The Void – The Emotionless State of Black Culture

From Survival to Serenity in Black Cultural Identity

Have you ever noticed a time where life kept moving around you, the world in its active best while you pattern yourself in a predictive rhythm of nothingness. Not happy, not sad, not excited, not worrisome, just existence. Yes in truth all those emotions rotate through our mindsets like the solar system while we remain dormant. Same shitt different day.

This is the existence of the (void) that can plague black culture if we aren't too careful. Because the void has no time limit. Like a time capsule that doesn't bring youth but face wrinkles and aged tones on our beautiful melanin to distort our youthful glow. A survival remedy through generations that has in some cases kept us alive, boldly let's remind our tribe that we are meant for more than just survival itself. 

This is a discussion about the void specifically. Where it comes from and our beautiful journey together as a people to come through this stage stronger, better and more at peace.

Causes

Often we can be in a void state and not even be aware. Triggers or emotional responses can be the cause derived from hidden truths, realization, acceptance—the void is simply an alternative to how we deal with reality.

Grief

One of the hardest realities to deal with in black culture is losing those close to us. If we have to be honest this can relate to grief not only in losing our elders to old age but the death culture that revolves around us. A young king may be in the void after losing so many friends to the violence, accepting a reality that someone could be here today, then gone tomorrow. How does one deal with the trauma of death becoming a norm? Though we may glorify the gangsta side of the streets the raw truth is the streets are filled with voids. From smiling in Kodak pictures with several of your boys sharing classic times to reviewing that picture years later with just a few of you still left breathing. Like fading away in lost art. I will never glorify the war amongst ourselves. It isn't pretty , it's a tragedy but if we can never talk about it we can never heal.

The same relates when grandma's gone or any elder that has guided us through life sharing moments we often overlook or only appreciate once they are gone with ancestors. Dealing with the absence of their presence creates a void itself. How do we move on? We do the only thing we know how to do. Succumb to the pain and keep moving. This is where the void portals open and sometimes we never get closure.

Letdown

Hope can get you hurt, even killed if you aren't too careful. It can be tied directly with heartbreak, disappointment and other emotional doors that lead to the void. I wouldn't say hope is a bad thing, I can vision my ancestors with hopes of a better future, despite the pain and shackles of physical confinement. Hoping for a better reality but waking to the hard truth of being property. We wonder why we have a void and trauma today as descendants.

Hope of self must be changed into confidence. As the old folks say "faith without works is dead". We can always hope but we are blessed to have tools the ancestors have gracefully in our own way. They must be applied no matter what condition we are in. Hope is the fuel. Action must be the vehicle. The void is like a car that has stalled out, always keep your motion. Keep the spirit, you are the prayers our ancestors made in their darkest hours, that alone is motivation.

Hope becomes dangerous when we place it in others hands. We often forget that we all have human tendencies mixed with a corruption bred into our skin from colonization. The characters we did possess collectively must be rebuilt and reinforced. Thus saying someone could have the best intentions but still let us down or disappoint if we place our hopes too high in others. A queen may have hopes to obtain commitment one day and become a wife. Her high hopes may even cause her to recreate her own truths ignoring any signs that things aren't what they seem. And when things come crashing down. That letdown, that disappointment creates a void, blocking any genuine intentions that may come her way.

Love of self must be our central focus before anything else. Part of reclaiming our identity is restoring that confidence from early development until now. Confidence and value of self helps us battle any shame when we fall down which everyone has, when we fail which everyone will if you try hard enough. And embarrassment when things occur that we aren't proud of. To take lessons from the journey itself, rather than placing us in voids. Revamping reactions not for a fight or flight mentality but a hold your ground mindstate. Nothing is worth our peace, someone out there has things harder, someone out there has faced the same battles as you. Become your biggest fan, the ancestors are always in the stands rooting for us.

