The unrelenting issues pertaining to Black men’s emotional attachment, emotional regulation, and self-concept difficulties give cause for mainstream society and causal observers to ask, “What’s wrong with them?  Why is it that nearly 1 in 3 Black men will spend time behind bars during his lifetime?  Why is it that Black men die six years earlier than whites?  Why are Black men so angry?  Why are Black males, young and old, committing suicide at an unprecedented alarming rate?  It’s not difficult to understand why, when one considers the holocaust of chattel slavery and it’s enduring injury that’s gone untreated up to today.  The issue of power and who holds it remains everybody’s hot button.  Life expectancy is one of the best indicators of power and suicide one of the best indicators of powerlessness.

Over the last thirty plus years many of the brightest in and outside the community have addressed these questions. But, there are many Black men who feel that the various systems around them have since failed and/or excluded them.  Consequently, these men are mis-educated/undereducated, have poor emotional regulation, possess little or no work experience, are female-dependent, and have little or no healthy involvement in the productive activities that foster real self-esteem and hope for a future. Invariably, these men come from a multigenerational experience of trauma, violence, powerlessness and poverty in their domestic, community, and social settings.  Even those African-American men, who appear to be succeeding in the mainstream, are trying to survive in a nation where they’re viewed as angry, aggressive and dangerous brutes.