Are We Trolling OR Teaching?

     In my last article What Is A Poor Righteous Teacher? I shared some insight on the etymology of the word "poor", its use in the 1800s until now and how it has been misinterpreted by some Five Percenters as evidenced by their quality of life. There are many Five Percenters who understood and appreciated that article because they do not represent that segment of our population. They desire more for us as a Nation and that is also evidenced by their quality of life. However, there were those who felt that my article was inaccurate and an unfair assessment of the poverty mindset among some Five Percenters. From their perspective I painted the Five Percent with a broad brushstroke which contributes to the negative narratives about us. That does not accurately reflect the content of my article or any of my contributions to this society. While genuine peer review and accountability is always important with our work, it is also important to offer practical solutions to what we see as problematic. Sitting back talking or just repeating what someone else said is not enough. We must have something to share, something we built that actually works. So lets build about that work and what works.

     For two decades I have consistently worked to be one of the many positive representations of the Five Percent. This work, from my youth initiatives, articles, books and animation series to being a Humans Rights Commissioner and Educator in my city, has literally served as evidence to help win court cases for incarcerated Five Percenters fighting to prove our cultural legitimacy. I am very proud of this and the various other ways that people have benefitted from these contributions. Among the different niches that Five Percenters have, we are not all a-alike. While there are some Five Percenters who represent the best of what we teach, there are others who behave like they don't agree with Dumar Wa'de's statement that We Are Not A Gang. You can see by how they live and a simple glance at their social media will have you confused about what they actually represent. Their social media is usually a hodgepodge of vulgar memes, trolling, throwback pictures of Five Percenter pioneers, Henny toasts, wannabe IG model flicks wearing our Universal Flag and video clips of questionable Eighty-Fiver behavior. These are the same folks who long to be professionally recognized as a credible source of Five Percent culture. The irony is, I am actually one of the most qualified people to teach them yet they usually don't want to learn who is causing all of this to professionally happen... Most times I am outright embarrassed by what I see and often find myself in awkward positions striving to diplomatically explain to outside onlookers that, "all of us [Five Percenters] are at different stages in our growth and development. Regardless what knowledge you think we have, some of us are evolving as civilized people, some of us are not and will not evolve as civilized people. That choice is entirely up to us." I receive so many emails, inboxes and DMs from people inquiring about our culture via the out-of-pocket behavior they see that I actually saved a standard response for folks to save time responding. Yeah, it is that serious.

     See, when we gain knowledge of self it is not like we start off with a blank slate and everything we have thought, said or done prior to that simply disappears. It does not work that way. In this journey we are not simply learning things. We also unlearn things that are not good for our growth and development. Well, we are supposed to unlearn things. We all experience this, even if we claim to be born into the Five Percent Nation. Living within this wilderness of North America we are all exposed to what others think, say and do. Some of that exposure is corrupting and contradicts our culture. All of us have to deal with this reality and none of us are exempt from it. How committed and consistent we are to deal with that corruption and those contradictions is entirely up to us. It is apparent, at least to me, that some of us have a much harder time with civilization than others.

     Over the years of having knowledge of self, the biggest challenge that I see among many of my fellow Five Percenters is how to connect What We Teach TO What We Will Achieve. Now some Five Percenters would argue that "What We Teach and What We Will Achieve" is not an authentic plus degree. Regardless if we think this or not, it is not debatable that there is a huge disparity between what folks say they teach and what they are actually achieving. There is no shortage of content you can find on social media of people sharing longwinded posts about Today's Mathematics or pictures with captions pontificating about what we teach and how it should/shouldn't be taught. However, there is a severe lacking of the same content that practically shows what we are actually achieving with these teachings. There is "some" content yet not nearly as much content as adults taking group pictures and talking. When I started sharing YouTube videos well over a decade ago and writing articles, my consistent focus has always been to demonstrate how I am actually using what we teach to positively impact my family and community in a practical way. My social media presence is based upon the same premise and over the years that focus has expanded beyond my family and community to include my city, other cities, states and countries. This is the reason that the national and international press contact me in regards to content related to our Nation of the Five Percent, why I currently have five books in a Curatorial Activism archive at the British Library and how I've had the professional opportunities to work with actors such as Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson and others. I have done and do all of this as a proud, public Five Percenter who literally comes in the name of Saladin Allah. I am not a Five Percenter at a Parliament but Marco the security guard the rest of the month. For whatever reason, some folks just don't like that I am in this kind of public position. When they are not playing a lazy game of Poison The Well, they are clumsily trying to discredit anything that they see me do while deliberately ignoring the things that are clearly of credit even to their own families. 

