The Shamanic View of Mental Illness, Part 2, Ask Nana

Question: 

"I remember som'e writing about this in some other work; and it makes complete sense. my only question is for example, take the case of "L" here who developed intense "post traumatic stress" from witnessing  ongoing violence at home  when she was a baby and child. so is the experience of the violence the necessary divine experience so that the ancestors could use her as a healer, making her emotional open as a result of the experience. Or is the violent experience a suboptimal experience that then "opens" the way for ancestors to come and utilize her?

In either case, how does one inform someone, say, "L" about the possibilities of this shamanic process. real talk" SMR  

Trauma causes a split in the psyche. Imagine the psyche as an electromagnetic frequency flowing from the “brain” into the Universe, like a long cord of energy. What trauma does is cause breakages or blockages in that frequency. When there is a breakage, it opens a space in which other energies can enter. Couple that with the fact that most people are outside of their bodies during the traumatic experience.

While outside or when there is a breakage other energies can enter and effect the mind and affect the emotions of the traumatized person. In some cases the breakage can be repaired without outside assistance, in most cases there is a need for some help and assistance for the traumatized person. If the assistance does not come from the physical plane, i.e., counseling or mentoring, the person’s psyche may attempt to heal itself but this may not be as successful, it does depend on each individual. 

Nevertheless, the breakage and/or opening allows for other entities good and not so good to enter. In our African spiritual traditions we find that the “gods” come or possess quite strongly when a person is distressed in some way, mentally or physically. In this instance they come to heal the person, and the Africans know this and allow the person to go with the energy of the “god” and let it fill their bodies to cure and heal them.

Western culture does not allow this, particularly when they prefer to medicate or suppress the energy of these entities. They don’t understand the mechanics of it, and in many instances these people end up in insane asylums. Malidoma Some' may be calling them healers because in his tradition as it is in Ghana, when a person is mounted by a “god” the “god” is calling them to service.

On her part, Nana Maanu, a Nana Asuo Gyebi Komfo spoke about domestic violence and appealed to the government to enforce laws that takes care of violators.

Another aspect of this is blockage that may also occur during a traumatic experience. That may be two or more entities attempt to come in or non-productive energies come in and this alters the normalcy of the individual psyche and may lead to personality disorders such as schizophrenia, bi-polar, manic/depression, adjustment disorders, ADHD, ODD, etc. Depending on the energy of the entity, determines the manifestation of it outwardly through the individual.

When I first started my journey into African traditional spirituality, an Obatala Priestess told me, that many people in an insane asylum who appear to manifesting other than their own personalities are simply possessed with some “spiritual entity” and given the right rituals they could be “cured” or managed so that they can understand what’s happening to them. She pointed out that, for those who have eyes to see, the certain repetitive mannerism, facial expressions and bodily gestures point to the presence of a certain deity. I have often said, that at a spiritual ceremony, where people are possessed, if you turned off the African drumming you would think you were in an insane asylum due to the numerous repetitive sounds and gestures that the people do during a visitation.

Definable insanity is not always present to the point of needing to have the person committed. Addictions, anger, extreme passions, severe depression, psychosis, neurosis, paranoia, sociopathic and psychopathic behaviors often escape notice till the person does something extremely harmful to themselves or some one else. In other words, we are all a bit “touched” we just are able to manage our lives in a somewhat sane manner.

So, in the African traditionally spirituality, the so called Shamans know that something has caused a trauma for the person and therefore opened them up to have a visitor, or other entity take over their physical body. What they then do is determine what spirit it is and attempt to communicate with it. If it is an amenable friendly spirit, they engage it, ask its mission and allow it to do its healing work. If it is not, then they do a ritual to get rid of it. Whatever the case may be, the fact that the person was able to carry another spirit inside of them is a sign that the Ancestors, gods, etc are able to penetrate that person psyche. To them, anyone who can be penetrated is a healer because now they can use that same space to help others. In other words, they can learn to consciously “separate” and go into the other realm, commune with the Ancestors or beneficent entities and bring the knowledge back to the community. Thereby, helping and healing the community. That takes training. And while many people may have experienced trauma, that does not mean that they are psychically in a secure space to do healing and/or entertain other entities in their psyche.

