If Racism Is Broadway, Narcissism Is Grand Central

22 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race

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American Narcissism, American Racism, Barbara Jeanne Fields, Black Reconstruction (1935), David Roediger, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, DSM-V, Narcissism, Racism, W. E. B. Du Bois

Grand Central Terminal Main Concourse in New York City, March 4, 2006. (Janke and Diliff via Wikipedia). Permission granted via cc-Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.

This is a subject matter that normally would be too complicated for me to write about here. But then again, the work of explaining any aspect of the human condition is complex work. Especially when addressing American racism, its origins, its subatomic parts, and its effect on humans beyond the material and physical. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Maya Angelou, bell hooks, and so many others have described the Black body and what the Black body has had to endure at the hands of American racism. But perhaps one of the most serious effort to address the psychological impact of American racism on Blacks and Whites was W. E. B. Du Bois’ in Black Reconstruction (1935). It’s a book that is the very definition of tome, covering twenty years of history with a sociological lens determined to cut to the marrow of what occurred during Reconstruction as if the reader was an eyewitness to each day’s happenings between 1860 and 1880.

Thanks in varying measures to Derrick Bell, David Roediger, Patricia Hill Collins, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Michael Eric Dyson, and many, many others, intellectuals and scholars have made much progress with the oft-quoted phrase “the wages of whiteness” over the past quarter-century. But while many have explained the wages of Whiteness, most haven’t tried to define it, especially when it comes to the psychological.

For a refresher, this was what Du Bois actually wrote about Whiteness and wages in Black Reconstruction:

“A sort of public and psychological wage,” Du Bois wrote on page 700. Most scholars have explained rather thoroughly the public or material wages of Whiteness, of American racism for Whites on a structural and institutional level. Many have attempted to do so on an individual or internalizing level. But Du Bois was one of a handful who attempted to explain both the collective and individual impetus for being comfortable in racism. A founding member of the field of American sociology, an expert American and Black historian, Du Bois in 1935 discussed with great explanatory power the nature of American racism and how it developed over time to trump class divides.

But this only gets at the material. As for the psychological, Du Bois spent a significant amount of his 760 pages in Black Reconstruction attempting to do so. Except that, as a sociologist, Du Bois explained the psychological wage primarily in terms of group and interpersonal dynamics, and not in terms of group thought or a sort of collective thought.

On page 52, though, Du Bois hits home with the following about American racism’s corrosive effect on those practicing it at the individual level:

What Du Bois described in 1935 was not just the effect of American racism on the individual Southern planter. If Du Bois had possessed a copy of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-V), what he described we would call narcissistic personality disorder in 2016. Phrases like “inflate the ego…beyond all reason,” “arrogant, strutting, quarrelsome kinglets,” “expected deference and self-abasement,” and “were choleric and easily insulted.” These could easily be “a persistent manner of grandiosity, a continuous desire for admiration, along with a lack of empathy,” the DSM-V general description of narcissism.

A couple of quotes and a general description of narcissism are likely insufficient to link Du Bois’ prescient nod to social psychology on the issue of American racism. This is what the DSM-V says about narcissistic personality disorder in full:

In order to determine if a patient may have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), a psychiatrist must determine if that patient meets at least any five (5) of the nine (9) standards below:

A grandiose logic of self-importance

A fixation with fantasies of unlimited success, control, brilliance, beauty, or idyllic love

A credence that he or she is extraordinary and exceptional and can only be understood by, or should connect with, other extraordinary or important people or institutions

A desire for unwarranted admiration

A sense of entitlement

Interpersonally oppressive behavior

No form of empathy

Resentment of others or a conviction that others are resentful of him or her

A display of egotistical and conceited behaviors or attitudes

(American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

Now there are actually far more serious personality disorders that can be part of a larger set of self-destructive, dangerous, or even lethal behaviors, in which narcissistic personality disorder can be entangled. Most individuals with narcissistic personality disorder are not dangerous or self-destructive, and often function as normal human beings. In other words, there are levels of narcissism here, from the ground floor to the edges of the known universe.

