Click Here: Black Men's Xchange-New York Survey 

 

   

During last week's BMX-NY dialogue, Brothers focused on what it's like Navigating The Matrix As Young Men Who Love Men from the following angles:

 

    

  

 

 

 

Is the Matrix a fantasy? If not, what is it in real terms?

 

"[The matrix is] A world one creates for themselves...a fantasy world..."

 

"The read that one has of the world that they live in...The way they see, feel and experience the world..."

 

"A trance we exist in within a patriarchal society..."

 

{Facilitator says, "How many people have seen, The Matrix [movie(s)]?..."}  

 

All but a couple of people raise their hands

 

{Facilitator says, "What the Planning Committee were thinking about in conjuring up the imagery of the matrix is what we refer to around here when we talk about the hegemony of White supremacy...Interestingly, the Matrix and The Terminator films are said to have been conce i ved by a Black woman named Sophia Stewart...Somehow it makes perfect sense that a Black person would have thought up the Matrix...To make sure we're on the same page, let's define hegemony..."}

 

"Hegemony is cultural manipulation..."  

 

"Mind control..."

 

 

{Facilitator reads dictionary definition, "'Dominance of leadership, especially of one nation over others'...It's a flimsy description, but the word dominance is the operative one there...Hegemony involves the domination, in all areas of experience, political, educational, economic, etcetera, of one culture by another...also known as colonization, imperialism...and, by our reckoning, the infrastructure of the hegemony, or matrix under which we live is an infrastructure comprised of white supremacy, undergirded by patriarchy and capitalism..."}

 

"For me, success is liking what I do and doing it well...This is my matrix...I believe all of you are created for me...The matrix is about taking back our lives..."

 

 

 

In the absence of formalized rites of passage, e.g., one's [socially sanctioned] first boyfriend, first meaningful sexual experience, first job, apartment...when does a boy become a man?

 

"I keep thinking about how our potential strength is being washed away... the way they use 'nigga'...In order to change that, we have to come together..."

 

"I realized we don't have rites of passage...When we turn sixteen, we don't start dating a boy...So, for me...I guess when Uncle Sam started taking out a big chunk of my paycheck..."

 

"I find that rites of passage are lacking in our community...I grew up in a traditional Haitian, Catholic family...I had my first [sexual] experience with a man at nineteen...The man I'm with now is my first boyfriend...So, I'm still unlearning the things I was taught about homosexuality..."

 

"The first time I was penetrated, or penetrated a man, I felt like [I had become] a man..."

 

"When I was cruising Prospect Park the first time was the first time I saw homosexual men like me who weren't effeminate...not that anything is wrong with effeminacy...so, that helped me feel like a man..."

 

"When I was able to come out to myself and my family... And I wasn't able to do that until I came here [to BMX]...I came here with bright eyes and big dreams...But, I was afraid in other parts of myself...I saw a guy here named Karamo Brown who had been on The Real World, and that inspired me [to be true to myself]...And, that's when I felt like I started becoming a man..."

 

"Graduating, sexuality, getting a paycheck are matrix reinforcing...How do I teach you that 'nigga' is bad if [I'm standing outside of the matrix]...Part of what the hegemony reinforces is that 'nigga' is one thing...When we talk about femininity and masculinity, that's the patriarchal part of the matrix...That's why some people prefer the matrix...because then, you get to stay asleep..."

 

"I came out in the nineties and into myself in the two-thousands...My younger self got caught up in [superficial things]... As I read a lot of self-help books...learning who I was and letting myself shine [was how I became a man]..."

 

"For me, becoming a man...I look at the greatest man [of all] was Jesus Christ...and other men like Martin Luther King...For starters, the idea of sexuality...A boy becomes a man...that's life...the sequence is uninterrupted...Capitalism is about [consuming things] and taking care of my own interests...For me, growing into manhood involves me serving other people's [needs] instead of my own...Jesus Christ was the greatest man [of all]...Jesus Christ washed other people's feet...What will help SGL youth is knowing we care about them...You have to be self-sacrificing..."

 

"As for me, who my whole life never experienced the concept of naming yourself before I entered this room...nobody ever asked me before who I was...or who I thought I was...It was a revelation...Maybe we shouldn't tell young people not to use the 'n' word, but rather ask them what it means to them..."

 

 

How do we build bridges for mentoring and mentorship?

 

"When I was twenty-six one of the things I knew I didn't want to be was some of the men I saw sitting around in bars trying to belie their age...They had very shallow mentalities...There's this big debate about the difference between gay and SGL...I get into it on line sometimes...What it means to be a real man is principles...There are certain things I will not do...I will not use my position to abuse other people...For me, there is a kind of spiritual awakening [in cultural identity]...That's what SGL is for me...It is about being anti-capitalist and many of the things this society tells us it means to be a man..."

 

"What that ['n'] word means comes of not knowing the history...That word was used to dehumanize us...The noose and nigger...My kids went out one day and said, 'Daddy'...[mimes smoking weed]...I lit into them...If they mimic drug use, if they mimic [intoning] 'nigga,' it's wrong because of what it holds..."

 

"They know that 'nigga' was used as a derogatory term..."

 

{Facilitator says, "Knowing 'nigga' was used as a derogatory term is a very different event than understanding what that term embodied in the lives of the people who were called 'nigga'...For instance...When I was a kid... and I'm not a hundred years old...all over the country, including in New York State...every day of their lives Black people were called nigga by White people...and as they did, there was implicit in that epithet the threat that, if the Black people dared challenge the identification that they, and their mother, and their children could be [destroyed]..."}

 

"Part of the hegemony is replaying the 'n' word...or insisting that it only has one meaning...You just dropped a hegemony bomb in the room...Young people use the 'n' word in four different ways...and when we keep insisting on only one way, that's what keeps us from focusing on what's important [in the here and now]..."

 

"What we're talking about is respecting ourselves...All I know is, when I thought of myself as nigga, I hated myself... I thought I would die long before now when I thought of myself as nigga...I can't sit on the train and not engage them [youth] about it...[When I do] some of the adults are afraid...Others sit there in amused contempt...I'm not afraid of the kids...I can't sit there and not say anything...If nothing else, I deserve respect...One of the biggest bridges for me was beginning to learn my history...We're all community leaders...It's about creating a new epidemic... a new movement [of self-respect] that spreads from all the people..."

 

Editor's Note: While the concern or fear that being mired in the past can impede our capacity to be forward   moving, by the same token, 'he who fails to learn the lessons of history is doomed to repeat it. '  We aspire to a balanced focus in which we reflect on how past events impact present dynamics as we strategize different outcomes in the future.  And, the Critical Thinking & Cultural Affirmation (CTCA) model, on which the work of BMX is founded, involves a process for resolving traumas which exist among Black people as a function of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS).  Now, we are entitled to believe that PTSS is not real, or, that there are better ways to deal with it, but that is the rationale for our historical perspective; to arm ourselves with our own 'Never Again!' credo, as it were.