Malidoma Some' did not explain all of this because most folks reading it would not understand the mechanics of it and how it is done. In fact, if it is not done correctly it can send a person off the deep end, never to return again. Possessions of any entity are dealt with with the utmost of scrutiny, reverence, respect and control. So more than likely, that young man he spoke about went through some training to center himself and give him keys on how to handle it when he feels the “presence” of another energy within him.

As far as "L" is concerned, there is very little that you can do, because you have not been trained to deal with spirits. I also doubt if sharing this information with her will help her for a number of reasons.

1. Entities that have been with someone from childhood are not easily removed and put up a lot of resistance
2. Entities can turn the person against anyone attempting to help them.
3. If the person is medicated in any way or has a really poor diet, then a serious distortion can occur causing the person to be worse than they were.
4. Entities will feign saneness just to make you go away. Tigare was notorious for that, he would possess someone, fall asleep and you would assume he was gone, but those who know how he operates knew that there was only one way for him to truly leave.
5. Entities can harass a person while they are sleeping causing sleep disturbances, nightmares, sleepwalking and a host of other sleep disorders.

All in all, the article barely scratches the surface of the entire situation of mental health and mental sanity vs mental disease and mental insanity on a spiritual level, but it is quite clear to those who know that there is a need in most cases to have some type of spiritual analysis done and then a ritual prescribed so that the true healing can take place and the person can be released from the distortion cause by the breakage or blockage and move towards their destiny of being a healer.

Sango, Nigeria, West Africa 

In Ghana, you will see the priests as they come back asking questions about where they've been, what they said, and how they acted. They will also feel a bit “off” from their normal selves, etc. In these cases the community is there to assist and help them travel back to the physical world unharmed. And even that takes training on how to handle someone who has just finished being possessed. It is a serious science with several protocols in place to as not to make a mistake and harm the person physically or psychically.

Let me also add, that this does not mean that from the African spiritual perspective, all healers have been traumatized in some way. Some people are able to separate from their physical bodies and commune with entities in the other worlds quite easily and upon request. But, in the case where the behavior of the individual is distorted, counter-productive, harmful to themselves and others, a closer look is taken, and rather than simply punishing them or committing them to isolation, they look for deep spiritual indicators. Some of these indicators may manifest as what Western Society calls Mental Illness when in the African mind-set, these distortions need to be addressed, analysed, placated or banished through rituals designed for this purpose.

Further Reading: The Shamanic View of Mental Illness

The Shamanic View of Mental Illness

The Shamanic View of Mental Illness
In the shamanic view, mental illness signals "the birth of a healer," explains Malidoma Patrice Somé.

Thus, mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born. What those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara people regard as "good news from the other world."

The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community that needs to be communicated from the spirit realm.

"Mental disorder, behavioral disorder of all kinds, signal the fact that two obviously incompatible energies have merged into the same field," says Dr. Somé.

These disturbances result when the person does not get assistance in dealing with the presence of the energy from the spirit realm. One of the things Dr. Somé encountered when he first came to the United States in 1980 for graduate study was how this country deals with mental illness.

When a fellow student was sent to a mental institute due to "nervous depression," Dr. Somé went to visit him.

"I was so shocked. That was the first time I was brought face to face with what is done here to people exhibiting the same symptoms I've seen in my village."

What struck Dr. Somé was that the attention given to such symptoms was based on pathology, on the idea that the condition is something that needs to stop.

This was in complete opposition to the way his culture views such a situation.

As he looked around the stark ward at the patients, some in straitjackets, some zoned out on medications, others screaming, he observed to himself,

"So this is how the healers who are attempting to be born are treated in this culture. What a loss! What a loss that a person who is finally being aligned with a power from the other world is just being wasted."

Another way to say this, which may make more sense to the Western mind, is that we in the West are not trained in how to deal or even taught to acknowledge the existence of psychic phenomena, the spiritual world.

In fact, psychic abilities are denigrated.

When energies from the spiritual world emerge in a Western psyche, that individual is completely unequipped to integrate them or even recognize what is happening. The result can be terrifying. Without the proper context for and assistance in dealing with the breakthrough from another level of reality, for all practical purposes, the person is insane.

Heavy dosing with anti-psychotic drugs compounds the problem and prevents the integration that could lead to soul development and growth in the individual who has received these energies.

On the mental ward, Dr Somé saw a lot of "beings" hanging around the patients, "entities" that are invisible to most people but that shamans and psychics are able to see.

"They were causing the crisis in these people," he says.

It appeared to him that these beings were trying to get the medications and their effects out of the bodies of the people the beings were trying to merge with, and were increasing the patients' pain in the process.