Ah, but the DSM-V is describing the behavior of individuals, and not that of a class of people or a society, like what Du Bois attempted to do in Black Reconstruction, right? Yes and no. Du Bois used one individual example after another to build the case that the “white laborer” had come to have the same aspirations for the “public and psychological wages” that the Southern planter class had obtained through generations of owning slaves. Only, Blacks by the time of Reconstruction were slaves no more. The best way for Southern White elites to provide poor Whites all of the amenities of American racism without the latter either revolting against them outright or joining up with Blacks to fight grinding poverty was to codify American racism in the form of Jim Crow.

But where I and Du Bois are not on the same page is in the nature of American racism and narcissism as variables. Du Bois essentially argued that the psychological wage of Whiteness was the effect of American racism on Whites over time. The problem is, where does American racism come out of psychologically and sociologically? The simple yet true answer is out of gaming an advantage through greed and the desire for profit, through fear and the disdain for those whom have been deemed lesser, and through a willful ignorance and ignoring of the condition in which one has left other human beings. And that, for those who are reading, is both racism and narcissism, two separate yet interdependent ideas that help to prop each other up.

Before digging deeper into this, there are two things I want to make clear. One is that to think about American racism and American narcissism as part of the collective culture, think first of an atom. If racism were an atom, narcissism is its neutron. An atom doesn’t necessarily need a neutron to be stable (think Hydrogen atom, for example), and neutrons can be used to split atoms. People can be individually or collectively racist without necessarily being narcissistic, in other words, but the two often go hand-in-hand. Or, one can think about racism as the result of the social construction of race (to slightly quote Barbara Jean Fields), while narcissism is a psychological construction from which socially-constructed racism can spring, and then the former can be reinforced by the latter.

However, do not get it twisted. Just because I am saying that narcissism is a part of racism and vice-versa does not make racism a psychological illness by any means. That narcissists often function normally in nearly all social settings means that the personality disorder is a flaw or weakness of the human condition, not a disease. Racism is the attempt to take as much advantage of this flaw for oneself or for one’s group as better than others, and then use that success to reinforce the belief that one person or one group is better than another by taking even more advantages, materially and otherwise. American racism and American narcissism are two bosom buddies, and intertwine and intermix much more freely in the American context than virtually anywhere else.

The Academic Conference: Likes and Dislikes

31 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, Patriotism, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh

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American Narcissism, Andrew Hartman, Christopher Lasch, Conference Presentations, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, Diversity of Thought, DSM, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Hamilton Crowne Plaza, Jackson Lears, Jonathan Holloway, No-Shows, Psychiatry, Psychology, Public Speaking, Randal Maurice Jelks, S-USIH 2015 Conference, Society of U.S. Intellectual Historians, US Imperialism, Washington DC

Summer Breeze, July 2014 (they served these at the hotel where the S-USIH Conference was held). (http://sommerbuffet.dk/).

This will not be a post in which I list every possible takeaway I’ve ever had from any conference or set of conferences. Instead, I have a few notable impressions to discuss, things of which the Society of U.S. Intellectual Historians 2015 Conference reminded me two weeks ago.

For one, October 17 was my first academic conference presentation in eight and a half years, my longest stretch without going in front of an academically trained crowd since before my first day of grad school in August 1991. It was a good presentation, not my best, but far from my worst. I presented as part of my panel on American Imperialism, American Narcissism, with my paper, titled “‘We’re #1:’ How US Imperialism and American Narcissism Reinforce Each Other.” My main points in the paper and in the presentation:

2 Cheers for American Exceptionalism, March 2010. (http://www.aei.org).

1. That historians and other scholars (really, other writers, other intellectuals, educators, psychologists, and social scientists) should take a closer look at the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel for Mental Disorders (a.k.a., the DSM) and maybe use it as a means for evaluating American culture and society as narcissistic (301.81, the code for narcissistic personality disorder as of DSM-IV-TR), rather than merely assuming that it is so based on simplistic observations. (I knew from my previous experience in grad school and through working for Western Psych in Pittsburgh and Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health that some historians would have trouble with the soft evidence of psychology).

2. That even though my paper concentrated on the period after 1945, my argument was far more comprehensive. My larger argument is that narcissism has always been a fundamental default position of American culture and society, rooted in part in imperialism, but part of the basic character of the nation from its outset as a group of English colonies.

