much experience can this person tell someone who is dealing with an issue that they don’t know how to deal with? They haven’t lived long enough. They don’t have the experience… It’s a huge issue.”
But it can be a double-edged sword if one does admit to having a mental illness. The legitimacy of the diagnoses can become into question, the men said.
Too many labels
“People who act out now-adays, we give them some clinical diagnoses when in fact, back in the old days we would say you are acting a fool (as) my grandmother used to tell us,” Alston said. “I am beginning to wonder if a lot of these terms are being manufactured and some academic is trying to create phenomenon to explain behavior. That’s the thing that concerns me.”
While Black males face a number of challenges and the concern over the increase of “labels” that are being given when it comes to mental health, the Black community must continue to examine itself, Alston continued.
“There is a lot of demand for the very stuff that is killing us, which is gangster rap music,” said Alton, who also is a father. “We purchase the product and then claim that the product is causing us harm. So, I don’t know who to blame for that but us. We have to stop supporting the things that are infused in our community that causes us to act a certain way.”
Alston went on to say that there are lyrics that suggest that “Black males don’t need to be fathers, don’t necessarily need to be in the household and mothers can raise their children on welfare. The Black male doesn’t feel the need or obligation to stay.
“That in itself emasculates a man and a lot of it is current-day society and where we place our values,” Alston added.
More discussions
The brothers who frequent Shear Excellence agreed that the serious conversations about Black men and mental health might need to continue.
Darren Watson, owner of Big Boss The Fruit Man, a Tampa-based produce business, had this to say: “What we probably haven’t done in the barbershop either is talk as men and talk about situations that we go through every day as men. Watson, who is married with two daughters, added, “We don’t sit down and say, ‘let’s have an open discussion on the floor as men about the things we are going through in life.’’
Jenise Griffin Morgan, senior editor of the Florida Courier, is a 2013-14 fellow of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism. She can be reached at Jmorgan@flcourier.com.