"Own It" -Drake

     

     As a public Five Percenter, my experience is not all Sun, Moon and Stars. I deal with bullsh*t just like everybody else, sometimes more than you could imagine. I have experienced dudes calling my home hundreds of times in a day. Yeah, I said hundreds. I have received snapshots of dudes gossiping about me in sausage party group chats. I have gotten pop-up trolled by lurkers who never even liked a post about my children. Dudes have circulated sloppy snippets of my content offline to try and discredit me. I have also been publicly/privately threatened with violence online and etc. None of these experiences involved women. Not one. While I have had some limited experience with girls harassing me when I was a teenager, never in my life did I ever expect to experience this kind of behavior from 30-50 year old dudes. Never! Allah was in his mid thirties and early forties when he was teaching youth in the streets of Harlem and I could not imagine him behaving like this. That dysfunctional behavior has nothing to do with Five Percent culture or "building." It has everything to do with what I see as a mental health and/or a substance abuse problem or folks who have become institutionalized; something that I am very well acquainted with because my Ole Earth [Mother] was a social psychologist by profession. No healthy, heterosexual, working family man would be that fixated on another man and behave like this. 

     Some would probably ask, "Saladin why do you even care?" Well as I mentioned earlier, we are all exposed to what others think, say and do while living in this wilderness of North America. So it does affect us, even if it is just a distraction seeing or hearing about it. In order to maintain a positive mental health state and sense of homeostasis we have to develop effective ways to neutralize and manage this exposure. After words, sometimes that exposure has the exact opposite effect; like the time someone posted a screenshot of my Atlantis School For Gifted Youngsters Page to denigrate my work and I instantly received new followers, messages of support and donations to my Atlantis School Renovation Project.

     When it comes to our stability, it is important not to minimize or gloss over the impact this COVID-19 pandemic is actually having on our individual and collective mental health, including those who claim to be "woke" or have knowledge of self. In fact, it is my assessment that this pandemic will born a mental health epidemic that will undoubtedly impact our Five Percent Nation. As Five Percenters, attending virtual parliaments, posting videos about Supreme Mathematics and taking pictures wearing our Universal Flag is not an effective mental health plan. Based upon some of our behavior, some of us need serious professional help and there is nothing wrong with that. We all need help in some capacity. What IS wrong is using social media and/or substance abuse to try and self-medicate. 

     A decade ago, in 2011, I published the book Explorations of God/Earth Mental Health that offers insight on what we have begun to see, particularly among some Five Percenters, and how we can address this. Following the recent tragic deaths of my father and brother on the same day, hours apart, under two entirely different circumstances, I took the initiative to get therapy for the first time in my life. I never experienced anything tragic like this before in my life and I wanted to be proactive in putting resources in place that can support me through my grieving process. Access to a safe-space that enables me to unpack and process my thoughts and feelings about this tragedy and trauma with an objective black therapist, not just talking to my physical/universal family, has been very therapeutic for me. I would definitely encourage others to do the same to help unpack and process tragedy and trauma; especially those black/brown males who never talk about being molested as children and/or who have experienced sexual violence while they were incarcerated. I am fortunate to have never experienced this and can only imagine how difficult it must be for those who quietly carry around this question about their manhood and sexuality. I would also encourage Five Percenters to explore becoming a therapist if they are interested in that field. We need more of our own people creating these culturally competent safe-spaces to support our positive mental health. Lastly, we need more people showing evidence of our Five Percent teachings with actual achievements, not just being trolls. 

