Huey Hawkins dissertation

The Institute for Clinical Social Work

Unconscious Maternal Communications of Endangerment for Black Men

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Institute for Clinical Social Work in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

By Huey Hawkins, Jr.

Chicago, Illinois July 26, 2020

Abstract This project explores the lived experiences of five Black men living in U.S. urban centers impacted by maternal messages of endangerment through a hermeneutic case study methodology using an interpretive psychoanalytic theoretical framework. The present endangerment of Black men, especially within the current climate of police killings of unarmed Black men, as well as the paucity of previous research motivated the undertaking of this study.

This research interviewed mother-Black son dyads separately to fully understand the maternal influence in the son’s life. Each mother received two unstructured interviews and each son received two semi-structured interviews. Using each mother’s narrative data as a backdrop to their son’s life, the son’s experiences of Black male endangerment were explored and analyzed using psychoanalytic and other social science theories, producing within-case analyses into individual case reports and master themes across cases.

The findings suggest that in addition to being responsive to a threatening environment maternal messages of endangerment serve unconscious roles in the lives of Black men, illustrating three major themes. First, these messages act as a defense against the unknowns of a threatening environment allowing the Black male subject to feel prepared against imagined and perceived attacks. Second, it allows for communications between the psychic worlds of mother and son. Third, maternal messages of endangerment create repetitions from the past allowing for the preservation of a unique mother-Black son bond. ii

For my mother, Patricia

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Acknowledgements

This dissertation study would not have been possible without the unwavering support, encouragement, and time of many. First and foremost, I am indebted to the participants for their willingness to assist me in illuminating the voices of Black Americans. Opal and Ed, Marva and Connor, Patricia and Que, Helen and Caleb, and Teresa and Umar, your life stories have touched my heart in amazing ways, leaving me feeling proud to be a Black man.

My committee has been an amazing group of mentors throughout this research journey. Michelle Piotrowski and Kevin McMahon deserve many thanks as readers for their editorial wisdom and guidance. Mead Goedert provided a critical lens that helped me to stay grounded and within the theoretical guardrails whenever I veered off into poetic and theatrical writing—I needed this reminder in my mind. Annie Lee Jones’ expertise on the Black human subject and psychoanalytic theory is unparalleled. Without Jennifer Tolleson’s influence, teaching, mentorship, encouragement, patience, wisdom, and sheer impressiveness, this study would lack the life I have worked to instill in it.

HLH

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Table of Contents

Page Abstract………………………………………………………………..………………...iii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………...iv List of Tables…………………………………………………………………………….x Chapter I. Introduction…………………………………………………….………………….1 General Statement of Purpose Significance of the Study for Clinical Social Work Statement of the Problem and Specific Objectives to Be Met Research Question to Be Explored Theoretical and Operational Definitions of Major Concepts Statement of Assumptions Epistemological Foundation of the Project Foregrounding

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Table of Contents—Continued

II. Literature Review………………………………………………………………...12 Introduction Black Male Endangerment Interpersonal Theory Radical Group Analytic Theory Mothers of Black Sons Existing Research on Mothers of Black Sons Racial Socialization Matriarchy in the Black Family Black Men’s Experiences of Their Mothers Maternal Roles Influencing Black Boys Maternal Anxiety of Mothering Black Sons The Original Transmission Setting: Attitudes from Caregivers to Child Psychic Identifications The Processing of Maternal Messages The Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma Summary

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Table of Contents—Continued

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III. Methodology………………………………………………………………..……51 Introduction Rationale and Research Approach Research Sample Research Plan Data Collection Plan for Data Analysis Within-Case Analysis Cross-Case Analysis Ethical Considerations Issues of Trustworthiness Credibility Dependability Confirmability Transferability The Role and Background of the Researcher

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Table of Contents—Continued

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IV. Findings…………………………………………………………………………..71 Introduction Mother of Case #1: Opal Case #1: Ed Mother of Case #2: Marva Case #2: Connor Mother of Case #3: Patricia Case #3: Que Mother of Case #4: Helen Case #4: Caleb Mother of Case #5: Teresa Case #5: Umar V. Discussion………………………………………………………….……………..250 Introduction Summation of Cases Maternal Messages of Endangerment as Defensive Operations: Complex Contradictions Maternal Messages of Endangerment as Defensive Operations: Survivalist Paranoia

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Table of Contents—Continued

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Maternal Messages of Endangerment as Connections: Internalized Maternal Voices and Presence Maternal Messages of Endangerment as Connections: The Recreation of Intimate Spaces Reminiscent of Childhood Maternal Messages of Endangerment as Connections: The Creation and Recreation of Mother’s Psychic Life Summation Implications and Recommendations Appendices A. Recruitment Flyer…………………………………………………………….304 B. Telephone Pre-Screening Interview and Script……………………………….306 C. Script for Informed Consent…………………………………………………..309 D. Informed Consent……………………………………………………………..312 E. Interview Questions Guide……………………………………………………316 F. Mental Health and Emotional Support Resources…………………. .……….319 References……………………………………………………….......….………322

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List of Tables

Table

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2.1 Mothers Description of Manhood and Masculinity……………………………...35 3.1 Socratic Questioning……………………………………………………………..59 5.1 Categories of Meaning…………………………....…………………………….253 5.2a Master Theme 1……………………………………………………………......256 5.2b Master Theme 2…………………..…………………………………………...257 5.2c Master Theme 3………………………………………………...……………...257

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Chapter 1

Introduction General Statement of Purpose The purpose of this psychoanalytic case study (Tolleson, 1996) is to understand and describe maternal messages of endangerment for a small sample of Black men raised in U.S. urban centers. I am especially interested in understanding the unconscious transmission of attitudes specific to race and gender from mothers to sons in urban environments. Ultimately, I hope to understand how this attitude informs the Black son’s understanding of himself and his beliefs and attitudes towards himself. This study selected five mother-Black son dyads in urban metropolitan areas. At this stage of the research, the meaning of Black male endangerment is defined as a lived reality in which Black men in the U.S. face dangerous conditions based on race and gender. This danger transcends social, economic, and political arenas leading to increased risks of physical harm, arrest and imprisonment, financial exploitation, and death. This study seeks to explore how maternal messages influence this endangered reality. For the reader’s ease, the term “mother” is used to denote mothers of Black sons throughout this study. Mothers of specific racial origin are defined as such.

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Significance of the Study for Clinical Social Work Clinical social workers, like other mental health practitioners, are entrusted to perform services that are clinically sound and culturally competent, especially for marginalized members of societies. To achieve this standard as outlined in the National Association of Social Worker’s Standard for Clinical Social Work Practice (2017), professionals are expected to engage in continuous levels of learning, exploring, and understanding of communities less well studied and researched; the experiences of Black men and their mothers is one such population. According to many (Dalal, 2006; Hammer, 2007; Leary, 1997a & 2000; Altman, 2000), research about the effects of race on human psychology is limited, leaving mental health treatments to suffer.

When considering much of the existing research addressing the needs of Black men in therapy, there appears to be limitations in the way Black men, and the experience of “being Black,” are conceptualized. The term “Black” has become performative (Leary, 2000) and prescriptive in some literature, neglecting subjective experiences of the individual. Thompson (1996) echoes this sentiment stating, “black is never simply black” (p.124). Consequently, mental health treatment for Black patients often focuses on selfaffirmation to overcome oppression (Dowden, Gunby, Warren & Boston, 2014) or social justice mobilization (Allen-Meares & Burman, 1995). Absent from both these approaches is a psychodynamic exploration of Black women and their son’s internal processes that are shaped by their social experiences. Utilizing psychodynamic principles, this study aims to influence clinical social work theory by creating a needed theoretical space in which social experiences are understood to influence the psychic lives of mothers and their Black sons. Furthermore, this study is relevant to clinical social work theory and

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practice because it aims to better understand those affected by the social and psychological effects of race and gender.

Statement of the Problem and Specific Objectives to Be Achieved Throughout the U.S., and especially since the 2016 Presidential election of Donald Trump, the country has experienced racial division on paramount levels. Bouie (2018) notes that nearly a year after Trump’s presidency 60% of Americans felt that racial divisions were worsened by his election. Similarly, the Southern Poverty Law Center found that, for the first time in the past eight years, hate groups were found in all fifty states and neo-Nazi groups saw the most prolific growth (Sidner & Simon, 2018). Police brutality of Black men also became a national epidemic as new stories peppered national television networks on an almost daily basis. Terence Crutcher in Oklahoma, Philando Castile in Minnesota, Samuel Dubose in Ohio, and Walter Scott in South Carolina were lesser known cases of Black men being shot by White police officers while the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown became internationally known (Hafner, 2018). Also known and imprinted into the memories of these cases are the mothers’ cries over their slain sons. Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, touched the hearts of many as she sat in the courtroom seeming perplexed, dazed, and traumatized while processing the acquittal of George Zimmerman. Few commentators have explored the experiences of these women.

