“This Real Ghetto Pain”: Black Community and the Black Psyche

Review of Eddie Taylor, Restoring the Mind of Black America, First Edition (Chicago, IL: African American Images, 2011), ISBN 978-1-934155-61-5, 146 pages, softbound, $15.95.

Dr. Taylor takes on the challenge of describing the psychohistorical experience of the post-Civil Rights Movement era black community in the United States, using psychoanalytic concepts— particularly those of Melanie Klein and the object relations theorists—to understand what he describes as “the decline of the African American community.” He rises to this challenge brilliantly. The heart and soul of the book addresses the trauma experienced by the black community in the loss of two major civil rights leaders, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, the dissolution of the Black

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Panther Party, and the defense known as “manic reparation” against major depression caused by these traumatic losses.

The book is organized in four sections. Part One, “Framework,” offers the phenomenological research philosophy underlying the book, outlines the concept of psychological reparation as developed by Melanie Klein, and applies the concept to social reparation. Part Two discusses the Civil Rights Movement, introducing “Significant Revolutionaries,” the inspiring leadership of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers, and the impact on the black community as the Civil Rights Movement came to an end, when the two leaders were murdered, leading to communal “manic reparation.” Part Three, “Community Activists Speak,” features interviews with eight community activists, some of whom are older people who were adults and some of whom were children during the Civil Rights Movement, and some of whom learned about it in school, by reading and by hearsay. Part Four, “Our Future Hope,” is indeed hopeful, offering a vision of “Restoring the African American Mind,” of a future that will enable a traumatized and disorganized community to experience meaningful reparation and healing.

In the introduction, “Remains of the Revolution,” the author bears witness to the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement and laments the aftermath. “Having grown up in the inner city…I have been perplexed to witness violence, hatred, and crime. How could such a powerful movement disintegrate into such terrible social decline in virtually every area of African American life?” (v). His question is a cry echoing the anguish of a people traumatized by kidnapping, slavery, vicious oppression, and discrimination, who were then uplifted by the courage and vision of civil rights leaders, only to be further traumatized by the murders of their beloved leaders.

Taylor chronicles the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, which set goals that bypassed the early 20^th century Black Nationalism and Back to Africa movement of Marcus Garvey. From the Harlem Renaissance to the 1950s and flowering in the 1960s and 1970s, the Civil Rights Movement “provided the Black community with direction, guidance, and hope for a better life in America” (viii). He points out that equality was the hallmark of the

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movement, a vision of unifying Black Americans into a coherent community. Studying African history, African American educators began to offer the black community a vision of being true to both an African and American Black identity.

Dr. Taylor then uses psychoanalytic theory to understand the devastation caused by the murders of inspiring leaders at the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement. “Only when…the African American community [begins] to acknowledge the loss on a deep, emotional, soul level can the process of healing begin” (12). He explores the extent of the damage and offers a vision of hope.

Using Klein’s concepts of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions as his base, and his phenomenological research philosophy, Taylor addresses the black community psychology in response to traumatic loss: first, a seesawing of projections onto one another, resulting in disparaging of blackness, and second, developing a manic reparation defense to avoid depression, resulting in substance abuse and community violence. Reparation is an attempt to make amends. Manic reparation is an attempt to avoid guilt.

Part Two is a tribute to Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers and a recognition that a mourning community became lost in manic reparation, resulting in despair. The author points out that many individuals transcended this situation, but their achievements remained individual and did not encompass the black community as such.

The voices of eight authentic and inspiring community activists he presents envision a reinvigorated Black community. Some voice disillusionment with current black leaders, whom they describe as self-interested, “hot dog leaders” who promote themselves, not the community. The author suggests that the psyche of the black community mind can be healed by addressing the fear that underlies anger turned against the self; by mourning; by strengthening black churches; by psychotherapy; and, in essence returning to the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement—by community action.

This valuable book inspired powerful thoughts and memories in me. First, Americans of all races and ethnicities have to recognize the lingering trauma and pain of African American history. When I was a child in the 1940s and early 1950s, my mother cease-

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lessly worked for civil rights. In our white Brooklyn neighborhood, bigots organized groups against integration of housing and education, including a group called SPONGE—Society for the Prevention of Niggers Getting Everything. Shocking then, and still shocking! My mother fought the message of this group, canvassing, speaking out, saying, “Everyone is equal, everyone is entitled to every opportunity America offers. If you don’t share, it will be taken nonetheless.”

Second, it resonates with my understanding of the Passover Seders I have attended all my life, with the repeated phrase during the service, “Avadim hayenu”—“We were slaves.” The trauma of slavery and oppression can never be forgotten. We must never forget. African Americans and Jews, and many other ethnic groups, are formed by their traumas—and by the leadership that offers alternatives. We never cease needing a Moses.

As a tribute to Dr. Taylor, I will close this review with an excerpt from the reggae singer Duane Stephenson’s “Ghetto Pain,” included on his album, From August Town:

From day to day we live, searching for our identity,
While the rich man says, we are a menace to society,
But they don’t know what it’s like,
This real ghetto pain, what it’s really like,

Taylor understands healing of “this real ghetto pain” comes from genuine mourning and reparation, by restoration of the lost and damaged leaders, not by bringing the dead back to life, but by recognition that these are part of a community’s history. The pain has to be embraced. “It will be worth it because now we understand: the pain will birth the promise” (p. 131). He closes with the Langston Hughes poem, “Harlem,” which begins famously with “What happens to a dream deferred?/ Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?” and closes with “Or does it explode?”

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