What Are Affirmations?

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Go here for my Self-Love and Body-Love Affirmation Cards. 

 

 

White Mother: Hands Off My Black Child's Hair

When the late Dh. Vijayatara did her research some years ago on the experience of Black people in predominantly white Buddhist Sanghas (spiritual communities), one of the issues that kept coming up was the need white people express to touch our hair.  Many white people seem to have an unhealthy fascination with our hair, and they also seem to feel they have every right to touch it – often without our permission.

(My experience was somewhat different from this - I often had Black people wanting to touch my hair.  But that's a whole other story.) 

Today, I really wanted to share this very positive post by a white mother asking other white  people not to touch her Black daughter's hair, and explaining why it's disrespectful to do so. As she says, it can affect the child's self-esteem.  

I understand the relationship between white mothers and their Black children, and/or the children's hair, can be difficult. I find it refreshing and inspiring to read this white parent's words about the need to respect her child's personal space. 

White parents and other white people are more likely to pay attention to this message coming from one of their own.  I only wish they would listen when we say similar things.  

Click here to read more about how to enjoy beautiful, healthy hair and skin.    

I welcome your comments below.

Lil Wayne Hates Dark-Skinned Women: Why We Still Need to Heal

I just saw this: Lil Wayne Boycotted for Hating Dark-Skinned Women.

We have public figures speaking this nonsense, but yet so many of our people are still in denial about why we need to heal.

This is all about self-hatred.

Check out my article series: Why We Need to Heal.

See also: Positive Change and Transformation

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Getting Past the Hate

Check out my blog at Ancestral Healing on Black Women, Men and Self-Hatred. For practical solutions, see Getting Past the Hate.

I will be leading a two-day course in Nonviolent Communication (NVC) in London in October.

We Need to Heal

Once again, I find myself involved with a Black organisation in which people are sniping at each other, launching personal attacks and generally undermining one another.

As people of African heritage, we were taught to hate ourselves. That's why we often find so much conflict within Black groups and organisations. It's why there is sometimes so much distrust between African people. When you see Black people tearing each other apart, and when we engage in that kind of behaviour ourselves, this is one of the reasons. We are very wounded and we need to heal these wounds.

To read the rest of this article, visit The Key to Confidence and Self-Esteem.

Obama and Mental Health

I saw this online the other day.

One effect of Senator Obama’s achievement the potential it has to impact positively on our mental health.

Positive role models give us a sense of what we are capable of achieving.

As people of African heritage, we have been force-fed negative images of ourselves for many generations.

We have internalised this negativity and we have passed it down, parent to child, over the course of many generations. This is part of what is known as “Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome”.

We are a very damaged people and we need to do a lot of healing, individually and collectively.

We don’t know if Senator Obama is going to win the Presidential election yet. Even if he does, we don’t know what kind of President he will be.

Sen. Obama’s nomination may well have positive reverberations for African people all over the world – and, in fact, for all people, regardless of racial or cultural background or heritage.

But someone does not have to win the Democratic Presidential nomination in order to be a positive role model.

And anytime a person of African heritage achieves a goal or accomplishes some success, that person becomes a positive role model. This is why I have collected Black Success Stories. This is why I publish More Black Success. And this is why I celebrate Black success on my "Success Strategies" radio show.

Since the dawn of time, human beings have shared stories as a way of communicating important lessons. People have used stories to teach important truths, and to learn those truths.

Stories of African achievement contribute to our sense of wellbeing and positive self-esteem.

We all need to see positive reflections of ourselves. As people of African heritage, still recovering from the effects of enslavement and colonization, we particularly need to be reflected positively. This is a crucial part of our healing process. It is down to each and every one of us to continue to foster, promote and support this healing process, from which we can all benefit.

We live in amazing times. These are times of great potential for transformation. Anything is possible. The sky’s the limit. The time is now.

How do Asian students get to the top of the class?

I recently read these two articles:

How do Asian students get to the top of the class?
http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/showarticle/ca/933/

Asian Parents and Success:
http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/showarticle/ca/950

I have a lot of problems with what these articles are saying. This is aside from any self-stereotyping that may be going on.

(1) For one thing, similarly to Asian parents, Black parents also have a high expectation of obedience from our kids, and expect them to respect their elders as we were taught to respect ours. But our children, particularly the boys, often do not do well in school. This is because the schools are failing our children, not because we don’t expect them to respect their elders.

(2) On a deeper level, my problem with this is that it assumes that parents are building up their children’s self-esteem by praising everything they do, so that the children don’t want to make any effort.

Praising a child’s every action is not the way to build the child’s self-esteem. If anything, this will make the child very dependent on parental approval.

Similarly, it seems to me that requiring your child to be obedient, and putting the emphasis on results, is one way to guarantee that your child will grow up neurotically dependent on approval from authority figures. He or she could spend the rest of his or her adult life, either working hard to gain the approval of employers and superiors while lacking quality of life, or in therapy trying to overcome this tendency.

(3) These articles also refer to the child identifying with the role of ‘student’. That way, the child will grow up to identify with the role of ‘accountant’ or ‘chemist’ or whatever career the parents think is appropriate.

Of course, white society is happy to see Asian children brought up to be insecure and competitive, quiet and obedient. This suits the needs of the majority, authority figures and the powers-that-be. But does it meet the needs of Asian children, families and communities?

Surely, we – all adults - should encourage our children to be proud of being themselves, and identify with being authentic. That way, they will grow up to be healthy, happy, well-rounded adults. People with high self-esteem tend to perform better in different roles, including their careers as well as relationships, because they expect to do well. When you feel good about yourself on the inside, your actions and interactions reflect this.

The way to encourage our children to do well is to build their self-esteem by helping them to identify their own strengths and accomplishments. Yes, children can always do better. So can adults. I suspect many Asian parents who spend their time pointing out to their children how to improve do so because of their own inner sense of inadequacy. Their strategy is to pressure their children to do well in the hope that their children’s achievements will help them to feel better about themselves.

I speak partly from my own experience of being parented by African American parents who used the same strategy.

Luckily, my Dad also frequently reminds me how brilliant I am and that I can achieve anything I want to. This helped me through difficult times during my childhood, and I find his belief in me still contributes to my self-confidence now.

High self-esteem comes from inside. It does not come from being praised or by achieving external goals unless those goals are linked to one’s inner sense of what is important. Reliance on achievement of results leads to a sense of insecurity and a constant need to achieve, to do better than others, to compete. The most competitive people are not necessarily the most successful or effective in their fields, but they tend to be the most insecure.

My Dad’s reminding me of how wonderful I am contributed to my positive self-image, as both of my parents’ criticism contributed to my negativity about myself. In the end, we internalise these outside influences and we are the only ones who can use them, overcome them or transform them.

We want to bring up Black children to be happy, healthy, secure and successful adults – on their own terms. Not just to conform to the values of white society. Of course, their achievements can include career success and should do if that is what is important to the person. Lastly, I recently discovered this somewhat humourous, but nevertheless truthful, article on The Asian Parent Syndrome.

Bitter Asian Men http://www.bitterasianmen.com/parents.html

For more on building positive self-esteem, for parents and children, see
Success Strategies for Black People.

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