History / Origins of Suppressed Emotion

As a descendant of those who were enslaved I wonder how genuine our smiles were before our identity was stripped away. These are often uncomfortable thoughts and conversations people are rarely willing to have, but history has done everything to hide truth, and we have to always remember that our lineage does not begin with chains and confinement. I imagine a child being taught how to love, when to hate, when to be angry, when to be happy, by their village—the village being the collective of the Black Diaspora. Village being a direct representation of Zanáfamu, the collective unity of Black people for a collective purpose. Because the void, or the absence of the village itself, creates a void within our people. Emotions are natural human instincts, but how and when to deal with them must be taught, and for far too long we haven’t had the luxury nor the relationship to teach our tribe how to deal with our emotions, much less how to express them, especially in healthy ways. When you don’t know what to do, when you don’t have any instructions, you go to your safest place—the void.

Why? Because the void is the only safe place we know. It doesn’t give peace, only an illusion of rest. If we don’t talk about it, then we won't think about it. This is where we must shift our culture in general. Across any religious platform, any association, belief, or practice, we all have something in common—we have ancestors. It is my belief, scratch that, I know that our ancestors of the Black Diaspora can hear us, relate to us, guide us.

This is the root of the Tokanji language, created so we all have a native tongue collectively. In Tokanji we call our ancestors Kulanshi. Keep following me, please. The relationship with our ancestors differentiates from prayer, but it serves as a home of expression. Our ancestors may not talk back physically after life, but they serve as a place where we can place our emotions instead of holding them in. Every day our ancestors walk with us. And they too have experienced anger, hate, grief, sorrow, joy, happiness, or any other emotion we can describe.

I write to ensure that the relationship with our ancestors does not end during death—honestly it only begins. This is the special part of our bloodline often overlooked. Someone may make prayers crying to their higher power for help and assistance, but it is a lot more personal when they can call to grandmother, to their father, to someone in their community who helped on this side of the aspect, or even someone in history who had a special impact. If their legacy never truly dies, neither does their voice.

This is common ground amongst us all and a key to filling the void—a true healing center. In life we inherited silence more than guidance. This is where we break the molds and allow our ancestors to guide us, to walk with us. This is something no one can take away from you. This is yours. Protect it.

Paul Laurence Dunbar- Novelist

The Mask

The breaking of the confidence of our ancestors, systematically, has turned into a generational wound. Kulanshi in the past such as the Honorable Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Dr. Francis Cress Welsing dedicated their life work to restoring the sense of value amongst our race. That confidence itself is a direct protection against the void.

We Wear the Mask (1896)

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

  We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

  We wear the mask!

At 14, Dunbar was publishing his poems in Black newspapers, and I am thankful for innovative youth like him because his expression of the void still stands today. Coexisting amongst others made it difficult to truly be ourselves in history. During Jim Crow, though slavery might have been over, any attempts for Black self-reliance and self-sufficiency were attacked. Many were forced to adapt and integrate into a society that refused to see them as anything of value. The void became the home of concealment and suffering.

It is no different today than a corporate Queen who is forced to adapt to an environment where she is not truly wanted, never really given a real opportunity, just there for diversity inclusion. Or the code-switching when mothers answered the phone, not sure if it was someone who didn’t look like us on the other line. The mask can only cover the void, but the void is still there. Silence has become our only form of protection when we see the examples of those who have been loud in history.

Here is where we must create inclusive safe spaces. In our culture, in our tribe, in this diaspora—there’s no need for masks anymore. What does that mean? Amongst each other should feel like home base. If I could compare it to anything, it would be the time before integration. Not for a separation purpose, but for reestablishing the culture of being comfortable around each other again, rather than automatically seeing each other as enemies. I refuse to accept that we must live in an environment where our peers feel the need to wear a mask 24/7—that only deepens the void.

Events that heal, that bond, are what we must build again: like Black-owned beaches such as the Black Pearl in Horry County, SC, or Mosquito Beach on James Island. Before we were “accepted,” we bonded a lot more. These are just the truths of how we should spend our time together. The disappearance of these places created voids themselves that must be restored. Now all we have are masks.