Black men living in America have been designated as an “endangered species” for a variety of reasons by a number of authorities (Gibbs, 1984; Allen-Meares & Burman, 1995; Gary & Leashore, 1982; Chestang, 1972). In fact, Bush and Bush (2013) show that

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it was the work of Gibbs (1984, 1988), Kunjufu (1984), and Madhubuti (1990) that first used the endangered species analogy to characterize the dismal life expectancies for Black men. Studies thereafter began illustrating the disproportionate unemployment, high school dropout, and arrest and incarceration rates of Black men compared to their White male counterparts. Additionally, these statistics shaped a social perception of Black men as dangerous, threatening, and, in many ways, doomed. While several studies have explored the social and psychological consequences of this perception for Black men (Dowden, Gunby, Warren, & Boston, 2014; Pieterse & Carter, 2007; Brown, Williams, Jackson, Torres, Sellers, & Brown, 2000; Clark, Anderson, Clark, & Williams, 1999) few have explored the experiences and feelings of their mothers. In a society in which a man is susceptible to a threat because of his race and gender, what meaning does his mother make of this experience throughout his lifetime? How are these feelings negotiated throughout a mother’s life? What personal, historical, and/or social experiences contribute to this meaning? Further, how does the mother’s meaning inform her son’s sense of himself? Until these questions can be thoughtfully explored in a systematic manner, how can Black men and their mothers be understood in consulting rooms, treatment centers, or by society at large? Answers to these questions explicate the reason and essential need for the present study.

Research Question to Be Explored The present study focuses on maternal messages of endangerment transmitted from mother to Black son and to understand how those sons experience that message; the objective is to reveal how those messages affects Black men’s lives. As such, this study

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attempts to achieve the following goals: to describe the meaning of Black male endangerment for mothers of Black sons, to describe Black men’s experience of that maternal meaning, and to provide a psychodynamic lens to understand this phenomenon.

The research question to be explored, thus, is what are the lived experiences of Black men influenced by maternal messages of endangerment?

Theoretical and Operational Definitions of Major Concepts The following are operational definitions of the most used and theoretically significant terms in this study: 1. Mothers of Black sons: Regardless of race or ethnicity, the woman who has raised a male child identifying his race as “Black.”

2. Black Son: A male who identifies his race as “Black.”

3. Black Male Endangerment: The thoughts, attitudes, feelings, and/or beliefs in response to Black men in U.S. society being subject to prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism of any kind by others based on race and gender.

4. Internalization: The process in which the object is installed into the ego, thereby shaping the personality. In this way, the external world (object) shapes the internal world. Etchegoyen (1985) spoke of a primary and secondary identification; primary refers to the infant undifferentiated from the object (the infant and parent are one) while secondary involves the object being taken in after it has become a separate object. From this perspective, self-esteem and other ideas about the self derive from the infant internalizing the parent.

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5. Social Unconscious: Taken from the work of Dalal (2006), this term refers to the caregiver for not only reflecting their internal state back to the child, but also their attitude toward the child. This attitude is shaped by race, gender, and class experiences and informs the growing infant’s attitude toward themselves.

Statement of Assumptions Based on the researcher’s experience as a clinical social worker, four primary assumptions were made regarding the present study.

1. Black men are endangered in the U.S. because of historical and present-day occurrences of discrimination and mistreatment based on race. Evidence of this endangerment is well documented in the manifestation of social, judicial, economic, and health disparities affecting Black men.

2. Mothers of Black sons experience or will experience conscious and unconscious feelings of fear about their son’s wellbeing throughout their lives; these feelings, along with others, are shaped by personal, historical, and social experiences.

3. Many Black boys and Black men internalize fear responses regarding their race and gender, among many others, from their mothers.

4. Many Black Americans, and those clinicians working with them in treatment, have a limited theoretical understanding of the internalization of fear for Black men.

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Epistemological Foundation of Project To answer the above questions regarding the meaning of Black male endangerment, I employed a hermeneutic epistemology grounded in the exploration and interpretation of mothers and sons. Hermeneutics is a form of knowledge that details the science of interpretation. As opposed to empiricism in the natural sciences that holds fundamental assumptions regarding objective truth and reality, hermeneutics poses the claim that truth and reality can never be fully objective due to the researcher’s subjectivity. Writing from an ontological perspective, Heidegger (1962) suggested that hermeneutics was a theory of being, referring to “Dasein” as the theory of being. He called for a three-fold structure of Dasein: attuning to the past, articulating the situation in the present, and pressing forward to the new possibilities of the future (Titchen, 2000). As Gadaner (1975) asserts, it is this philosophical framework that guides understanding, claims of truth, the analysis of data, and the validity of the study’s findings.

Aside from being a philosophy, hermeneutics is also a practice of interpretation.

Paterson and Higgs (2005) outline three philosophical assumptions that inform hermeneutics as a strategy for knowledge creation and that will inform my research strategy to this study: 1. Hermeneutics pertains to the shared understandings that human subjects already have with one another; this sharing happens through language.

2. Knowledge is constructed through dialogue. According to Koch (1999), meaning emerges through a dialogue between the text and the inquirer. Packer (1985) explains that “one of the unique characteristic of hermeneutics is its openly

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dialogical nature: the returning to the object of inquiry again and again, each time with an increased understanding and a more complete interpretive account” (p.

1091).

3. Gadamer wrote metaphorically about the hermeneutic circle “to describe the experience of moving dialectically between the parts and the whole” (Koch, 1996, p.176). In this way, the researcher becomes a part of this circle by moving repeatedly between interpretations of parts of the text and interpretations of the whole text. Eventually, they come to discover an emerging understanding of the phenomenon.

In practicing hermeneutics in this study, different interpretations of the lived experiences of Black men and their mothers were brought together through dialogue between the participants and myself, ultimately creating a shared understanding. Through these dialogues, I arrived at an emerging understanding of truth and was mindful of my biases and opinions so that “the text [could] present itself in all its otherness and thus assert its own truth against one's own fore-meanings” (Gadamer, 1975, pp. 271-272).

This also illustrates Gadamer’s point about the hermeneutical circle; when guiding interpretation, the hermeneutical circle is never static, but an ongoing process requiring the researcher to oscillate between understanding the whole, the parts, and then again back to the whole of the texts (Paterson & Higgs, 2005). Member checking, peer debriefing, and continuous analysis of codes until exhaustion are interventions done in the service of this ongoing hermeneutic process.

Using hermeneutics to interpret the data, my positioning as the researcher is situationally based, influenced by personal, cultural, and historical experiences.

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According to Tolleson, biases of the researcher are assumed, and based on this epistemological stance, “No researcher can be wholly objective” (J. Tolleson, personal communication, December 19, 2019). Thus, the researcher’s interpretations, as further explained by Creswell (2013), inevitably shaped and flowed from this personal history.

In addition to hermeneutics framing the analysis of mother-Black son experiences, I employed psychoanalytic theory in a generalist and pluralistic way as an interpretive framework (Tolleson, 1996). Rooted in feminism and philosophy, Cooper (2015) thinks of this as ‘bridge theory,’ while Harris (2017) describes it as a ‘nomadic’ approach to illustrate the movement between theoretical domains to ultimately destabilize the margins and center concepts and their meanings. Speaking to this topic at the IPA 50th Congress/IPSO 24th Conference, Harris (2017) explains, “Surely Freud is one of our original nomads and psychoanalysis an appeal from the margins of the thinkable. In the idea of nomadic subjects, what is proposed is a non-unitary subject, a subject of multiple belongings” (p. 3). Employing this process, I used psychoanalytic theory to explore and understand the individual subject’s experiences.

When used inductively, psychoanalytic theories afford an opportunity for data to guide the understanding of meaning. Because these theories emphasize “dynamics,” or the complex relations between conscious and unconscious motivations, they allow each subject’s lived experience to tell a unique and idiosyncratic narrative unlike any other story. The rigid use of theory can limit understanding, and for this reason, theory must only be used as a guide. It is also for this reason that other social science modalities are integrated into the present study to understand the lived experiences of Black men and their mothers.

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Foregrounding I come to this study with several important and relevant personal biases and beliefs about the topic and participants under study. To begin, the focus on Black male endangerment and mothers is influenced by my own history of being a Black man in an urban environment who, throughout life, has struggled with clinical manifestations of anxiety. I held, and still hold today, an enduring and close relationship to my mother.