It was kind of fun to present, but would have been even more fun if folks on my panel or in the audience challenged some of my ideas and evidence. That’s often the way to make a paper or a presentation even better. (For those who have an interest, a copy of the paper is here to download, but I do expect some feedback).

It was good to meet some folks I either hadn’t seen in years or had never met before, like Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Jonathan Holloway, and Jackson Lears. It was good to see my friend and one-time student Andrew Hartman as he facilitated the conference (flaws and all). Mostly, it was good to be able to get out of my own head and own writing, to hear others talk about some of the issue I care about from a perspective different from my own.

A bored audience, April 2012. (https://ispeakcomics.files.wordpress.com/).

But it wasn’t exactly like going to do the boogie-down at a Sade concert. Two things really stood out. One, academicians need serious public speaking training. The older I get, the more quickly I tire of watching presenters read their papers verbatim, as if the audience couldn’t download it and read it at their leisure. Even a mediocre presentation delivered as a speech is generally better than the best-read papers. Of course, even in the extemporaneous category, many academicians could still use lots of training and deliberate focus.

Two, where is the common courtesy when someone cannot make a conference to serve as a chair or present their work? The chair for my panel bagged out without so much as a tweet, much less an email or a telephone call. As the senior person on the panel, I became the chair the same afternoon I delivered my talk by default. Not a new thing, but a heads-up even that Saturday morning would’ve helped. I followed up with the derelict chair after the conference. He still has yet to respond to my message.

All I know is, I need to do more of this, especially if this idea of mine is to evolve into a larger project. But it can’t be me speaking only at academic conferences. Other settings, with other thinkers, old and young, disagreeable and full-fledged advocates, I’m in need of them all. If or when I do come through, though, please, please show up.

Aside

Sure I’ve Raised Money, But…

27 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon New York, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

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Academy for Educational Development, AED, Bob Beane, Capitalism, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, Exploitation, Fundraising, Grant-seeking, Maximizing Profits, Medicaid, Medicare, Mount Vernon Clinic, Partnerships for College Access and Success, PCAS, Presidential Classroom, Valerie Johnstone, Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health

Man on a hamster wheel gif, like constantly looking for money, July 26, 2015. (http://twitter.com).

Keep in mind that these are just observations, not me axe-grinding or feeling sorry for myself. My biggest observation is that raising money for others without reaping enough benefit for myself shows that even governmental and nonprofit organizations are just as prone to capitalistic exploitation as Walmart and Apple. And that I am not immune, nor have I ever been immune, to the pride and naiveté of production and exploitation.

Many times during my years in the nonprofit world as a manager or consultant, employers have asked me about my ability to raise money. I’ve done a pretty good job of that over the years. Fifteen minutes of work as an educational “closer” at Presidential Classroom led to a $25,000 grant from State Farm’s civic engagement work (a.k.a. service-learning) in 2000. I worked on a $1 million renewal grant from Lumina Foundation for Education for the college access and success initiative for which I served as deputy director during my last four years at the Academy for Educational Development (AED). I also raised $200,000 from Lumina for data collection for the initiative in 2005.

“I come here looking for money (Got to have it),” lyrics from Pet Shop Boys “What Have I Done To Deserve This” (1988), July 27, 2015. (http://nonprofitquarterly.org/).

I’ve indirectly raised funds from which I didn’t derive a benefit, either because the amount were too small for AED’s vast overhead and other direct costs (read as paying higher-ups salaries for the privilege of raising money on behalf of the now-defunct organization). Or because others used my curriculum vitae and my work for AED to garner grants that I never worked on. My last year at AED we turned down what would’ve been a $100,000 grant from Carnegie Corporation because it would’ve been too small, especially since we needed to collaborate with a sister organization on K-16 access and success work. We turned down potential smaller grants from other private foundations for similar reasons.

And after nine months of work off-and-on, the wife of a Pulitzer Prize winning-columnist for a Washington newspaper received a $250,000 grant from a corporate foundation in New York, based on my work. Because the AED higher-up in charge of the process worked with her as a personal favor — and didn’t put our proposal and implementation work into a contract — her socialite friend and head of a college fund organization received a grant with no strings attached, for AED or for me. I did get paid for my work, as I did it under the AED banner. But the fruits born from that work went outside the organization, to a person almost as duplicitous as the organization for which I once worked.