Peace,

Saladin

Mental Health in the 21st Century

   I grew up in a household with a DSM-III. Because my Ole Earth was a Social Psychologist she referred to it often. As a child, my younger siblings and I simply knew it as "the big book" among the many other books in our small library. I didn't understand its importance and how my parents orientated us until I got older. I'm not saying that the DSM is the Bible. My Ole Earth once said, "Psychology is the white man's Bible. You need to study everything you can about it." So in my household words and phrases like Transference, Self Mutilation, Schizophrenia and etc. were common place and I developed a working understanding of these concepts at a very early age. Being exposed to this at an early age also means that I was exposed the world of mental health. I recall an incident where my Ole Earth, a Case Manager of a Mental Health Agency at the time, was summoned to a Hospital because a client who suffered from Schizophrenia came to the Hospital with a pair of 24" hedge shears, locked himself in the bathroom and castrated himself because the voice in his head instructed him to do it. I could literally write a book about the experiences my Ole Earth shared with us about her work within the mental health field. In fact, my upbringing and gaining KOS [Knowledge Of Self] is one of the reasons I published the book Explorations of God/Earth Mental Health.

   Why am I mentioning all of this? Because it is my assessment that we are not having enough conversations about how our mental health has been and is impacted living in this society. None of us grow up here unscathed and there are various degrees along a psychological spectrum from folks using healthy coping mechanisms that foster mental stability to outright institutionalized mental illness. People fall somewhere within that spectrum and typically people have not been assessed or clinically diagnosed, especially within black communities where this type of thing is a taboo. Growing up, and even as adults, some of us have always just called uncle so and so, cousin so and so or other families members who displayed and display mental health issues as "crazy." And in regards to the behavior we see, all we often know is; they always been a lil touched, ever since they came back from the Army they ain't been right, they was smoking that sh*t, somebody slipped them a mickey, they ain't been the same since the funeral, ever since they broke up with so and so or a host of other reasons that may hint at a psychotic break or even a deteriorating mental state, yet not a formal assessment of what we're seeing. While people are judged, what you usually don't hear is societal judgement; the quantifiable impact society has upon shaping one's mental state, especially when that impact is an indictment. Among the clinical professions the traditional narrative is that a person's mindset and behavior in society is their own and needs to be addressed. The institutions, laws and cultural norms in this society are often not assessed, held accountable, modified or even removed that helped produce and maintain the very mindset and behavior we see people display. While this perspective of personal responsibility is true. The societal impact on one's psychological state coping with institutional racism, sexism, a chronic scarcity of resources in impoverished communities, redlining and various other social dysfunctions are equally true. So while we are indeed personally responsible for doing something about changing our condition, we are equally responsible for helping change the institutions, laws and cultural norms in this society that continue to shape the mindset and behavior of people. 

   Asili is a Swahili word for nucleus or origin. In order to understand an origin or nucleus we must take an etiological approach. Meaning, we must be dedicated to investigating the cause. In terms of mental health, even though the nucleus or centrally important part is a person's mental state, this mental state is centrally important to their role within their family, community and society. The institutions, laws and cultural norms in this society, good or bad, are the direct result of a person's mental state. There are countless examples of institutions such as Nambla, laws such as slavery and cultural norms that indicate mental instability on the part of those who were involved in creating them and those who maintain(ed) them. In many instances, that mental instability is viewed as standards normalcy. Consider the countless cases of mass shootings where it's not a given but arguable whether the perpetrators were insane. 

   The first step in assessing and addressing mental health is to start making this conversation normal, especially in communities where this is considered taboo. Simply having conversations like this makes it easier and resources more accessible. The next step is broadening this conversation to assesses and address the societal impact upon mental health. Having this conversation also makes it easier and resources more accessible. Lastly, we must commit ourselves to acting upon the things we are discussing, not simply for personal development but also in changing institutions, laws and cultural norms. Be an Advocate! This does not require us to build our own institution, although we can. Simply support those institutions who represent the stability you connect with. It does not mean that we have to run for public office, although we can. Vote for, volunteer and support candidates and legislation that your principles and values align with. 