Separations during pivotal life stages (i.e., college, young adulthood) were both tenuous and ambivalent. I believe that during childhood into adulthood, she unconsciously transmitted messages about my identity being endangered; these messages contained her perception of me as well as how society would come to perceive me. Thus, I bring to this study the same belief that there are unconscious messages transmitted from mother to Black male child regarding his identity. These messages are fraught with anxiety as they are responses to idiosyncratic narratives colored by history, geography, family ancestry, race, gender as well as a societal collective unconscious reaction to race and gender.

These messages manifest in both intrapsychic and interpersonal ways.

My relationship to my father, a man who lived his life addicted to mind-altering substances, played an enormous role in my thinking about mother-Black son relationships. Searching to understand him, I studied his earliest maternal relationship experiences and believe that he, too, reenacted internalized messages received about his self-worth and value. My recovery and emotional healing from years of physical abuse from my father came, in part, from understanding his life from a clinician’s perspective, which led me to the field of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and the present research study.

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These biases are particularly important to this study because of the hazards to which Gadamer (1975) refers when describing the text’s “alterity.” Highlighting the essential need for the researcher to be cautious of their own biases, he goes on to note That is why a hermeneutically trained consciousness must be, from the start, sensitive to the text's alterity. But this kind of sensitivity involves neither “neutrality” with respect to content nor the extinction of one's self, but the foregrounding and appropriation of one's own fore-meanings and prejudices (pp.

271-272).

If not closely monitored, my biases risk framing the lived experiences of mothers, and the mothering experience itself, from a position of blame. This line of thinking repeats the rigid positivism inherent to many psychoanalytic theories that undervalue biopsychosocial influences. Mothers, along with their sons, live nuanced lives constantly shaped by the world around them; these subjective experiences will be privileged throughout this study.

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Chapter II

Literature Review Introduction Research and literature on the meaning of Black male endangerment for mothers of Black sons is limited and research detailing how Black men experience that maternal meaning is even more sparse. Thus, the following review represents a selection of interrelated topics, theories, and psychoanalytic and social science research found to be important to the present discussion. The structure of this chapter purposely illuminates and seeks to answer the following research question: What are the lived experiences of Black men influenced by maternal messages of endangerment?

Because the present study examines the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of Black men and their mothers, I divided the literature into three primary areas: (a) the experiences of mothers of Black sons, (b) Black men’s experiences of their mothers, and (c) the transmission of attitudes from caregivers to children. Other important themes come from psychoanalytic discourse pertaining to interpersonal theory and radical group analytic theory, perspectives in which the internal and external worlds converge. Within this broad area of study, I examine literature detailing relational dynamics between mothers and sons from the societal to the individual, sociological to psychoanalytic, interpersonal to intrapsychic, and empirical to theoretical. This review of literature is a

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nomadic enterprise aimed at covering all corners of thought around the topic of Black male endangerment including dialectical tensions between poles where subjectivity often resides.

Black Male Endangerment I believe that such a robust conversation about Black men and their mothers would be incomplete without first starting with a thorough understanding of the concept “Black male endangerment.” In other words, what does it mean to be Black in America?

Chestang (1972) examines three conditions of the Black experience that affect the social, interpersonal, and intrapsychic realms of the human subject classified as Black: social injustice, social inconsistency, and impotence. Experiencing any one of these conditions can have deleterious effects on the psyche. However, when faced together, the personality is subjected “to severe crippling or even destruction” (p. 2). Throughout their lives, the Black human subject is continuously confronted with and responding to each of these conditions.

Social injustice, the first of these conditions, refers to the denial of legal rights pursuant to groups in any given society. Because laws represent agreements between these groups, injustices represent violations of these agreements. It is the group that intermediates consequences on the individual for violations of social injustices. Thus, the Black subject receives consequences via laws and social mores that in piecemeal fashion injure the personality. Company hiring practices negatively targeting exotic hair styles such as dreadlocks exemplify these modern day social agreements. Stop and frisk laws

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allowing police officers with reasonable suspicion to interrogate pedestrians speak to this process as well.

Chestang charitably explains that social inconsistency is “the institutionalized disparity between word and deed . . . [referring to] . . . social immorality perpetuated on the oppressed group by the manners, morals, and traditions of the majority group” (p. 3).

It refers more specifically to the individual expression of group rejection and the messages received from individual others about that rejection. Here, Chestang focuses on the person-to-person transaction affecting the subject’s subjective experience without the group’s intermediary support. Consequently, the effects of injustice to the personality are much more direct, and thus, damaging. Consider the experience of racial profiling of Black male subjects by police and the implicit message communicated. These experiences naturally leave the subject contending with feelings of frustration, confusion, and bewilderment (Grier & Cobbs, 1968).

The effects of social injustice and inconsistency lead to feelings of impotency, what Chestang defines as “the feeling of powerlessness to influence the environment” (p. 4).

He writes about the Black man, it is the feeling of the father unable to secure employment and therefore unable to support his family. It is experienced by the [B]lack man consigned to prison because he is unable to secure justice in the courts and depicted by the [B]lack politician who recites platitudes issued from the man, whereas his father bowed, grinned, and scraped (p. 4).

Such feelings bear a sense of erasure. Grier and Cobbs (1968) also write cogently about this process, explaining,

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For the [B]lack man in this country, it is not so much a matter of acquiring manhood as it is a struggle to feel it his own. Whereas the White man regards his manhood as an ordained right, the black man is engaged in never-ending battle for its possession.

For the black man, attaining any portion of manhood is an active process (p. 59).

It is easy to surmise that from these experiences, feelings of fear, inadequacy, and insecurity inevitably result.

Interpersonal Theory Harry Stack Sullivan (1953) provides a helpful way to understand the lived experiences of Black men. He saw the intertwined nature of social and cultural factors on the developing human psyche and paved the way for what later came to be known as interpersonal theory and the intersubjective perspective. Deviating from Freud in major ways, Sullivan saw the human subject as a participant in their social and cultural environment, constantly being shaped and influenced in relations to others. Complicating these relations is a society that has become fractured by disjointed group formations leaving the individual broken down into clusters of significant others. While such human relations are essential for development because people need “a communal existence with a necessary environing medium” (p. 98), the fracture of society engenders problems for personal identity. Speaking to the societal changes of his day, Sullivan (1947) explains: In the Western culture, into the second decade of this century, there was no devastating divergence of the religious rules from the main trends of the culturecomplex. With short-lived emergence of the Communist idealism and the stillspreading reversion of Totalitarianism as a doctrine of the state, the practical solidarity

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of the Western culture was destroyed. There are now many significant differences in the culture patterns which are now impressed on children in home and school, and through the channels of mediation acculturation. A great deal that was unquestionable has now become controversial, if not obsolete. Whereas once one ‘belonged’ or was an outcast, the question now is rather where one belongs than does one. Each party, group, and clique has its own normative rules, its own orthodox attitude to the religious and even the legal systems. The differences in these respects between the most extreme groups are greater than any differences of belief that have previously influenced the peoples of the world. The ideologies (dogmata) that find devout believers even among our own people are strange indeed to survivors of a time when one’s ‘conscience’ could be one’s guide (pp. 95-96).

For Sullivan, the human personality begins in infancy with a self-system that is continuously reinforced by others’ responses. This creates a reciprocal relationship between society and the individual that is necessary for development. The way in which the individual perceives themselves and the world around them happens because of this constant reciprocity. Describing this process, Palombo, Bendicsen, & Koch (2009) explain, “perception is located between the other world and the person’s mind or inner world. What ultimately resides in a person’s mind is the result of interpersonal experiences” (p. 230). Mental illness, as well as mental health, is a manifestation of interpersonal relations made complex by perceptions of self and the other. Regarding the present study, additionally, Black men begin life managing perceptions conditioned by their environment.

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Addressing the genesis of personality development more directly, Sullivan argues that through interpersonal situations, the infant develops personifications of themselves and others. Personifications account for inner representations of self and others based on the infant’s needs and experiences. Similar to internal objects within an object relations perspective, these experiences are internalized and registered by the infant to populate and form his internal world. The infant differentiates his experiences of mother into good and bad personifications. The self-system commences when three personifications have formed to organize experience. Detailing this process, Palombo, Bendicsen, and Koch (2009) explain: During good me experiences, the mother is pleased with the infant and supplies rewards of tenderness. The experiences refer to aspects of the self that the infant experiences as positive. Bad me experiences result from increases in the mother’s anxiety. These experiences refer to aspects of the self that the infant experiences as negative. Without me experiences there is intense anxiety. These experiences refer to aspects of the self that are so anxiety inducing that they are kept out of consciousness, cannot be communicated, and persist throughout life as symbols (p. 231).