But in terms of fundraising, or at least, making money for an organization, absolutely nothing in my work history compares to what I did at nineteen. Yes, nineteen! The summer of ’89, I worked for Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health, out of the Mount Vernon, New York clinic, across the bridge from the Mount Vernon East Metro-North stop. After the previous long summer of unemployment followed by five days of homelessness and two more months of living on financial fumes, I was happy, really happy, to have gained steady employment all through ’89.

So happy that I didn’t notice how productive I was being in the office. I had the rather official title of Summer Intern, and had been told by the Director of Community Mental Health Programs in Bob Beane that he was “counting on me.” I came to the Mount Vernon clinic with Beane’s charge to “get their back-billing in order.” Since 1984, the clinic had regularly had its Medicaid and Medicare billing for psychiatric and psychological services rejected by the state-level health folks in Albany, mostly due to coding errors.

Graphic on DSM editions since 1952 (DSM-V is in its “beta-testing” phase), American Psychiatric Association, 2012. (http://life-surfing.com/).

Specifically, the clinic staff were putting incorrect codes from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders — in this case, DSM-III and DSM-III-R (with the III-R standing for version number three, revised edition) — on the state billing forms. There were other errors to be sure. Doctor’s names and patients names were often misspelled. Control numbers were incorrect. The proper signature wasn’t obtained. But well over ninety percent of the errors were DSM-III or DSM-III-R codes that staff had entered into a billing form incorrectly.

This was the summer of ’89, so the form itself was printed on a line printer, and the checking of such forms had to be done manually. It would take two or three weeks to hear from Albany about an incorrect code, a month to receive payment. After five years of coding errors, red tape, and the clinic’s administrative staff badly managed by one Valerie Johnstone, my job was to rectify as many of the old billing errors as I could before the summer came to a close.

In eight weeks’ time, despite all the other menial tasks Johnstone would sometimes have me do, as well as having to share the same billing computer with Beverly (who dealt with current billing, and was probably responsible for the majority of my back-billing work), I got through three cabinets’ worth of billing issues. I left at the end of August, I left for the friendly environs of Pittsburgh and Pitt, vaguely aware of how much money I’d made for the Mount Vernon clinic and for the county.

Screen shot of 100 East 1st Street and South 1st Avenue, where I toiled for Westchester County the summer of 1989 (and 1992), April 2012. (http://maps.google.com).

I found out in September that my work had made them $371,000! I was impressed, but then I quickly became depressed. My salary for Westchester County that summer was $5.90 per hour. Over eight weeks, my net income was $1,610. As an intern, I had no fringe benefits, not even a commuter allowance. In terms of ratios, for every dollar I made between June 26th and August 18th, Westchester County and the Mount Vernon clinic made $230.43!

No wonder the staff at the Mount Vernon clinic looked at me with a combination of bemusement and derision! I had shown them up, unknowingly, and allowed myself to be an exploitable resource. And though I had a guaranteed job for the next three years after that summer with Beane and Westchester County, there was no way I could ever make enough income to make up for that kind of profit-generation. So much for the idea of not-for-profit and government enterprises!

Unbearable Being Of Whiteness

24 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Work, Youth

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Cliven Bundy, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, DSM-IV, Education, Ethan Couch, Frazier Glenn Miller, Hate Crimes, Hypocrisy, Injustice, Racism, Terrorism, Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Wade Michael Page, Wages of Whiteness, White Supremacy, Whiteness

White supremacist and deadbeat grazing fee payer Cliven Bundy at his ranch, Bunkerville, Nevada, April 11, 2014. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters via http://www.newsweek.com).

There have been few things more disappointing than seeing how frequently the structures, institutions and individuals in this country cut Whites slack for things that would have me out of work, in jail or long dead. If I were a human rights attorney specializing in racial justice, I’d want to take a sledgehammer to my head at least five days a week, every single week, given the ridiculous things that occur and how the mainstream media reports them.