"The beings were acting almost like some kind of excavator in the energy field of people. They were really fierce about that. The people they were doing that to were just screaming and yelling," he said.

He couldn't stay in that environment and had to leave.

In the Dagara tradition, the community helps the person reconcile the energies of both worlds,

"the world of the spirit that he or she is merged with, and the village and community."

That person is able then to serve as a bridge between the worlds and help the living with information and healing they need.

Thus, the spiritual crisis ends with the birth of another healer.

"The other world's relationship with our world is one of sponsorship," Dr. Somé explains.

"More often than not, the knowledge and skills that arise from this kind of merger are a knowledge or a skill that is provided directly from the other world."

The beings who were increasing the pain of the inmates on the mental hospital ward were actually attempting to merge with the inmates in order to get messages through to this world.

The people they had chosen to merge with were getting no assistance in learning how to be a bridge between the worlds and the beings' attempts to merge were thwarted.

The result was the sustaining of the initial disorder of energy and the aborting of the birth of a healer.

"The Western culture has consistently ignored the birth of the healer," states Dr. Somé.

"Consequently, there will be a tendency from the other world to keep trying as many people as possible in an attempt to get somebody's attention. They have to try harder."

The spirits are drawn to people whose senses have not been anesthetized.

"The sensitivity is pretty much read as an invitation to come in," he notes.

Those who develop so-called mental disorders are those who are sensitive, which is viewed in Western culture as over-sensitivity. Indigenous cultures don't see it that way and, as a result, sensitive people don't experience themselves as overly sensitive.

In the West,

"it is the overload of the culture they're in that is just wrecking them," observes Dr. Somé.

The frenetic pace, the bombardment of the senses, and the violent energy that characterize Western culture can overwhelm sensitive people.

Schizophrenia and Foreign Energy
With schizophrenia, there is a special,

"receptivity to a flow of images and information, which cannot be controlled," stated Dr. Somé.

"When this kind of rush occurs at a time that is not personally chosen, and particularly when it comes with images that are scary and contradictory, the person goes into a frenzy."

What is required in this situation is first to separate the person's energy from the extraneous foreign energies, by using shamanic practice (what is known as a "sweep") to clear the latter out of the individual's aura.

With the clearing of their energy field, the person no longer picks up a flood of information and so no longer has a reason to be scared and disturbed, explains Dr. Somé. Then it is possible to help the person align with the energy of the spirit being attempting to come through from the other world and give birth to the healer.

The blockage of that emergence is what creates problems.

"The energy of the healer is a high-voltage energy," he observes.

"When it is blocked, it just burns up the person. It's like a short-circuit. Fuses are blowing. This is why it can be really scary, and I understand why this culture prefers to confine these people. Here they are yelling and screaming, and they're put into a straitjacket. That's a sad image."

Again, the shamanic approach is to work on aligning the energies so there is no blockage, "fuses" aren't blowing, and the person can become the healer they are meant to be.

It needs to be noted at this point, however, that not all of the spirit beings that enter a person's energetic field are there for the purposes of promoting healing.

There are negative energies as well, which are undesirable presences in the aura. In those cases, the shamanic approach is to remove them from the aura, rather than work to align the discordant energies
  

Alex: Crazy in the USA, Healer in Africa
To test his belief that the shamanic view of mental illness holds true in the Western world as well as in indigenous cultures, Dr. Somé took a mental patient back to Africa with him, to his village.

"I was prompted by my own curiosity to find out whether there's truth in the universality that mental illness could be connected with an alignment with a being from another world," says Dr. Somé.

Alex was an 18-year-old American who had suffered a psychotic break when he was 14.

He had hallucinations, was suicidal, and went through cycles of dangerously severe depression. He was in a mental hospital and had been given a lot of drugs, but nothing was helping.

"The parents had done everything - unsuccessfully," says Dr. Somé. "They didn't know what else to do."

With their permission, Dr. Somé took their son to Africa.

"After eight months there, Alex had become quite normal, Dr. Somé reports.

He was even able to participate with healers in the business of healing; sitting with them all day long and helping them, assisting them in what they were doing with their clients... He spent about four years in my village."

Alex stayed by choice, not because he needed more healing.

He felt,

"much safer in the village than in America."

African Shaman/Priest

To bring his energy and that of the being from the spiritual realm into alignment, Alex went through a shamanic ritual designed for that purpose, although it was slightly different from the one used with the Dagara people.