Because of these personifications, or different parts of the self, Sullivan believed that the personality is a dynamic living organism consisting of interacting relational dynamics constantly in states of flux. Such processes are inextricably tied to relationships and cannot be understood outside the social contexts from which they are located and positioned. The closest one can come to understanding another’s personality is through interpersonal behavior. Using a patient coming for treatment as an example, Sullivan (1953) explains that a psychiatrist cannot see this person as just a “case,”

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The patient is, rather, a suffering human being, a victim of circumstances over which he had little control. He is not a determinist but, on the other hand, sentimentality has no place in therapy. Acceptance is essential but patients are not cured by love (p.

111).

The nucleus of Sullivan’s theory rests on the idea of communication as the operational element of psychiatry and the positions that (a) mental illness is derived from and perpetuated by inadequate communication and (b) the human subject, in any relationship, is forever tied to an interpersonal field that must not be overlooked. Communication is made complicated by anxiety, which Sullivan views as a product of society. The human subject is not by nature “the anxious animal,” but rather is made anxious by the conditions from which they live. Thus, it is through this prism that the lives of Black men in this study are viewed; most importantly, the interpersonal field and social dynamics that influence the personifications of Black men must be emphasized to gain an adequate picture of their lived experiences.

Radical Group Analytic Theory Strongly tied to Sullivan’s conceptualization of the human subject within a social context, Dalal (2006) offers a way to understand the experience of dehumanization for Black men. He begins this discussion with a critique of psychoanalysis’s history of treating the external world, explaining “the overwhelming majority of papers in the psychoanalytic literature treat the topics of racism and prejudice as a symptom-as the external effect and social expression of internal psychological dynamics” (p. 136).

Further, it is seen as either an experience from the classicalists as a projection of

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unwanted mental content that is split off from consciousness or from the relationalists as products of one’s developmental story. Dalal argues; however, that while both of these processes occur without question, they fail to explain why developmentally healthy individuals commit racist behaviors.

Pointing to radical group analytic theory to answer how and why developmentally healthy people commit these behaviors, Dalal posits four positions that lead to an understanding robust enough to account for the universal nature of dehumanization, especially as it applies to the lives of Black men. The first of the four is the inherent and inevitable nature of power present when humans interact because of the interdependency of humankind. Needing one another is never an option for the human subject, and because of this need, one subject will at any given time have power over the other. The second supposition corrects the metapsychological assumption that the social and psychological worlds are different levels of existence. Summarizing Elias (1976, 1978, 1991, 1994), rather, Dalal (2006) explains “that the social and the psychological are two aspects of the same process” (p. 144). The third element emphasizes that unlike traditional psychologies that privilege the individual over society, radical group analysis posits that the individual is constituted by the many groups making up the society. He explains, Each of us, as a particular individual, is born into a preexisting society constituted by a multiplicity of overlapping and conflicting cultures. The cultures themselves, as well as the relationships between cultures, are constituted by power relationships. As we grow and develop, we imbibe, out of necessity, the preexisting cultural forms, habits, beliefs, and ways of thinking around us. These introjections are not taken into an

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already-formed self; rather, they come to contribute to the formation of that self.

Further, because the relationships between the varieties of we are of necessity power relationships, then we can say that the I-the me-is constituted at the deepest of levels by and through the power relationships that are part of the social fabric one is born into (p. 145).

The fourth and final element of radical group analytic theory addresses the notion to belong. Citing Foulkes (1948, 1964), Dalal asserts that all human subjects possess the fundamental need to belong for psychological survival. There is no such thing as not belonging because development depends upon the social groupings introjected at birth.

As seen in the other three elements, society plays a defining role in the internal world of all human subjects.

Dalal helps to illustrate how the Black man’s development is shaped by the groups he belongs to and his experience of endangerment is inevitably influenced by these groups’ interpretation of that endangerment. This group affiliation is not a choice; the Black human subject is psychologically dependent on the connections of those groups, which will inevitably become inflamed by power dynamics. It is this power imbalance that shapes and conditions his understanding of himself and others leading to what Chestang (1972) describes as injurious to the personality.

Critical to this discussion of Black men and their mothers, Dalal expands attachment theory to demonstrate how the social world influences the maternal-child relationship.

Depending upon the social groups to which she belongs, the mother will experience her child from a variety of vantage points. She will not only reflect to him a picture of his state of mind but also her attitudes toward him. Dalal (2006) explains, “the attitudes of

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the caregiver are severely constrained by the discourses that have formed the caregiver’s self” (p. 146). Such attitudes are unconscious but constantly shape responses, thoughts, and experiences—a phenomenon also known as the social unconscious.

There can be no discussion of Black men and their mothers without a focus placed on these social categories to which people of color attach. Posited here is the assumption that there is more to the psyche than drives seeking expression and internal representations of self and others. The psyche is shaped by interactions with the social world, and because of this process, each subject’s experience will differ in some way; Vaughans (2016) terms such interactions “cultural introjects” (p. 277). When these interactions are of a demeaning, dehumanizing, and socially deleterious nature, the internal world is further impacted. Dalal speaks to this effect, We can see why it is that, when the social identities one finds oneself imbued with are trampled on, tampered with, trivialized, denigrated, or dismissed in some way, one is powerfully affected; such experiences are likely to be perceived as attacks on one’s integrity and as a violation of the sanctity of one’s being (p. 148).

Mothers of Black Sons Grier and Cobbs (1968) explain that the mother’s role in any caregiving milieu is to interpret the society to her children, making every effort to shape their personality to meet the world’s demands as she knows it. More recently, Brown and Davis (2000) add “that the word ‘mother’ is more than a noun. It is a verb…A verb which means to give life to, to nurture and protect, and/or to assist in the development of person” (p. 4). This study continues this level of thought by conceptualizing the mother as a social agent

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tasked with interpreting the world to her children. As this interpretation occurs, the child takes into his mind aspects of the mother. As Sullivan (1947) and Dalal (2006) suggest, the mother cannot be introjected by her child without her culture, experiences, and history. It is for this reason that blame to mothers for their children’s behaviors critically overstates the power that any one human subject holds. Susan B. Anthony, quoted in Harper (1898), addressed this dilemma passionately in the following statement: Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “Men are what their mothers made them.” But I say, to hold mothers responsible for the characteristics of their sons while you deny them any control over the surroundings of their lives, is worse than mockery, it is cruelty!

Responsibilities grow out of rights and powers. Therefore, before mothers can be held responsible for the vices and crimes, the wholesale demoralization of men, they must possess all possible rights and powers to control the conditions and circumstances of their own and their children’s lives (pp. 1011-1012).

The mother of a Black child has an added task of mothering, and as Grier and Cobbs (1968) explain, “[she] has a more ominous message for her child and feels more urgently the need to get the message across. The child must know that the White world is dangerous and that if he does not understand its rules it may kill him” (p. 61). This was seen and heard most evidently at the Mother-to-Mother symposium (Ethics Project) where eight women shared their experiences raising Black sons. Nearly all of the panelists talked about having the “talk” with their son, a detailed and ongoing conversation about his need to be socially aware of how his race and gender would be dangerously perceived by others. “Over and over I would tell him to stay away from

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certain parts of town, leave White girls alone, stop sagging…all because people will judge you and hurt you,” one panelist recalled telling her teenage son (2019, January).

Such forms of societal preparation by mothers may explain the findings of many social scientific studies on the cultural differences in parenting that document how White parents tend to give choices and expect the child to choose the desired option (Delpit, 1988), while Black parents generally give directives (Steinberg, Lamborn, Dornbusch, & Darling, 1992). The mother of a Black son must parent dialectically: she must nurture yet harden, sooth yet prepare her son for battle, give to him yet push him to provide.

Existing Research on Mothers of Black Sons Bush (2000) acknowledges the paucity of literature specific to the roles that mothers play in the lives of their sons, irrespective of race or marital status. When examining mothers of Black sons, he shows that there is little to no research on the topic. What has been written about and privileged; however, pertains to Black mothers, their sons and the construction of manhood; he explains the significance of Black women in this research: (1) 50[%] of all [B]lack households with children under 18 are headed by [B]lack women, (2) [B]lack women are held responsible in some academic literature and in the popular press for [B]lack males’ maladaptive characteristics and behaviors, (3) catastrophic conditions exist that cause some observers to view [B]lack men as an endangered species, and (4) researchers have virtually ignored-irrespective of race, marital status, or age-the dynamics of mother and son relationships (p. 145).

When Black mothers have been studied, much is focused on single parenthood negatively affecting children, both sons and daughters. Collins (1990, 1994) points to

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stereotypical images of Black women being used when they are subjects of research, going so far to term these descriptions inaccurate and misleading. Dickerson (1995), along with Collins, argues that Black women being portrayed by scholars as dominant matriarchs led to the division of Black families. Bell Hooks (1981), also disputed the accuracy of the “matriarch” designation, echoing Susan B. Anthony’s sentiment that Black women simply lack the power to control families.