Cliven Bundy is the latest in a long, long, long line of White supremacists whom the media have turned into heroes. Bundy has the distinction of refusing to pay over $1 million in grazing fees for his cattle over a tw0-decade period, even though his cattle grazed on federally-owned land in Nevada. When federal agents came to his ranch to seize his cattle, instead of paying his fees, Bundy and his neo-Nazi/militia buddies brazenly displayed their guns and rifles for the whole world to see. Bundy and company complained that the government had violated their rights as ranchers — rights to an endless free lunch for their cattle, apparently.

The sad truth is, all one would have to do to change the perception here would be to make Bundy and the rest of his master-race-band Black. There would’ve been a shootout, and not necessarily with law enforcement, either. The mainstream media would’ve called them terrorists, militants, anarchists and Black Panther-wannabes. And that would be the end of the story.

Then there’s Ethan Couch, the now seventeen-year-old who ran over and killed four people on a road outside of Fort Worth, Texas, not to mention permanently disabling one of his teenage passengers. A judge sentenced Couch to ten years’ probation, in no small part because a psychologist testified that Couch suffered from affluenza. Affluenza, of course, is the inability to link bad behavior with consequences due to parents inadvertently teaching the lesson that wealth buys the privilege of not having to suffer any consequences. Last I checked, affluenza appears nowhere in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders.

Affluenza Awareness Poster Child (of character King Joffrey from Game of Thrones), April 24, 2014. (Roflbot via http://disinfo.s3.amazonaws.com/).

If I did this, even at the age of ten, my Black ass would be in juvenile detention, especially in Texas, and likely transferred to a high-security prison as soon as I started puberty. It wouldn’t have mattered if Dr. Phil himself had testified that I suffered from the poverty pox. I would’ve been treated as close to an adult in the Texas criminal justice system as the system would’ve allowed. The media wouldn’t have whispered a protest, much less bought the poverty pox defense or tried to treat it as a plausible psychological disorder (of course, grinding poverty does result in PTSD for millions, but let’s not tell that to the mainstream loonies).

So I’m tired. I’m tired of employers making excuses for lazy twenty-three year-olds whom happen to be White, saying that “they’re young.” As if someone incompetent and lazy in their work deserves more consideration than a Black man or woman in their mid-twenties because they are White and have a college degree? Ridiculous!

I’m tired of teachers and professors who explain away inconsistencies in someone’s academic record, saying “thery’re brilliant” or “he’s a genius.” Is boredom really an excuse for not working hard or completing assignments? Is a higher SAT score really a justification for ignoring borderline personality disorder or the potential for violent behavior? It is the epitome of arrogance to excuse immoral or criminal behavior on the basis of high analytical intelligence, but I’ve seen it enough times to know that it’s a normal part of Whiteness’ wages.

I’m tired of the mainstream media reporting the ludicrous as normal and the normal as ludicrous as they ignore their own complicity in upholding Whiteness’ wages. Frazier Glenn Miller (Overland Park, Kansas shooting, Jewish community center) and Wade Michael Page (Oak Creek, Wisconsin shooting, Sikh temple) committed acts of domestic terrorism, hate crimes based on Whiteness. But whenever these shootings occur, the mainstream theme talks about mental illness, about whether racism is an illness. Maybe in a couple hundred years, individual racism will be in DSM-XV. What about the structural and institutional racism that ensures the privileges of Whiteness, though?

Frazier Glenn Miller mugshot, April 14, 2014. (European Pressphoto Agency via http://nymag.com).

I’m tired of injustice being called justice. How can a kid in the back of a squad car in Arkansas shoot himself in the head with his hands handcuffed and his arms behind his back (that kind of contortionist act would be a highlight of Cirque de Soleil!)? Seriously? Marissa Alexander shoots a warning shot to ward off her abusive husband and protect her kids, but she can’t use self-defense as her defense? Come on!

I’m really am tired of the bullshit. It’s a wonder sometimes that I don’t have high-blood pressure (except when I’m dealing with incompetent nurses). But hey, the forces of Whiteness still have time to drive me there if I let them.

Bearing False Witness At Work – It Can Hurt

16 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

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Academy for Educational Development, AED, Bigotry, Bipolar Disorder, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, False Accusations, Hostile Workplace, Juan Mezzich, Ken, New Voices, New Voices Fellowship Program, Paranoia, Racism, Sexual Harassment, Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health, Western Psych, Western Psychiatric Institute & Clinic

Hannah Arendt on false witnesses, November 16, 2013. (http://izquotes.com/).