Peace,
Saladin

American Horror Story: Asylum

Allah & Azreal

In May of 1965 after being arrested with several other men for unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct at a rally in front of the Hotel Theresa in Mecca [Harlem, NY], Allah [the Father] was arraigned in criminal court before Judge Francis X. O'Brien and held on a $9,500 bond. Four months later he was shipped off to the Psychiatric Unit at Bellevue Hospital. Allah would remain there until a final psychiatric report submitted to Judge O'Brien stated that "he did not understand the charges against him" thus remanding him to the NYS Department of Mental Hygiene for indefinite confinement. At the age of 37, Allah was confined in these institutions, Bellevue and Matteawan State Hospital, for two years. Matteawan was a limbo for sadists; a living nightmare used to house people considered too dangerous for civilian institutions yet too ill for prison. It was during Allah's stay in Mattewan that he met and befriended a young 17 year old Caucasian transfer from Elmira State Penitentary named John Kennedy. Because Allah didn't represent a religious group he didn't have the constitutional protection of religious freedom in a court of law. There were always others who considered themselves a diety, yet because they claimed it within a religious context, they were afforded religious protection under the law. Allah was not afforded that protection and some Five Percenters are still being catagorized as 'criminally insane' and denied the right to practice our culture in correctional facilities around the country. Allah also wasn't politically affiliated, a member of any organizations or representing any institutions. Therefore, he didn't have their support, publically or privately. He stood alone, and as he came to learn, the 17 year old Caucasian boy he met in Matteawan stood out, and alone, in his own way too.

Allah and Azreal

Born on September 28th, 1948, 17 year old John Kennedy was Allah's first Caucasian student. As the first Caucasian Five Percenter, John adopted the name 'Azreal' becoming a prototypical model of how Caucasians were educated and entrusted to function within the context of our growing national body. As a civilized man who was empowered with the knowledge of his people, and ours, Azreal grew to educate people on how to survive and avoid the snares of this devilish society, especially mental health institutions. He had a lot to tell because he had been through hell. An institutional hell that he knew so well that Allah symbolically gave him the keys to it.

I knew Azreal personally and one of the things he always talked about is how he suffered in various facilities, especially Matteawan, because of his name. Some of us took that for granted and never looked further into what Azreal may have been striving to communicate. "Yes the President's name was John F. Kennedy and Azreal's birth name was John Kennedy" some of us thought, believing that Azreal was just proud to have an honorable name that many of our people looked at honorably. Well what politics and policies did President John F. Kennedy represent that the guards at Matteawan felt the need to persecute Azreal, AKA John Kennedy, for? Why the transference?

President John F. Kennedy

Doing further research I learned that John F. Kennedy spent his entire political career, as a Senator and as the President, striving to reform the mental health system. It personally hit close to home; his elder sister Rosemary was 23 when she had a lobotomy [brain surgery] that incapacitated her and eventually led to her death. In 1955, then Senator Kennedy sponsored the Mental Health Study Act to begin reevaluating the practices/procedures employed in mental health institutions around the country. As the President of the United States in 1963, President Kennedy authorized the Joint Commission on Mental Health to investigate mentally ill related problems and sponsored the Community Mental Health Centers Act to reform the entire mental health system. This final Act, was one month before his assassination. Following his death, in 1968 John F. Kennedy's sister Eunice Kennedy Striver, partially inspired by their sister Rosemary, started the Special Olympics.