Another catalyst for research on Black mothers is the postulation that a father’s absence causes many of the social ills faced by Black families. A host of studies have advanced this claim as empirical truth (McLanahan & Garfinkel, 1993; Moynihan, 1965; Parish, 1991; Parish and Taylor, 1979; Sampson, 1987; Steinberg, 1987; Zimilies & Lee, 1991) despite literature showing that economic conditions and parenting characteristics play a far greater role in these situations. Randolph (1995) shows that while Black male teenagers may feel taxed by filling in the roles of absent fathers, there is little available data to suggest that Black sons who are raised by a single parent face greater risks than same aged youth.

As expressed in this body of quantitative research, mothers are approached purely from a deficit perspective that seeks to explain deleterious, causative factors impeding Black families, especially Black men. This work lacks an understanding of the subjective experiences of mothers, especially those raising a Black son. A more in-depth, qualitative approach was provided in the works of Forcey (1987) and King and Mitchell (1990, 1991) that used narrative interviews of women raising their sons. King and Mitchell compared literary narrative accounts of Black mother-son relationships to seven semistructured interviews with Black women. They asked the women the following questions:

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(a) What have you done to protect your son(s) from society’s hostile forces? (b) What have you taught your son(s) of honesty, loyalty, compassion, faith and responsibility? (c) What have you taught your son(s) of reciprocity difference, mutuality, and spirit? (d) What have you taught your son(s) of family background, secrets, and family lore?

King and Mitchell (1990, 1991) found that these mothers deliberately talked to their sons about males in the family (i.e., fathers, grandfathers, and uncles) in efforts to show that men could persevere through difficult times while maintaining their sense of dignity and self-respect. The participants shared that telling their sons stories about successful male ancestors strengthened core values important to the family, especially in settings that devalued Black culture. The researchers also found that when the participant’s sons did not live up to the desired family values, the mothers felt guilt as a predominant emotion and described feeling that they did not live up to their perceived expectation of mothering. These women described facing a no-win situation in that they wanted to protect their sons from a cold and racist world but at the same time wanted their sons to take on and face that world.

Forcey (1987) found similar results from conducting open-ended phone interviews of 114 mothers of which only nine percent were Black women. Her findings also revealed the “no-win” situation captured in King and Mitchell’s (1990, 1991) study. She attributed much of this attitude to the conceptualization of mother-son relationships by psychoanalytic theorists: Mothers of sons have been placed in a catch-22 situation. In the eyes of our social commentators they have been damned if they do and damned if they don’t. While Freud, his followers, practically every biographer of famous men, most social

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scientists, and literary figures too, tell us that behind every conqueror, every hero, is the responsible mother; they usually describe her as overinvolved, overwhelming, and smothering. In contrast we are told that behind every vain, hypersensitive, invidious, cruel, violent, schizophrenic, paranoid, sexually deviant, narcissistic, overachieving, or merely unfulfilled male of whatever age there is a responsible mother (p. 1).

While neither King and Mitchell (1990, 1991) nor Forcey’s (1987) work with mothers addresses specifically maternal messages of endangerment, they provide a useful lens through which much of the social science field has seen and understood the experiences of mother-son relationships. Even some 30 years after Forcey’s research, her point regarding the pathologizing of mother-son relationships seems to influence the thinking of today and may represent the lack of attention paid to mother-son relationships by researchers. This latter point adds yet another reason for the present psychoanalytic exploratory study of maternal messages of Black male endangerment.

As was seen in the work of King and Mitchell (1990, 1991), Forcey (1987), Sullivan (1940), and Dalal (2006), mothers are undeniably shaped by their life experiences and share these conscious and unconscious attitudes with their children. It is here that the present study’s focus on maternal messages is positioned. It is wedged between the aforementioned quantitative studies of Black mothers’ maternal behaviors and the more qualitative work of authors such as King and Mitchell and Forcey. While none of the researchers specifically address the experiences of mothers of Black sons and Black male endangerment, King and Mitchell come close to the mark by asking Black mothers, “What have you done to protect your son(s) from society’s hostile forces?” In doing so,

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they presume a socialized experience for the mother that I, too, assume in this present study.

Racial Socialization Reynolds (2010) used a qualitative case study approach employing counterstorytelling, a common qualitative methodology employed with participants of color, to capture the messages Black mothers conveyed to their sons about microaggressions occurring in schools. Using interviews and focus groups with 16 Black middle-class mothers, she found across all participants the deliberate attempt to warn their sons about stereotypes and consequent repercussions of microaggressions and the need for their sons to be prepared for such mistreatment. Describing one participant’s experience chaperoning her son’s fieldtrip in which his behavior was reprimanded over his White counterparts, she recalls telling her son the following: I said to my son, ‘See Vance, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s the thing that you need to be aware of, because you will say, you know that such and such was doing such and such, and you’re absolutely right. I’m not discrediting you. I don’t want you to think I don’t believe you. But you’re going to be watched more often, more frequently and with more intensity than the next kid.’ (p. 154) More telling of these messages was another participant’s views on the subject.

Distinguishing the difference between raising her daughter and son, she explained: I have to prepare him for life. And this is the hardest part of parenting; nobody shared with me. I would not have ever known that I would be in such personal distress that sometimes I’m like just in tears and praying, ‘Lord, help me, guide me to teach them.’

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And it can be life or death. Literally (p. 155).

Reynolds found that her participants experienced what W.E.B DuBois (1903) termed a “double consciousness,” the process in which one looks at him/herself through the eyes of the other and routinely performs self-checks to avoid complying with stereotypes deemed by the majority group. In the seminal book, The Souls of Black Folk, DuBois (1903) writes, After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, -- a world which yields him no True Self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder (p. 4).

Reynolds’ participants show an interesting dynamic about the value inherent in the messages communicated to their sons. Speaking to the warnings given to her son about his race in society, a participant explained, “We try to communicate it [messages] as a challenge, not as a negative, it’s a challenge” (p. 155). This seems to allude to Grier and Cobbs’ (1968) reference to the “healthy cultural paranoia” Black people develop in response to having to forever expect mistreatment based on race; they maintain, “He [the Black subject] must maintain a high degree of suspicion toward the motives of every White man and at the same time never allow this suspicion to impair his grasp of reality”

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(p. 161). In this way, messages are acts of protection and survival designed to equip young men in dangerous environments, thereby confirming his position as endangered.

Implied here is that perception is reality.

At the more recent “Mother-2-Mother: Five Years Later” event in St. Louis (Ethics Project), ten Black women passionately shared their experiences of “having the talk” with their Black sons. Such poignant, heart-felt narratives deserve recognition here: “My kids are grown. Once I raised them successfully, I thought everything was okay.

But I find myself worrying every day. I keep my phone on all the time. I’m supposed to be more hopeful, but I’m not.”

“My son came and asked me, ‘Mama, when is it going to get better, when are people going to stop killing us’. You don’t know the powerlessness I felt in that moment when I had to tell him, I don’t know.”

“I find myself asking, what is the breadth and depth of the talk that needs to happen with my children when they constantly hear from the President of America lies that reduce [B]lack and [B]rown lives. What is the content of that talk?”

“Can you imagine having to have the talk with your first grader? Can you imagine not sleeping all night long for the rest of your life?”

“I knew immediately that when I had a son, the talk was necessary. I remember telling him as a kid, you have to have power. Your power is being polite and obedient to authority, and keeping your cool. That, I told him, is power. He’s 40 years old now and a couple of months ago, he told me, ‘Mom, I got a chance to use my power when I was stopped by the police.’”

“I refuse to raise my children without joy.” (2019, September)

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The following quotes and Reynolds’ findings illustrate the formal and informal process by which mothers attempt to socialize their sons regarding race. Stevenson (1995) defines this process as racial socialization, which involves the parental communication of messages to children to enhance their sense of racial identity given the possibility of potential mistreatment based on race. Hughes (2003) offers a more explicit definition, defining it as the implicit, explicit, purposeful, and unintended ways that parents’ beliefs and behaviors convey views about race to children. Many on the topic (Bowman & Howard, 1985; Greene, 1990; Spencer, 1983; Stevenson, 1995) note a secondary function of racial socialization—to protect the child, acting as a buffer, against probable racial injustices. Studying Black families, Boykin and Toms (1985) delineated three areas of socialization Black families found themselves providing to their children: 

Socialization based on mainstream societal values



Socialization within a Black cultural context distinct from the mainstream culture, and most important to the present study of maternal messages of endangerment



Socialization specific to understanding the reality of present dangers based on one’s Black skin

Stevenson, Cameron, and Herrero-Taylor (1998) studied youth’s experiences of socialization using their own 40-item self-report paper and pencil measure, the Teenager Experience of Racial Socialization (TERS) survey. From their findings, they similarly conceptualized two core prototypes of racial socialization messages: proactive racial socialization messages promoting a sense of cultural empowerment and pride, and protective racial socialization messages communicating an awareness of societal oppression. This latter message seems to capture best the Mother-2-Mother panelists’

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descriptions of “the talk” and the participant findings of King and Mitchell (1990, 1991) and Reynolds (2010). Grier and Cobbs’ (1966) description of “ominous messages” (p.