I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the fact that this week ten years ago, I endured what was the beginning of a three-month period of a hostile work environment (one that was already not-so-optimal to begin with). It was brought on by my then immediate supervisor’s paranoia and jealousy, and intensified by his then undisclosed bipolar disorder. I’ve written about my three years of hell with Ken before on this blog, most notably in “The Messiah Complex At Work, Part 1” from a couple of years ago.

What I haven’t really discussed at all was how I felt about all of this as I went through it. As a man, as a Black man, as a person who believed in social justice, including in a workplace in which we funded social justice projects. I’d only been accused of sexual harassment one other time, by a boss whose best friend had been harassing me at work for the better part of two months, in the early part of ’89. Now, fourteen years later, here was Ken, at an HR meeting he set up, accusing me of saying things that I never said, of thoughts that I never had.

I was already used to being guilty before being innocent. With police. In a public setting, like a supermarket or bookstore. But not at work, and for the most part, not while I was at Pitt or Carnegie Mellon. Why? Because I tended to be at my most guarded while at work back then. In fact, during an exit interview the year before, a former program assistant at New Voices said that I needed to be “more open” at work if a team like ours was ever to reach its full potential. She may have been right. If only I had bosses who were more open, more relaxed, less accusatory, and in Ken’s case, on his meds.

Archie Bunker from All In The Family (1971-78) screen shot, June 2013. (http://www.chicagonow.com/).

There are few things worse in one’s job or career than reckless false accusations. Even if proven completely untrue, there are some who’ll choose to look at those accused with less trust and more suspicion. And Ken, for all of his bluster about social justice, had proven himself to be as much of a bigot as former executive director at Presidential Classroom, an openly admitted bigot. He could’ve accused me of insubordination, of wanting his job, of not doing my job well enough. Instead, Ken relied on the whole hyper-sexualized Black male motif, as if my testosterone was dripping right out of my penis, like some animal in heat.

Of course, some of you will say, “He had untreated bipolar disorder. He didn’t know what he was doing. Cut him some slack.” No, I can’t and I won’t. As I’ve noted in another post regarding Ken’s condition, bipolar disorder doesn’t equal insanity or irrational behavior necessarily. I worked for Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health between ’89 and ’92, and for Western Psychiatric Institute & Clinic at Pitt between ’89 and ’91. I became pretty good at understanding the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders. I did learn a thing or two from having Dr. Juan Mezzich as a boss while I worked at Western Psych between my junior year and first year of grad school at Pitt.

Kingda Ka, the world’s tallest roller coaster, Six Flags Great Adventure, Jackson, NJ (Exit 7A, NJ Turnpike), September 23, 2006. (Dusso Janladde via Wikipedia). Released to public domain.

One of the things I learned was that bipolar disorder generally exaggerates existing thoughts and behaviors. The psychosis can often be exasperated by stressful situations. For those with the illness, the highs are way too high, the lows so low that suicidal thoughts can become prevalent. If one tends to be paranoid, the paranoia becomes heightened, as was the case with Ken. Still, even with bipolar disorder, he was acting on his bigoted and paranoia template, there long before bipolar disorder manifested itself in him as an adult.

I understood all of this, even as I went through months of accusations and arbitrary changes to my work schedule. But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t a part of me that felt rage, wanted revenge, wanted to take the physically and emotional stunted twerp and stuff him in a garbage can. Or that I didn’t come to work at AED every day between November ’03 and February ’04 with thought that I should just quit, turn around, go home, watch my newborn son Noah and figure out my next step. Most of all, there were times I wanted to choke Ken until he told the truth, that he was a jealous-hearted bastard who lied about me to HR in order to put me in my place as a Black guy working under a White guy.

But I didn’t. I didn’t because I knew that I was right. I knew, somehow, that things would work out in my favor. I knew that God and the universe would vindicate me. If my life is proof of anything, it’s proof that my truth wins out in the end. Those thoughts dictated my actions and counteracted any feelings of rage or violence I had during those cloudy days. To Jonathan Martin and so many others out there, I think I know how you feel right now. Please hang in there, and hang on to the truth.