HawaH teaches violence prevention, socio-emotional literacy, conflict transformation, yoga, mindfulness and trauma-informed care to diverse communities around the world. He founded One Common Unity in Washington D.C., and hosts the Everlutionary podcast.
Reggie, the founder of Active Peace, is a Yale graduate, stroke survivor, political organizer, community builder, and minister of sound. He teaches ways to cultivate well-being in all walks of life through wisdom, movement, meditation and sound. Together with HawaH, Reggie leads Permission and Refuge Healing Retreats for men of colour.In this excerpt, two men of colour speak candidly about healing from patriarchy and how it differs depending on the body you live in. Hear the full conversation on The Gifts of Trauma Podcast.
HAWAH:
My life has straddled East and West. Born in the US as a brown man of South Asian ancestry, I spent summers in Mumbai amidst pretty dire poverty, little electricity or running water. In the US I lived in a white suburban middle-class home in New Jersey. So I had this ping-pong childhood of culture shock and questions: “Why is the world this way? Why is there so much poverty? Why do some people have no food or medicine and other people throw food in the trash?”
That experience guided my life, education, and will to understand young boys, in particular. The first neighbourhood where I worked, Anacostia, teaching literacy and math, my mentees were young black boys who didn’t know their incarcerated fathers. I spent most of my time breaking up fights and making sure they had food in their bellies. I realized quickly that in addition to math and English, they needed support dealing with what it means to be human, racism, their emotions and the pressure of living in a world not built for their success.
I have spent so many years dealing with racism and discrimination… Brown men are not treated the same as white men. Black men are not treated the same as brown men. There are layers to this…
REGGIE:
American society sees me as black, but my ancestry is Nigerian, indigenous American and Scottish-Irish. I’m all of it, but in this society, I’m black. My ancestral lineage includes freed people of colour, enslaved people of colour who found liberation through political struggles, and privileged white people that took advantage of enslaved humans. All of that is coursing through me, genetically and psychospiritually.
My grandfather, Robert Hubbard, was a light-skinned black man. My grandmother Hubbard is dark-skinned black. They came together to form the rainbow coalition, however, American society has created this system where if you have one drop of black blood, you’re black. This system is almost impossible to navigate if you play by their rules. So another aspect of my experience of being black is opting out of the system that wasn’t made for me. Being an outcast has been a blessing, because I never had a home in the system in the first place. I created a home for myself everywhere I went, in my spiritual practice, and in the communities I build and minister to.
HAWAH:
Masculinity is not the problem. The real question is, how is it being expressed and directed? Underneath the layer of masculinity, there’s a layer of BIPOC men being pressed down by the weight of living in a world not built for us. Our masculinity is often feared. We’re constantly under surveillance. We’re constantly being policed. A really confident white man is celebrated. But a really confident brown or black man will be seen as aggressive. If a white man is assertive, that’s a positive trait. But if you’re an assertive BIPOC man, that could be seen as a threat.
White men, brown men, black men. We’re all healing from patriarchy. Reggie and I bring back feeling and emotion, love and forgiveness. We help men grieve because we’re grieving. The layers of the work that need to happen with brown and black men are different from those that white men work with. Different. Not better or worse. Brown and black men have been policed, feared, criminalized, murdered and enslaved for hundreds and hundreds of years. It sucks.
REGGIE:
The frustration of being told, if you do this, you’ll be led into a system—only to find that you do this and they change the rules—is maddening. All men have been taught that to be men, we have to suck it up and swallow our feelings. The caveat becomes that in communities of colour, living under the conditioning of a patriarchal system requires you to suffocate your emotions and to not feel or validate your rage, grief or anger. The juxtaposition of not being allowed to feel the justifiable anger and rage that you have at a system that’s been lying to you for your whole life—people don’t have the words for it. They only have the emotion that they’re told not to feel.
That emotional rupture creates problems because if you don’t acknowledge the demon, you can’t defeat it. Not acknowledging the violence that you or your community has been through epigenetically is a disaster. One of my deep personal learnings is reckoning with the legacy of free people in my genetics, alongside the legacy of trauma. My grandmother’s grandfather’s first family was sold to punish him. My grandma told me about this, and I was like, “Us?” They sold us? Healing my reaction to that liberated me from that suppressed trauma and created conditions not just for my own healing but also to be of better service through my activism.
You have to be conscious of black history, oppression and the threat of death in an environment that is not only patriarchal but also white supremacist. This is outlined by one of my intellectual heroes, W.E.B. Du Bois, who wrote The Souls of Black Folk over 120 years ago, which talks about the dual consciousness required to be black in American society.
HAWAH:
We’re also healing the loneliness men experience. Our loneliness epidemic comes from being isolated from connection with each other, with authentic, real brotherhood. Men also have high rates of depression and suicide, so it’s encouraging to see an emergence of men coming together who want to do the work. Ten years ago, it wasn’t happening. Whenever Reggie and I finish the Permission and Refuge Retreat, at least two or three brothers start their own men’s circles. Men, we need to gather. You don’t have to know what you’re doing. None of us know exactly what we’re doing. We’re just out here, coming together, playing gongs and facilitating conversation around the question, “What does it mean to be alive right now? And how do we show up better? How do we be better uncles, better dads, better lovers, better sons?”
REGGIE:
The coolest thing in our work is the intergenerational connection and collaboration that exists in our men’s healing circles. During the most recent Permission and Refuge Retreat at Kripalu, we had someone in his 70s and someone in his 20s. We had a Palestinian brother, a half black, half-Jewish brother, and all aspects of the diaspora: intergenerational, intercultural men from all identities coming together to say, “Hey, I’m kind of messed up, what about you?”
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, transformation, healing, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the full conversation, and if you like it, please subscribe, rate, review, and share.
Editor’s Note: This post is comprised of edited excerpts drawn from The Gifts of Trauma podcast transcript. Selected passages have been carefully woven together to create a cohesive narrative that speaks in the guests’ voices and faithfully represents their perspectives. – Rosemary Davies-Janes