"He wasn't born in the village, so something else applied. But the result was similar, even though the ritual was not literally the same," explains Dr. Somé.

The fact that aligning the energy worked to heal Alex demonstrated to Dr. Somé that the connection between other beings and mental illness is indeed universal.

After the ritual, Alex began to share the messages that the spirit being had for this world.

Unfortunately, the people he was talking to didn't speak English (Dr. Somé was away at that point). The whole experience led, however, to Alex's going to college to study psychology.

He returned to the United States after four years because,

"he discovered that all the things that he needed to do had been done, and he could then move on with his life."

The last that Dr. Somé heard was that Alex was in graduate school in psychology at Harvard. No one had thought he would ever be able to complete undergraduate studies, much less get an advanced degree.

Dr. Somé sums up what Alex's mental illness was all about:

"He was reaching out. It was an emergency call. His job and his purpose was to be a healer. He said no one was paying attention to that."

After seeing how well the shamanic approach worked for Alex, Dr. Somé concluded that spirit beings are just as much an issue in the West as in his community in Africa.

Yet the question still remains, the answer to this problem must be found here, instead of having to go all the way overseas to seek the answer.

There has to be a way in which a little bit of attention beyond the pathology of this whole experience leads to the possibility of coming up with the proper ritual to help people.
 

  

Longing for Spiritual Connection
A common thread that Dr. Somé has noticed in "mental" disorders in the West is,

"a very ancient ancestral energy that has been placed in stasis, that finally is coming out in the person."

His job then is to trace it back, to go back in time to discover what that spirit is. In most cases, the spirit is connected to nature, especially with mountains or big rivers, he says.

In the case of mountains, as an example to explain the phenomenon,

"it's a spirit of the mountain that is walking side by side with the person and, as a result, creating a time-space distortion that is affecting the person caught in it."

What is needed is a merger or alignment of the two energies,

"so the person and the mountain spirit become one."

Again, the shaman conducts a specific ritual to bring about this alignment.

Dr. Somé believes that he encounters this situation so often in the United States because,

"most of the fabric of this country is made up of the energy of the machine, and the result of that is the disconnection and the severing of the past. You can run from the past, but you can't hide from it."

The ancestral spirit of the natural world comes visiting.

"It's not so much what the spirit wants as it is what the person wants," he says. "The spirit sees in us a call for something grand, something that will make life meaningful, and so the spirit is responding to that."

That call, which we don't even know we are making, reflects,

"a strong longing for a profound connection, a connection that transcends materialism and possession of things and moves into a tangible cosmic dimension. Most of this longing is unconscious, but for spirits, conscious or unconscious doesn't make any difference."

They respond to either.

As part of the ritual to merge the mountain and human energy, those who are receiving the "mountain energy" are sent to a mountain area of their choice, where they pick up a stone that calls to them.

They bring that stone back for the rest of the ritual and then keep it as a companion; some even carry it around with them.

"The presence of the stone does a lot in tuning the perceptive ability of the person," notes Dr. Somé.

"They receive all kinds of information that they can make use of, so it's like they get some tangible guidance from the other world as to how to live their life."

When it is the "river energy," those being called go to the river and, after speaking to the river spirit, find a water stone to bring back for the same kind of ritual as with the mountain spirit.

"People think something extraordinary must be done in an extraordinary situation like this," he says.

That's not usually the case. Sometimes it is as simple as carrying a stone.
  

A Sacred Ritual Approach to Mental Illness
One of the gifts a shaman can bring to the Western world is to help people rediscover ritual, which is so sadly lacking.

"The abandonment of ritual can be devastating. From the spiritual view, ritual is inevitable and necessary if one is to live," Dr. Somé writes in Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community.

"To say that ritual is needed in the industrialized world is an understatement. We have seen in my own people that it is probably impossible to live a sane life without it."

Dr. Somé did not feel that the rituals from his traditional village could simply be transferred to the West, so over his years of shamanic work here, he has designed rituals that meet the very different needs of this culture.

Although the rituals change according to the individual or the group involved, he finds that there is a need for certain rituals in general.

One of these involves helping people discover that their distress is coming from the fact that they are,

"called by beings from the other world to cooperate with them in doing healing work."

Ritual allows them to move out of the distress and accept that calling.