61) described above is also inherent in communications emphasizing societal oppression.

Racial socialization, whether intended to enhance pride or protect, has been linked to both positive and negative outcomes for Black children. Racial pride socialization has been positively correlated to higher overall functioning and self-esteem in children according to the majority of studies (Caughy, O’Campo, Randolph, & Nickerson, 2002; Constantine & Blackmon, 2002; Hughes & Chen, 1999; Stevenson, Reed, Bodison, & Bishop, 1997). However, protective messages have mixed results. Research by Bowman and Howard (1985), Hughes & Chen (1999) and Stevenson et al. (1997) found these messages to be positively correlated with higher academic functioning, self-efficacy, and fewer depressive symptoms. Others found either no correlations or higher incidences of perceived discrimination and low academic functioning (Fisher et al., 2000; Hughes & Chen, 1999).

Matriarchy in the Black Family As noted above, many have attested to the belief in a matriarchal structure of the Black family; a position that strengthens the argument that Black women are, in part, responsible for the plight of the Black community. Among the most influential of these proponents was Daniel Patrick Moynihan and his 1965 report, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” that cautioned the federal government to intervene in rebuilding the lost paternal presence in Black families. Clark (1967) added to this belief, stating that the Black urban matriarchy led to antisocial behavior among Black men.

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Countering this position; however, Bush and Bush (2013) assert that it is the historical ramifications of slavery that created a matriarchal theme in Black families, which left Black women assuming more assertive roles within the family than their male counterparts. As mentioned above, Bell Hooks (1981) asserts that Black women lack the requisite power in society to assume roles of dominance and authority.

Black Men’s Experiences of Their Mothers It bears repeating that to understand Black men's experiences of themselves and others, especially regarding the experience of Black male endangerment, Chestang’s (1972) conditions of social injustice, social inconsistency, and impotence must frame the discussion. From this perspective, Black men continuously navigate complex social, interpersonal, and intrapsychic worlds laden with implicit and explicit expectations.

Fanon (1967) wrote eloquently about this process, “The [B]lack man must wage his war on both personal and social levels: Since historically they influence each other, and unilateral liberation is incomplete, and the gravest mistake would be to believe in their automatic interdependence” (p. 13).

Highlighting dual cultural expectations, Hunter and Davis (1992) explain “AfroAmerican men move between majority and minority cultures and must negotiate the racism and discrimination that accompany caste-like minority status” (p. 465). Franklin (1986, 1987) expands this discussion to gender, positing “Specifically, Afro-American men are expected to conform to dominant gender role expectations (e.g., successful, competitive, and aggressive) as well as meet culturally specific requirements of the AfroAmerican community that may often conflict (e.g., cooperation, promotion of groups, and

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survival of groups)” (p. 465). It seems likely that such implicit and explicit communications influence the maternal messages Black men receive about Black male endangerment.

Fanon (1967) writes in detail about the consequence of these societal forces at play, but unlike DuBois’ conscious experience of the double consciousness, Fanon posits a collective societal unconscious dating back to colonization that operates and conditions the psychic lives of Black people. He grounds his theory in the defensive action of projection, explaining that the colonizer uses the colonized to hold and contain his most unwanted mental content. Race, in this instance, is merely a social construct weaponized to function as a vehicle for this purpose. Blackness, thus, came to represent the reprehensible. Describing Fanon’s conceptualization, Davids (1996) explains it in the following way, “Black is an animal, the [B]lack is full of rhythm but short on intelligence, the [B]lack is bad, the [B]lack is the devil, and the [B]lack is, of course, sexual” (p. 216).

Because of the forced subjection to this socialization by the colonizer, Black people have internalized this belief of inferiority. The unconscious wish to be White is thus fantasized as the solution to their problems. In the pivotal work, Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon (1967) describes it in this way, Out of the [B]lackest part of my soul, across the zebra striping of my mind, surges this desire to be suddenly [W]hite. I wish to be acknowledged not as [B]lack but as [W]hite…Who but the [W]hite woman can do this for me? By loving me she proves I am worthy of [W]hite love. I am loved like a [W]hite woman. I am a [W]hite man.

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When my restless hands caress those [W]hite breasts, they grasp for [W]hite civilization and dignity and make them mine (p. 63.)

Whether enacted or defended against, this fantasy rules over the mind of all those colonized, mothers and sons alike, until those affected learn of this insight. It seems futile to explore maternal messages of endangerment for Black men without this context.

A more empirical examination of societal factors impacting Black men comes from the work of Golf, Brooke, Cullotta, and DiTomasseo (2014). Exploring dehumanization in the U.S. police and undergraduate populations, they found that Black boys are more likely to be perceived as older, and thus, less childlike than their White male counterparts. Childhood qualities provoke thoughts of innocence that go on to yield protections from society. Studying Black boys in the criminal justice system, these authors show that such children in comparison to White boys are misperceived as older, less likely to be seen as innocent and be protected by that innocence, and more likely to be treated and charged as adults. Poe-Yamagata & Jones’ (2007) earlier findings that Black children are 18 times more likely than White children to be sentenced as adults and represent 58% of children sentenced to adult facilities affirming this study.

Maternal Roles Influencing Black Boys Most research on Black men’s attitudes toward their mothers is incomplete, and as documented above, limited to women’s perspectives on mothering. In particular, feminist psychoanalytic theory hypothesizes that boys learn their maleness by rejecting femaleness via separating themselves from their mothers (Benjamin, 1988; Chodorow, 1978), occupying an identity distinct from femaleness. This has led to Western values of

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masculinity privileging autonomy and independence, competitiveness, and emotional rigidity. Empirical studies show that compared to their White counterparts, Black men are less gender stereotyped in their conceptions of masculinity and femininity (Albert & Porter, 1988; Bardwell, Cochran, and Walker, 1986). Bush (2004) found these same results in his qualitative dissertation study of 23 mothers, discovering that Black mothers, in raising their sons, privileged and worked to instill an interrelationship of masculine and feminine experiences more than traditional concepts of masculinity. The following table illustrates his findings of how the mothers described manhood and masculinity (p. 383).

Table 2.1: Mothers Description of Manhood and Masculinity

Black Mothers’ Alphabetical List Describing Manhood and Masculinity A love for people

Respect for others

Believer that there is a God

Respect for elders

Christian

Respect for parents

Compassion for everyone

Responsible

Concern for the human race

Responsible to his community

Financially independent

Strength

Good morals

Strong Character

Honest

Strong in his mind and strong in his heart

Honorable

Treats other people the way he wants to be treated

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Married

Trustworthy

Moral obligation

True to himself

Reliable Religious

A host of other writers theorize another pattern seen amongst Black men and their mothers. Aligned with Bush’s (2004) assertions and King and Mitchell’s (1990, 1991) findings, Grier and Cobbs’ (1968) note, When Black men recall their early life, consistent themes emerge. For example, the mother is generally perceived as having been sharply contradictory. She may have been permissive in some areas and punitive and rigid in others. There are remembrances of stimulation and gratification coexisting with memories of deprivation and rejection. There is always a feeling that the behavior of the mother was purposeful and deliberate (pp. 61-62).

Here again, a focus is placed on the duality of roles Black mothers experience and the ways in which Black men experience those roles. Black women have been said to feel impelled by dual obligations of loving and enjoying their sons while also protecting them from a cruel and unjust world (King & Mitchell, 1990, 1996). As many authors have posited, these are two conflicting poles and the dialectical tension that results leads to a number of emotionally overwhelming feeling states (Grier & Cobbs, 1966; King & Mitchell, 1996). Anxiety, and the adaptable cultural level of paranoia Grier and Cobbs describe, can become a way of life for not only mother, but also the son. It seems

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plausible to assume that any woman raising a Black son, regardless of her race, would be impacted by and susceptible to this form of anxiety.

The Maternal Anxiety of Mothering Black Sons Maternal anxiety in response to Black male endangerment was a theme heard at the January 2019 Mother-2-Mother symposium (Ethics Project, 2019). As noted above, the paneled group of eight Black mothers unanimously echoed feelings of terror in response to raising a Black son in St. Louis. “I haven’t gotten a good night’s rest since my son was 14 years old (now 24) because I am constantly worrying,” one panelist exclaimed.

