MENTAL WELLNESS
Due to historical and ongoing systemic and individual racial trauma, (originating in slavery, food apartheid, environmental racism, housing discrimination and racialized capitalism) our Black/African American communities are suffering deeply often with internalized messages of inferiority from media, relationships and the overlaying systems of white supremacy.
Often this manifests in justified feelings of pain, anger, rage, frustration etc, that then become exacerbated in systems of care that treat them with inhumanity, as inferior or as tokens, beginning with schools, to policing, jobs, and in “helping” systems that often treat parents, grandparents and families, with a lens of white patriarchal, homophobic supremacy, that criminalizes our existence. This plays out overtime the lifespan with increased use of available coping mechanisms such as substance use, abuse, reliance upon underground work economies for survival, and targeting by the police and justice system.
The existing mental health system has failed our communities, and we are in dire need of accessible, pro-black mental health and wellness services.
POLICIES WE WANT
Create fully funded training pathways for Black/ African American youth through college and graduate school in programs that are positive and culturally reaffirming, with mentors, scholars, teachers and leaders who are modeling Black excellence for them throughout their pathways.
Provide fully funded training opportunities and educational opportunities for adults who are in programs, so that they can complete the process without exorbitant debt through until licensure should they choose.
Invest in non-pathologizing, positive Afrocentric modalities of mental health and healing that do not require diagnosis or “government tracking of MH challenges/opportunities.”
Reparations for the wealth extracted from our communities through environmental racism, slavery, food apartheid, housing discrimination and racialized capitalism in the form of corporate and government reparations focused on healing ongoing physical and mental trauma, and ensuring our access and control of food sources, housing and land.