Another ritual need relates to initiation. In indigenous cultures all over the world, young people are initiated into adulthood when they reach a certain age. The lack of such initiation in the West is part of the crisis that people are in here, says Dr. Somé.

He urges communities to bring together,

"the creative juices of people who have had this kind of experience, in an attempt to come up with some kind of an alternative ritual that would at least begin to put a dent in this kind of crisis."

Another ritual that repeatedly speaks to the needs of those coming to him for help entails making a bonfire, and then putting into the bonfire,

"items that are symbolic of issues carried inside the individuals... It might be the issues of anger and frustration against an ancestor who has left a legacy of murder and enslavement or anything, things that the descendant has to live with," he explains.

"If these are approached as things that are blocking the human imagination, the person's life purpose, and even the person's view of life as something that can improve, then it makes sense to begin thinking in terms of how to turn that blockage into a roadway that can lead to something more creative and more fulfilling."

The example of issues with an ancestors touches on rituals designed by Dr. Somé that address a serious dysfunction in Western society and in the process "trigger enlightenment" in participants.

These are ancestral rituals, and the dysfunction they are aimed at is the mass turning-of-the-back on ancestors.

Some of the spirits trying to come through, as described earlier, may be,

"ancestors who want to merge with a descendant in an attempt to heal what they weren't able to do while in their physical body."

"Unless the relationship between the living and the dead is in balance, chaos ensues," he says.

"The Dagara believe that, if such an imbalance exists, it is the duty of the living to heal their ancestors. If these ancestors are not healed, their sick energy will haunt the souls and psyches of those who are responsible for helping them."

The rituals focus on healing the relationship with our ancestors, both specific issues of an individual ancestor and the larger cultural issues contained in our past.

Dr. Somé has seen extraordinary healing occur at these rituals.

Taking a sacred ritual approach to mental illness rather than regarding the person as a pathological case gives the person affected - and indeed the community at large - the opportunity to begin looking at it from that vantage point too, which leads to,

"a whole plethora of opportunities and ritual initiative that can be very, very beneficial to everyone present," states. Dr. Somé.

 What a Shaman Sees in A Mental Hospital

Return to Shamanism

Return to The Psychic Universe

Return to The Deadly Industry of Psychiatry

Black-ish Trailer, Would You Watch This Series? Yes/No Why?

Black-ish Trailer, Would You Watch this? Yes/No Why?

Watch First Full Trailer For 'Black-ish' Starring Anthony Anderson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Laurence Fishburne

http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/watch-teaser-for-black-ish-starring-anthony-anderson-tracee-ellis-ross-laurence-fishburne

I laughed at the trailer. I can also relate. I can relate to the father. I went to catholic school grade school and high school, and off to an all girls' college who was seeking to reach a quota for federal funding and PR. My mother was strong about being black in America, but  she did not do it to the point of identifying with her culture from Africa, or not even identifying with African American culture. She did it because it had become a popular thing to do. We are talking about the 60's.

Angela Davis

My mom was one of the first people I knew to have an Afro hairstyle. But again, not for the cultural aspect of it, but because it was popular. She had fried our hair up until that point. In fact, she fried the hair of other friends in the community we lived in. I can still remember that smell of frying hair.

She didn't talk about black power, or to be young gifted and black, nor did she wear a dashiki, or any other African garb. She wasn't a nationalist, socialist, communist or a fan of Angela Davis. She was always changing her hairstyle so I guess, it was just a change of hairstyle that she was after. And let me not forget, my mother was a rebel, in her own right, and since wearing an Afro meant you were rebelling against the system, well she did it, just to be rebellious.

Left, me with my Afro @graduation, 1969

At the time, I did not see it as rebellion. I thought she was expressing her strong sentiment about her African heritage. Quite frankly, I took that literally and want one myself, just like mom so I could identify with her and possibly make her happy one day????? Like I said, I can relate to this story line.

We grew up in North Philadelphia, a part of Philadelphia, where we were constantly being reminded of how it used to be all white years ago and how after the "blacks" moved in the property value and neighborhood went down, down, down. There was an elder gentleman who had a shoe shine stand on the corner of 29th & Dauphin Streets... He would hire young boys in the area to help him shine shoes. That would be his story, whenever you walked by you would hear him talk about all the white folks that use to live in the area, and now look at it. Well, the area had become all black. Black business, black stores, black churches, black dentist, black doctor, black shoe repair man, black milk man, black post man. In fact, the entire area was "black" except for the insurance man who visited homes on Saturday morning, the landlords, and the man who owned the fish store. Well, I must admit that the school, though full of black people, only had white priests, and nuns... In fact, though I wanted to grow up and be the only black nun I knew, I doubted that I would NOT be the only Black nun in the entire world!! Ha, I found another in college years later.