Matteawan State Hospital

I mentioned an American Horror Story in regards to the mental health system because that's exactly what these institutions were, and Matteawan was considered the worst. Along with medical care that was below hospital standards, the institution's practices were barbaric; performing lobotomies and using shock/water therapy, hypnosis, sleep deprivation, starvation and other Spanish Inquisition-like procedures on people as young as their early teens. It's also worth noting that lobotomies were not carried out by professional surgeons nor were they performed in surgical laboratories. They were done in un-sanitized environments with poor lighting, poor staffing and crude instruments. This is not even mentioning the knuckle-therapy, sexual and verbal abuse people had to deal with or died dealing with while confined in these institutions where prison guards were also trained. It wasn't until the 1960's with the political pressure of President Kennedy, and during the time Allah and Azreal were in Matteawan, did the mental health system begin popularizing the use of psychotropic drugs for psychiatric treatment. However, this did not spell relief for these inhabitants of hell; the drug experimentation, overdoses and Thorazine straight jacket's made it that much easier to carry out the knuckle-therapy, sexual and verbal abuse. 

No I am not saying or implying that Allah and Azreal were sexually abused. Because of the nature of the environment, both of them were verbally abused and Azreal talked extensively about the physical abuse he suffered. Allah, Azreal and others witnessed many of these things and lived to tell about it. Many who survived this hell still carry a mental diagnosis along with physical scars. All of them suffered some degree of PTS [Post Traumatic Stress], including Allah. Allah was confined there for two of the five years he and his companions organized the Five Percenters; that's 40% of the time he was here among us. Have you ever asked yourself why there's not much conversation about that time, or have you even considered how he was psychologically affected? As Five Percenters, some of us romanticize the idea that the Father showed and proved who he was and just walked out of Matteawan unaffected. Just researching the state of the mental health system in this country at the time Judge O'Brien deliberately remanded him to it would show you this idea is unrealistic. The state of this country's mental health industry was so horrific that John F. Kennedy, as a Senator and as the President, made its reformation a key talking point of his entire political career. One of his final talking points prior to his assassination. Given this history, it is my perspective that Azreal was more than a prototypical model of a Caucasian Five Percenter. He symbolized, in the name of John Kennedy, the reformation of the devil's mental health institution. With President Kennedy's Community Mental Health Centers Act he sought to de-institutionalize mental hospitals with community mental health services. This translated into the closing of long stay mental health institutions because of its reduced population, staff losing jobs and companies aligned with these institutions losing contracts [money]. President Kennedy was messing with a lot of people's money, which over time cut 90% of the beds at state mental institutions. Staff at Matteawan were forced to change and find a new hustle. They didn't like that, nor did they like Azreal's honorable name that represented that change. And because many couldn't reach President John F. Kennedy the President to show their dissatisfaction with these changes, they persecuted the John Kennedy they could reach. Azreal mentioned his honorable name, President Kennedy, the mental health industry and his experience in Matteawan often. He also talked a lot about Allah's compassion and insight to not only recognize what we was going through, but to educate him on how to become better. These correlations help us better understand the context of our plight as a Nation of Gods and Earths [Five Percenters].

After standing trial, Allah was eventually released from Matteawan in April of 1967. Some time after that Azreal was also released and came to Mecca to find him. Because of the national political pressure to change the psychiatric landscape of state mental institutions and the mental health industry as a whole, they, and others being held unreasonably, were able to go home. It wasn't because Allah debated a board of psychiatrists about the science of everything in life and they were so mezmerized by his wisdom that they just had to let him go. Nor did Azreal burst out of Matteawan like Chief in One Flew Over the Cockoo's Nest. Allah, like Azreal and others, didn't demonstrate the kind of maladaptive behavior, dependency or learned helplessness institutional staff documented to justify keeping them there. This was the climate of America during this time and slavery by another name; a 'citizen-to-asylum pipeline' that shuffled people into a system they often didn't survive.

In closing, keep in mind that nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything is not as explicit as we may like for it to be. Some things are implied, if we listen, and give us deeper insight and a better appreciation for what others may not say. Azreal and Allah found themselves caught up in a kind of system that many of us could only imagine. They, like many others, didn't walk out unscathed and there were things they saw and experienced that they probably took to their graves. So behind some of the things Azreal said, what Allah instructed some of us to do, and how they coped, is a story. A story that gives context to AWM.

Peace, 

Saladin