Posts

Showing posts from July, 2009

Reclaiming Black Men’s Mental Health

Image
The death of Michael Jackson has made me think a lot about the problem of mental illness in the black community. On the one hand, Jackson's talents were indescribable. He mesmerized (including me) crowds across the globe with his singing and dancing for decades – I nearly broke my ankle trying to do that damn moonwalk back in the 80s. Jackson made it all look so easy. Without a doubt, he is one of the greatest entertainers to have ever lived. But, it has been nearly twenty years since Jackson had a bona fide hit record. His stardom and the public's obsession with his life, however, did not fade away. Sadly though, Jackson stayed in the media for all the wrong reasons: the bizarre effects of numerous cosmetic surgeries, the child molestation charges, the designer surgical masks, the strange looking clothing, the brink of bankruptcy despite making hundreds of millions of dollars over the years, and dangling his infant son over a railing at an hotel, just to name a few. Jackson wa