Somehow, I managed to truly identify with my African culture. I was inclined towards African dance, and

Me @ African Dance Performance, 1968

African fabrics, and while I didn't have access to African fabrics during those days, I managed to create something from some fabrics that looked African, at least to me. I doubt that my emphasis on African culture would have happened had it not been for my perception that my mother was into it.

When I went to college, there were 7 African Americans on campus of 1500 students. My mother told me to go to that college. She knew about racism. I knew she knew, though it was not spoken aloud, except the little innuendos that were said when we shopped in a store that was not black owned. I would watch my mother transform and speak "proper" English so that she could impress the cashier. She would do that on the phone too, when she was making important business calls. It was funny to watch her transformation, but we knew deep inside, she wanted to appear educated and talking like we did in the house among ourselves, friends and family, did not make us appear educated. So again, I can relate.

My mother's agenda for encouraging me to go to an all white, catholic girls college was simple. "You are a fly in a bowl of milk. They will not, not teach their own, simply because you are there." We knew what that meant on so many levels. I would definitely get a good education because they give their own a good education. I may miss my "black" friends, but that's no problem, I can always come home on school breaks to be with them, and... after college, I will still be "black in America". Yeah, I can relate. Plus, I really wouldhn't have too much trouble getting along there, my high school was 75% white. It wasn't too popular for African Americans to be Catholic during those days. Those of us who went to Catholic School were often teased and called "stuck-up" mainly because Catholic school was not free, like public school, and if your family could afford Catholic school, you must have had some money. At least enough to put you in a class slightly upper than the rest of the neighborhood folks. This perception was hard to comprehend, since we lived in the same neighborhood as everyone else, but Catholic education was considered elite during those days. It was brutal, but that's a topic for another blog.

In 1969, I went to Marywood College, in Scranton, PA. I have to admit it was a culture shock. Grass, trees,

Marywood University

mountains and open spaces????? Full meals cooked 3X's a day??? Food I had never seen eaten before. White people doing the laundry, cutting the grass, picking up the trash and serving us meals in the Dining Hall?? Yeah that was a culture shock for certain. I had to get used to that. In fact, when they hired ONE African american Service Staff person, they called me in to ask, "How should we treat her?" I was baffled by the question. We never wondered how we should treat white people, what was the problem? My response may have been a bit abrupt but I said, "Treat her like a human being, like you treat everyone else around here." Not quite the answer she expected, but I was not going to give her a crash course on race relations because they decided to hire ONE Black person as personnel. I wondered who she asked when she got the 7 black students to come to her college.

I am not sure if it was the times, the protests or my desire to affirm my identity, but after a while I had to do
something. I started to lose myself, the way I spoke changed. I began to speak "proper, just like my mom. I did not like that one bit, and I made a concerted effort to reclaim my identity by speaking Ebonics (Black English). Of course I did not use it in my research, term papers and tests, but out of the class, I had to, it was all I had to hold on to. My roommate made innocent fun of me, she would mimic my saying "Maf" and Baf" "You're going to Maf class and you gonna take a baf." She was wonderful and very very cool, we would laugh together, and her mother made excellent brownies, but I digress. After a while I found myself speaking Ebonics on purpose, I was getting lost in the sauce.

One day, Arthur Hall Afro-American Dance Ensemble came to Scranton! What a shot in the arm that was for me. I seemed to remember that I was African, Black and that I could hold on to my identity and still attend an all white college. I totally embraced this concept and started a black power movement on campus. I started a Black Student Union. BOSS, Black Organization of Students in the Struggle, by now there were 9 of us. We represented the Macrocosm, as every single type of "us" was there.

Arthur Hall Afro-American Dance Ensemble

I read "Black Muslims in America", "The Souls of Black Folks", "Black Cargoes" "The Outsider", "Black Rage"  Nikki Giovanni and several other books about Black Americans that I found, interestingly in the College Library. Imagine that!

I started wearing the "Black Power" pins and pendants, red, black and green hat and belts, a khaki jacket and walked around campus like I was a genuine black panther. My English Professor, called me a Pink Panther.... I didn't take it to mean she was racist or demeaning. Besides, when I found out what the Black Panthers were really about I knew what she meant.

