Now I Can Dream: Adult Black Males and the Mentors That Saved Them
validated or debunked. As for writing their stories, you are farther along than you think,” said the Soul.
New Knowledge When I knocked over my chair a few days ago, trying to fgure out where a certain voice was coming from, I had no idea I was going to be gaining something. I thought I would be losing something, namely my wallet, my money or my life. But neither of those occurred. Instead I’ve gained a wealth of knowledge, some new and some old; needless to say the encounter changed my life. Considering my newfound awareness of Black identity development theory, I’ll use the post-pre encounter stages to highlight the diferent stages of knowledge passed along from the Soul and the Brothas. Encounter I found that I didn’t know a great deal about the origins of the psychological shackles that seem to plague the Black man. Addressing slavery as the key point in the intersection of African and Europeans made me aware of the sheer brutality of slavery and the humiliation it caused. My sanitized view of that period, while certainly not wine and roses was a long way from rape, murder, physical abuse, breeding, branding, and extreme psychological abuse. I was unaware of the moral and legal constructs that made White superiority so pervasive and omnipresent, the basis of what the Soul defned as racism. Recounting stories from slaves, though brief, was important; I wanted to read the story, even if only a very small fraction of the entire tale. If misery does indeed love company, then oppression is its name. Small liberating wonders were ofered, primarily using the big “B” versus the little “b” and the big “W” versus the little “w” and fnally the big “R” versus the little “r”, those are for Black, White and Racism. Each of these should be utilized in a clear, concise voice, to be heard, so that people may one day understand that when they discuss the little “b” and 229