Another passionately shared her thoughts while becoming tearful, “Raising a Black son is a health hazard—because there is constant worrying…worrying that makes you physically sick.” Yet another panelist offered the following advice to other mothers of Black sons, “Move your son away from Missouri…this is not a safe environment for Black men.”

That children respond to and are affected by their mother’s anxiety seems to be a point unnecessary to substantiate; the century-old collection of multi-disciplinary literature and research on maternal internalizations is well documented (Beebe & Lachmann, 1988, 1994; Bowlby, 1950; Kohut, 1971). Grier and Cobbs; however, speak intimately to the response Black men have to their mother’s anxiety, and they go so far as to suggest that these men “develop considerable hostility toward Black women as the inhibiting instruments of an oppressive system” (p. 63). They explain, “The woman has more power, more accessibility into the system, and therefore she is more feared, while at the same time envied. And it is her lot in life to suppress masculine assertiveness in her sons”

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(p. 63). This point was cited fifteen years earlier by Freudian psychoanalysts Kardiner and Ovesey (1951) but for different reasons. They note that for young Black males, “the dominance of the matriarchy predisposed them to negative ideas about females…[and] if the male comes from a female-dominated household, the relation with the mother is one of frustrated dependency and hostility. This was not conducive to good relations with the female” (p. xix).

The Original Transmission Setting: Attitudes from Caregiver to Child While the discussion thus far has focused on external forces influencing the mothering process of Black men, I now turn to internal dynamics shaping the mother-Black son relationship. Central to psychoanalytic theory is the term internalization, or the process in which the object is installed into the ego, thereby shaping the personality. In this way, the external world (object) shapes the internal world. Etchegoyen (1985) spoke of a primary and secondary identification; primary identification refers to the infant undifferentiated from the object (the infant and parent are one) while secondary identification involves the object being taken in after it has become a separate object. From this perspective, selfesteem and other ideas about the self derive from the infant internalizing the parent. As noted above, contemporary thoughts add to this infant-parent dyad the influence of the social world. This thinking brings to the psychoanalytic cannon a new perspective in that the analyst is not only interested in the phantasy life or internal objects of the patient, but the actual lived social experiences germane to their object’s narrative. It bears repeating, especially considering mother-Black son relationships, that the patient’s internal objects are inextricably tied to social experiences.

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Many have studied the developing internal object and self-representational world of the infant (Harris, 2017 July; Laplanche, 1999; Beebe and Lachmann, 1988), and have shown that despite longstanding beliefs about the infant as a container into which the caregiver projects meaning, the infant is an active and participating member of the parent-child matrix. From the beginning, at birth, the infant possesses inborn capacities that impact the caregiver in bidirectional ways. These capacities include memory, cued recall, matching, cross-modal perception, and detection of correspondences. Infant observation studies of the first six months of life (Beebe and Lachmann, 1988) show that because of these propensities, the infant is hardwired to learn and take in stimuli from their caregivers before symbolic formation occurs. When the infant later develops ways to think in terms of symbols, he/she has already co-created a rhythm of intrapersonal, interpersonal, emotional regulation, and kinetic activity with the caregiver. These attuned patterns between caregiver and infant come to represent the first feeling states, demonstrating empathic and agentic levels of being. In this way, the infant actively participates in the structuring of his internal world.

Studying how subjective states become shared experiences between mother and infant, Beebe and Lachmann (1988) write, “The various ways in which mother and infant influence each other to match the timing and affective direction of behavior provides each a behavioral basis for knowing and entering into the partner’s perception, temporal world, and feeling state” (p. 320). Here, the authors are speaking to the development of feeling states and the dependence of such states on the actions of others. The infant learns to feel in relation to its mother, and when their feelings are in sync, language and

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communicative behavior between the two become more similar. Implied here is the notion that identifying another’s feelings increases those feelings in one’s self.

Beebe and Lachmann (1988) go on to note three mechanisms connecting the feeling state of one person to another: The first occurs when subjective feeling states are expressed in behavior. In a social interaction, this expressive display is perceived by the partner, and there is a strong tendency to match the outward display in some way (in its timing, affect, direction, etc.). This matching is a second intermediate mechanism of transmission of a feeling state. The third way, as we previously suggested, is that the very act of matching generates a central emotional state in the receiving partner who matches (p. 320).

Ekman (1983) and Zajon (1985) add to this understanding by illustrating patterned matching experiences between mother and infant in predicting the emotional states of the other. Ekman’s research reveals that a person’s facial features elicit autonomic activity that then goes on to shape a matched response in the receiving partner. Zajonc found similar results, documenting the matching of affective direction and temporal patterns.

These findings suggest that subjective states between two subjects, particularly mother and infant, can be shared and influenced in bidirectional ways.

Harris (2017, July) takes a somewhat different look at the infant’s internal environment that leads to subject formation and describes the intrapsychic experience of this time. From this perspective, she describes it as inherently intimate driven by erotic and manic impulses. It begins with the mother-infant dyadic situation as binary; it is big and small, pointing to an asymmetry of power between the adult parent and evolving infant. This differential of power eventually results in a seductive milieu in which ‘being’

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or otherness precedes subjectivity, but requires the presence of an object; Mitchell (2000) calls this experience pre-objectal. This experience with the other that prepares the way for the human subject is both overwhelming and needed, and while the infant is always unprepared, interiority and exteriority is co-constructed (Harris, 2017, July). Laplanche (1999) holds that these experiences are seductive, and as Harris explains, “the reality of encounters with an Other whose fantasy and material transactions of adult with infant infuse the child with experiences, longings, erotic forms of being and feeling that require acts of translation and registration that are the very work of becoming a subject” (p. 6).

Such maternal seductions occur mysteriously to both mother and child and lead to shame which forces what is formed as subjectivity.

It is from these points of view that the current study of mother-Black son relationships is explored. While mothers develop conscious and unconscious thoughts regarding their son’s wellbeing, it is reasonable to assume that sons actively participate in shaping their mother’s feelings regarding race and gender. This seems likely to occur because of the unique and idiosyncratic unit the pair creates existing, in part, from pre-symbolic messages. That these messages occur on an unconscious level makes nearly impossible the processing of such information; as van De Kolk (2014) explains, “the body keeps the score and remembers what the mind cannot.” Harris and Laplanche help to underscore the instinctual forces of these times, leaving me curious as to how sons in this study unconsciously experience their mother’s intrapsychic needs.

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Psychic Identifications Moss’ (2001) conceptualization of the psychic identification inherent in structured hatreds is important to this discussion of Black male endangerment for many reasons.

While the subjects of this study may represent a group to which others project disavowed feeling states, it seems reasonable to assume that all human subjects seek out ways to employ projections to achieve identification/disidentification aims. As Moss asserts, human nature is to use objects to achieve the aim of the drive. Speaking to this process more directly, he explains “Homophobia, racism, and misogyny construct the other as a transparent object. Definitive knowledge about it is available through immediate apperception, through a kind of revelation. No sustained contact is necessary” (p. xxvi).

As Freud (1949) believed, there is a human tendency to seek out objects to achieve our instinctual aims.

Moss allows for a somewhat different interpretation of Reynolds (2010) findings.

Without minimizing the validity of her participant’s views, there may be unconscious motives influencing the mothers’ admonishments to their sons about race. This conceptualization allows for an understanding of mothers as dynamic, unconsciously wrestling with conflicting self-states and needing to dispense intolerable emotions. This also speaks to the work of Altman (2000) and Dalal (2006) illustrating the point that the projector needs the projectee as much as the projectee needs the projector. Fanon’s (1967) quotation above illustrates this point.

In addition to maternal messages about race being live reactions to perceptions of danger, Moss’ work raises important questions for this study: (a) could they be, on some unconscious level, attempts at maintaining identifications with aspects of the mother’s

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personal, communal, historical, or socially relevant past, (b) could they function, in some unconscious way, to reconstruct some needed aspect or experience from her past, and (c) could they reflect some assignment of roles needed to maintain connection to a parent’s traumatic past? These questions and others point to the content of the earliest maternal messages and the intergenerational transmission of trauma.

The Processing of Maternal Messages Many psychoanalysts maintain that the infant will make as much sense as possible of the communications they receive from their environment, especially what the caretaking adult is communicating (Winnicott, 1960a, 1963; Kohut, 1971). House (2017) points to Laplanche and Pontalis’ use of the term “translation” to define the infant’s effort at making sense of these communications (p. 790). This translation is always incomplete and limited by the infant’s undeveloped capacities. The communications that can be understood, or translated, to become a part of the progressively developing ego.