Nevertheless, I became a spokesperson for everything black. Being the most outspoken and outgoing of all the other Black Students on campus, it fell upon me to explain it all to them. There I was in the middle of conversations about being black in America. I would discuss what growing up was like for me in my neighborhood, where we never used the term impoverished, deprived or ghetto. We were resourceful and creative, making a way of no way, making a dollar out of 15cents.

The Flip Wilson Show - "Geraldine" + Bill Cosby... by videohollic

I was in the middle of discussion attempting to explain to folks that Flip Wilson, WAS NOT YOUR AVERAGE BLACK MAN IN AMERICA, when that is all they knew. I was in the middle of discussion with folks who had never seen an Black person up close and were extremely curious as to why my hair grew up and out instead of down. I became the First African American Freshman Class President! Why?? Because I stood out, imagine that, and they didn't know each other or who to vote for, so why not our token black girl.

I was in the middle of my own desperation along with a Black Classmate, who could tolerate being in that all white environment anymore!!! So one night, we made flyers and put them under the doors of the Nuns who lived in the dorms with us, along with other adult staff who lived in the dorms with us. What did our signs say?

BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL     POWER TO THE PEOPLE      BLACK POWER   

We did that, it was a desperate attempt to retain, reclaim, reaffirm and identify with our heritage, a heritage we knew so little about, but one we felt the need to hold onto at all costs. So yes, I can relate.

Baba Tunde Olatunji-Drums of Passion

We knew we were black in a bowl of milk, and that racism was alive and well, no matter how much those around us pretended it wasn't. We were in the middle of the Civil Rights movement, they had just raided the Black Panthers in Philadelphia, strip them naked, and posted that on the front of Newsweek. They were fire bombing, lynching and terrorizing black folks in the south. They had just opened the restaurants for black folks to come to along with white patrons. They had just killed Dr. Martin Luther King! Yeah, we were certainly aware of the racism but we knew little about our African Culture. And for certain, the administration of the school knew little as well, so when they asked me to do an African Dance for their World Cultures Course, they never knew I was making those steps up and dancing to Baba Tunde Olatunji Drums of Passion. I may have been a fly in a bowl of milk, but I never lost my wings, or my desire to fly.

I remember my trips home, and how different I felt being among African Americans in my familiar environment than I did on campus. Every trip home required a major adjustment.