Schools / Education

How many voids did you experience in school? How many times did you have to put your mask on? Though our legacy has been paved academically in both their schools and ours, the voids have been there. Imagine Katherine Johnson being called on to solve mathematical equations for NASA, the fate and lives of space legacy in her hands alone. As she carries her books across the street down the dark hall to the Black bathroom, there is no doubt that there are emotionless voids in the inhuman journeys our ancestors took. That many take now.

I will never question my ancestors disrespectfully but in conversation I often question. What I've noticed is that in their schools we are taught a secondary mindset. Still challenging ourselves such as the great W.E.B Dubois to break their premeditated barriers but reminding them after excelling that “The honor, I assure you, was Harvard’s.” — W. E. B. Du Bois 1895. Yet in fact in our schools we were taught a primary mindset, a mindset of racial pride that is truly needed today. The simplicity of telling students they can be whatever they wish to be no matter how genuine is hypocritical amongst the current voids and blockades in the road itself.

Now we find ourselves today with history not only being erased but blatantly ignored. The education system itself is a factory of quietness to the Black Diaspora. Education must begin at home, continue in groups and in our own institutions. This is just honesty. The secondary mindset these systems cast produce a lack of motivation and an acceptance of resignation which is toxic to our youth. Education gives the opportunity to present a primary mindset again to our youth that they are not secondary based on the color of their skin or the conditions they may dwell in. But an honor and privilege to serve amongst a lineage that has always broken barriers, defied the odds in spite of our emotions.

Confidence is an emotion that must be placed in black youth at an early age on a foundation that is stable enough for the coming storms that try to break it down. This is the Bloodline, this is sacred work.

I Pray You Heal

The most beautiful thing about our voids is what we can fill them with. We are survivors by nature. Healing is an instinct. Understanding the void is there is only a part of the picture. The key is to not get stuck amongst the tracks.

Staying with the Herd

Zanáfamu is bigger than just Black Unity. It's black collective existence. A cup of coffee together goes a long way. We choose not to face voids alone anymore; we face them together. Though we may not have the abilities to fix one's problems, being around each other is healing energy in itself. It takes your mind off of things and focuses on the possibilities that still exist. This is tribal, this is sacred. If you feel yourself stuck in a void, go around and be around someone. Anything that can take your focus off of self. Find comfort in the collective and the work that can be done there. There is always healing in service.

Talk with Those Who Listen (Kulanshi)

Regardless of your spiritual background or affiliation, find peace and comfort in your lineage, in your bloodline which connects us all. The ancestors are like the trees in nature. They may not respond but they flourish new fruit every season, despite the weather conditions there is always something new. Old leaves, character traits fall and fade away but ending in new things to replace them. The trees are filled with untold stories soaked in their roots just as our ancestors have seen the world for the good and bad. Conversations with kulanshi should feel therapeutic.if no listens they will but be sure to listen back. Remain humble, always willing to learn and obtain new information. Peace in the void, serenity in the ancestors walking with us.

Arts from the Void

Some of the strongest works are produced emotionless. I believe every person of the Black Diaspora is an artist in some form or fashion. History shows that itself.

Art is a cultural expression any one of us can partake in and it should be viewed as sacred work. Use it as a tool of therapy for the void. Paint a picture, write something, make something let your creativity flow through any pain. This has always been a special process for us. We can see it today through music over time certain songs still carry this legacy and energy today. Art is how we communicate without communicating a powerful concept.

The Bloodline is always an open space to showcase your art. Poems, drawings, sculptures whatever you feel share it with our initiative to bring Black Press Black.

Voices of Wisdom

“Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.”

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”

— Angela Davis

“I do not weep at the world — I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

Voids are temporary, stay focused on longevity. Embrace the journey itself.

May the ancestors guide and protect you always.