At the risk of sounding preachy (and I know there is a contingent that would sharply disagree with me), I want to point to something I call ‘Holding yourself b(l)ack. I knew someone who is a black man, who was sure that every hardship was due to his skin-color. Eventually I came to the conclusion that no one would deny there is racism outside of yourself, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be inside of yourself. In other words, this attitude would have damned every one of us people of color long before we won any civil rights at all.

This belief system can literally and spiritually kill us. There is no self-Love present and at Love Don’t Play, self-love is referred to in the 3-part greatest commandant: Love 1. God and Love 2. Your Neighbor as 3. Yourself. If you are struggling at all, take a note of this supreme law. This is likely what is lacking because when you realize that you are to Love yourself sin vanishes because you are better than that. To be more truthful You are better than Satan who convinces us all otherwise through the hereto unseen (darkness). Where the enemy comes to kill, steal and destroy, what he’s stolen from birth is our affections. Our affections towards him are then used against us in much the way an abusive lover convinces the subject to hate themselves.

But back to internal racism, there is a clear difference. A racist/bigoted person doesn’t have to know your name in order to get you to do his or her work for him. In fact, their works are rendered moot depending on our belief systems. This is a Christian blog after all; I’m writing this to help anyone who is experiencing this condition to stop damning themselves. To my earlier point, the fallout creates a devastating snowball effect. I have a pet peeve in this area: the ‘too many liquor stores in the Black community’ trope.

This has gone mostly quiet in our conversations lately but in the 90’s Black Awareness movement, there was much attention given to the prevalence of Liquor stores implicitly planted or unmitigatedly founded in low income (read, Black’) communities (I’ve nothing against the gentlemen in the clip linked to this sentence, by the way; they were doing God’s work). The theory was that it increased the prevalence of drunken/destructive behavior in these communities where affluent (read, White) communities were left pristine, free of related social ills.

So White people have to drive to the hood to by Alcohol now?

We need(ed) to learn to simply walk past the liquor store and here are a few reasons. 1. If you can think of a faceless family member who ruined familial bonds due to alcohol abuse and that you were able to ask them ‘Why did you leave us? Why did you let Alcohol ruin our family?’ If a person would accept the answer ‘because there are too many liquor stores in our community’, I would say that it’s possible they are struggling with a much bigger issue than what we’re discussing here, which is being able to discern personal responsibility. 2. If you are concerned about the Black community, then we should learn to stop expecting others to police it, particularly as the Black community is (in)famously complex, outsiders do not know what to bring to the proverbial cookout.

This is in our attitudes about the music as well, we make the song, send it to the radio station, go to the station to promote it and then say, ‘why do radio stations only play this kind of music’. Meanwhile, any DJ will walk down the street and hear the songs in question often enough from car radios, etc. I’m not saying it’s right as much as why in the world would a radio station know what to do with this? Are we really expecting them to step in and say this music is wrong and risk being accused of not playing Black music after all that promotion? Or more to the point, they’ve no idea how the Black community at large feels about the music and why would they? The Black community could do better by understanding where we are complicit in whatever wrong or engage perspective to understand that outside entities simply should not be expected to be moderators of our output; we are.

I don’t mind ranting, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point to scripture: The power of life and death is in the tongue, being sober minded is a must, and letting our moderation to be known is also a must. You cannot stop other Black people from saying The N Word as much as you can stop a White person, who is way more confused but often enough they just won’t say it. There was likewise a movement in the 90’s that ‘took the power back’ from the N-word. Took it back from who, actual Satan? Yet even if I feel like it’s an evil word, a person who says it would be better off not making excuses for it and simply to understand that nothing makes it a better word.

And yet further still, that theory is likely to eventually work in future generations as Gen Alpha will likely disregard the history of the word at some point or the generation(s) after them.

So who am I to judge? No one at all and in fact judging a person makes me afraid. Judge not less ye be judged. I will strongly distill this post into 2 points: 1. Let’s not wait for another entity to police us and 2. Let’s not do a Racist’s (or actual Satan’s) work for them.

Until next time, take care.

Gregory Longmore, LMHC is an online-only Christian Professional Mental Health therapist based in NYC.