Me. 1969 Freshman in College

I mentioned the Microcosm of the Macrocosm... truly we were. Each one of us represent a different experience being in the African Diaspora. During my stay there I manage to find out where each of these young ladies' head were. Again, the Microcosm of the Macrocosm. We are as varient in our expression in the African diaspora as we are in our skin color. Our identities span the gamut of Black Nationalism to Integration.
How did we each experience our own bowl of milk??
1.  Me (Freshman) - I have already explained my role.
2.  KG (Freshman) - from South Philadelphia and sincerely not interested in being in this bowl of milk. She looked forward to leaving next semester and made no bones about wanting to get out!! She didn't hate white people she just did not want to live anywhere near them.
3.  BJ (Freshman) - she came from Northfolk, VA... there was no question in her mind about her identity or racism, she had experienced it first hand, and did not trust a single white person. She was a deep thinker, so deep she spent much of her time being depressed. She also wanted to leave.
4.  CF (Sophomore) - who had completely assimilated into her environment, she came there with several white friends and had no problem continuing to talk their talk and relate with them as her best of friends. She did have an Afro though which showed on some levels that she hadn't completely assimilated, but was basically taking the path of least resistance. If you can't beat em, you might as well join em.
5.  DS (Sophomore) - in a dark room, it would be hard to tell where she came from, or whether she was white or black. There was no indication in her voice that she was anything but a white girl who happened to have black (darkest out of all of us) skin. She was not interested in joining anything that was about Black, for Black, by Black or with Black. She was a person, a human being and she did not relate to the skin she was in at all.
6.  VS (Sophomore) She was from the Virgin Islands and due to the color of her skin, she was considered white. Her family was elite and well off. That she would come to the US for an education had her as upper class. She was completely intolerant and disdainful of all that Black stuff, and told me clearly, she considered herself white, as she was considered white where she lived.
7.  Novice (Senior) She was so intriguing to me, a black nun. What made her pursue it and stick to it to the point that after Senior year she would complete her training and be a real Nun. I later learned that the IHM order of nuns, had more African Americans in it than any other. And since I was taught by the Sisters of St. Joseph, I had no idea. She was sweet and cordial and very much into being a nun. Her main focus was on continuing her training and completing her journey. She was definitely not going to join BOSS!
Next Semester, lost two students and gained 4 black students, one female and one male in the School of Social Work and one Freshman and one Sophomore.
8.  DC (Freshman) came from Philadelphia, and she also attended Catholic High School, which at that time were majority White students there. She did not seem to have any trouble getting along with the other students but she was extremely homesick. She cried every night for the first semester it seemed, I could hear her in the hallway as I passed her room. She identified with me to the point of at least being able to have someone familiar to cling to. Her position was not political or religious, she just wanted to get through it all.
9.  BS (Sophomore) came from a family that had already assimilated. Nice car, nice, house, 2.5 children, two car garage, father a professional and recognized by the White Professional World, mother an educator who had taken time from her career to raise her children. They were very color struck in my estimation as I remember it being said that she was not allowed to bring anyone home darker than her. In fact, I could hardly tell if she was black or white due to the paleness of her skin and the way she blended. And of course she would not join BOSS. She did wear a curly Afro which she flattened on the weekends when she returned home. No way on God's green earth would her parents allow her to wear an Afro!!! And since at that time, the Afro was our clarion call to arms, anyone without one was certainly not part of the struggle.
10.  JR (School of Social Work).. was from Philadelphia as well. She was older and more refined. She was more accepting of each of us being so different from one another and would often function as a mediator when we couldn't come to terms with our differences. Primarily, I had become emboldened as I had never really learned about the Transatlantic Slave trade, or much else about African history predating Slavery. . It seemed there was none, well especially not in an inner city Catholic School. And here I am on an all white college campus, learning about these things and so much more.
My mom used to remark how they learned about what Black people did in her school. She lived in Virginia and the educational system was actually better than in the Northern City. She was quite surprised that we were not taught Black history as she was.
11.  RH (School of Social Work) was a male student from Harrisburg. It quickly became clear that he was going to be the most sought after Black "man" on campus. The numbers themselves showed the imbalance. He was the only male student on campus as the School of Social Work had opened to male students while the undergraduate school was not. Coming from Harrisburg he had some experience interacting with White folks, being the only black man on campus, he also became the star of every show, that is, those white women who were not adverse to interracial relationships sought him out and so did I.
When I think about it, I really didn't have any competition with the Black women on campus, because none of them were really interested in him. It was more of "he is the only one and that's all you got"??? But for some reason, I was interested in him and attempted to get him to join our organization to no avail, he was content, just being the only male student on campus. I think he shared mutual interest but I got the impression that he preferred white girls. Thus coming up from the rear is another aspect of the African diaspora, a black man who prefers dating white women.

By my junior year, two other black female students had come to Marywood. I won't describe how they presented except to say that one was totally blind, and the other was also from Philadelphia, and the same high school I attended.

My identity crisis came to a head during my junior year. I became a Black Muslim. It was a radical change that made me feel completely uncomfortable on campus. I made the decision to quit college and return to Philadelphia and get married. Another long story.

I would like to note that today, Marywood College is now Marywood University and is coed and has Black folks in numbers. Something that I would have never imagined. I returned there a few years ago with my group, the "Voices Of Africa" Choral & Percussion Ensemble, and to my surprise there were Africans there from the continent!!! Along with the Nun who asked me to do an African dance for her World Cultures Course! Now I don't know if I opened the door for that or if it is just a sign of the times or maybe a bit of both, but I was floored to find them there, along with African Americans functioning as administrative staff. The black population during my time there was a little over 300 and now they have staff members of color.

From Negro, to Black, to Afro-American, to African-American to African descendant... we have continuously been trying to identify ourselves in a world that is foreign to us, and no matter how much we assimilate, in a world (not just a nation) that has taken up the discourse about the superiority of a race based on skin color... it is quite evident that there will be several attributions made by each of us. These attributes will be affected by the way we are raised, along with how we process our reality.

So yes, I may watch this show from time to time, I don't have a TV so I will see if it comes on the internet. But again, my own experience, helps me to relate and gives me some insight to the various challenges we face, trying to find our identity in a society that has stripped us of it, and caused us to look upon our heritage with disdain.