Browning (2016) explains that those messages that cannot be translated, metabolized, or digested but perceived, “for example, a caregiver’s particular type of smile or grimace or quality of touch or intonation—are “failures” of translation that will be retained, “stripped of meaning,” and repressed, becoming the initial and continuing source of the unconscious (p. 1039). Laplanche (1989-1990) deems these messages to be enigmatic.

Distinguishing psychic trauma from other kinds of trauma, Freud (1894) notes that these communications present the developing ego with an incompatible idea, a type of mental conflict that can be thought of as a psychic trauma. Consider the following passage: For these patients whom I analysed had enjoyed good mental health up to the moment

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at which an occurrence of incompatibility took place in their ideational life—that is to say, until their ego was faced with an experience, an idea or a feeling which aroused such a distressing affect that the subject decided to forget about it because he had no confidence in his power to resolve the contradiction between that incompatible idea and his ego by means of thought activity (p. 47).

Browning, Laplanche and Freud raise important questions for this study of how Black boys metabolize unconscious messages about their endangerment and to what extent these messages are experienced as traumatic.

The Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma Speaking directly about identifications of past objects and experiences, many have written about intergenerational transmissions of trauma (Fromm, 2006; Drapeau & Perry, 2004; Frailberg, Adelson, & Shapiro, 1975; Schechter, 2003; Davoine & Gaudilliere, 2004). Theorists as early as Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham (1943) saw that children whose mothers experienced trauma by the effects of World War I were far more likely to develop trauma than children whose mothers did not. Studying traumatized and psychotic patients, Davione and Gaudilliere (2004) found this same connection, and summarizing their work, Fromm (2006) writes: The unthinkable traumatic experience of the preceding generation lodges itself in highly charged but chaotic fragments in the troubled mind of the patient. In a sense, these patients are attempting to give a mind to that which has been cut out of the social discourse that surrounds them (p. 449).

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Volkan (2002, 2004) shows intergenerational trauma taking a variety of forms, including emotions passed from parent to child as well as unconscious fantasies about the cause, nature, and effects of the trauma. Paraphrasing Volkan (2004), Fromm posits that “children become the reservoir for unresolved and unacceptable mental representations of the trauma of the previous generations who have been unable to come to terms with issues of humiliation and loss” (p. 284). He further adds, The children adsorb their elders’ traumatized parts and then bear the burden of completing the task that their forebears were unable to resolve. These mental representations or traumatized self-images are continuously passed from one generation to the next and are constituted by shared feelings, perceptions, fantasies, and interpretations of the calamity (p. 284).

Fromm (2006) writes cogently about the intersection between trauma and social historical contexts, showing that one is always influencing the other. The ‘big history,’ he writes, “refers to wars, atrocities, diaspora, and social upheaval, while “little histories” involve the personal narrative of an individual’s family in a particular time and place” (p.

450). Worthy of lengthy quotation, he writes about a patient’s treatment that illustrates the social historical influence of intergenerational trauma: A young woman brought up in London reported a dream after her therapist's vacation.

“There were some ruined buildings. They were destroyed by fire. One was a pet shop.

There were some guinea pigs in a cage, doing something sexual with each other.” The next day, she remembered that the buildings were not destroyed by fire, but by rain.

Spontaneously, as though it were more her thought than his, her therapist said: “There is a kind of rain that brings fire.” The patient said, “Bombing” and suddenly

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remembered, for the first time, an event from her childhood.

Night after night, her father would watch newsreels of the bombing of London. He seemed to be looking for something. His eight-year old daughter sat anxiously beside him and repeatedly asked him why he was looking at these films again and again. He made no reply. This took place just after the father's mother had died, with whom he had been quite close. In fact, mother and son had long since been left by the grandfather, so that when her son moved away to be with his own family, the patient's grandmother became desperately lonely and seemed to will herself into debilitation and death. The patient was named for this grandmother. She was later to learn that her father had lost his childhood home in the bombing of London when he was eight years old.

After his mother's death and the phase of searching newsreels for his destroyed home, the patient's father entered a long, subtle depression that his adoring daughter's liveliness and flirtatiousness were designed, though not destined, to cure. As she grew into adolescence, this former “pet” of her father felt that she had lost her father's presence and love completely. She became vulnerable to rejection in love relationships, deeply conflicted about sexuality, determinedly involved with wounded, remote men and increasingly convinced that no one could stand the anger, borne of hurt and humiliation, she felt inside her. Eventually, she became recurrently and seriously preoccupied with death. Multiple near-fatal suicide attempts were interspersed with both outpatient treatments and short-term inpatient treatments, none of which led to sustained improvement. From one angle, she seemed to be following in her namesake's suicidal footsteps, as though to replace her grandmother as the

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object of her father's mourning. Perhaps, if she could not have access to his liveliness, she could at least access his depression (p. 450).

The history of Black Americans is rooted in big history events, namely the American Slave Trade, Jim Crow segregation laws, the Civil Rights Movement, and more recently, the Black Lives Matter movement. Following Fromm’s conceptualization, it is not important that a person experienced a particular social historical event, but rather someone in their ancestry. Because trauma is transmitted from one generation to the next, human subjects are forever tied to the traumas of their forbearers. Fromm, here, also describes this traumatic past as silent: On the one hand, silence is a recurrent feature in the transmission of trauma, silence about something both terribly confusing and absolutely urgent. This eight-year-old experienced an urgent speechlessness from her father at the core of his trauma. Had it been possible for her father to speak, his choosing to be silent might have been designed to protect her. But, in her experience, it deprived her, and the subsequent, ongoing deprivation she felt from her father led to a retaliatory, deeply depriving motive within her suicidal actions (p. 451).

Fromm (2006) adds an understanding of the intrapsychic dynamics of trauma similar to the pre-symbolic aspects of shared subjective states noted in Beebe and Lachmann’s (1988) observations. Trauma, on this level, appears to return two subjects to the earliest moments of shared states of mind. It is dissociated, and thus, exists without symbols, language, or even consciousness. Fromm’s (2006) eight-year-old patient and her father communicated unconsciously through a trauma linked to a particular social upheaval. The messages were unspeakable but defined her mission—to become the replacement for his

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father’s mother. “Speaking,” he adds, “separates the patient from a person she needs and who needed her” (p. 453).

That many messages are unconscious, and thus unspeakable, creates an enormous challenge for the Black son making sense of maternal meanings. Psychoanalyst Sherwood Faigen alluded to this point, echoing Freud’s point above about the ego’s lack of power regarding the incompatible idea. He explained there being no way for the subject to respond to unconsciously transmitted messages; there is no disputing it [the unconscious message]—it is forced to be integrated however disruptive (S. Faigen, personal communication, May 18, 2019). Equally confusing to the mother and son are social unconscious messages transmitted by society at large, as noted in the prolific works of Chestang (1998), Fanon (1986), Sullivan (1940, 1953) and Dalal (2006).

Summary This chapter aimed to synthesize, from a variety of perspectives, components of research and theory conceptualizing the Black human subject. In particular, his endangerment is explored from the distinct vantage point of the external and internal worlds converging and coexisting to create a unique human experience. Within this matrix, the mother is positioned and acts as a social agent tasked with the instinctual responsibility to protect her child. This protection involves acts of preparation for the world beyond his capacity to understand. From birth, the Black man receives both conscious and unconscious messages from his environment about his worth, value and security.

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The present study of maternal messages of Black male endangerment assumes that maternal attitudes are shaped by these social experiences and shared from caregiver to child. The theorists outlined above deepen this discussion by illustrating the complex and multidimensional nature of living in Black skin. Writing from a socio-political perspective, Chestang identifies the injurious effects of role identity. Sullivan underscores the psychic developmental trajectory influenced by external and internal interchanges.

Dalal, lastly, explores the impact of race, power, and dehumanization on the mothering experience. Together, these perspectives offer explanatory power to understanding the lived experiences of Black men.

The research on Black men’s experiences of their mothers is varied. On one hand, authors (Bush, 2000) highlight loving relations from the dual obligated tasks of mothering. On the other hand, Grier and Cobbs (1968) note Black men’s intrinsic anger toward the female role, giving credence to the findings suggestive of matriarchal family structures. What both positions overlook; however, is the subjective and dynamic experiences each mother-Black son dyad creates that bidirectionally colors the experience for both parties. Beebe and Lachman (1988) and Harris (2007) speak to these processes from their observations of infants. Also absent from the prescriptive approaches of Grier and Cobbs is the variation in social groupings highlighted by Sullivan (1953) and Dalal (2006). Each mother-Black son dyad has a unique place and location within a complex matrix of groups in their environment.

Moss (2001) and Fromm (2006) help to remind that the use of projection as a defense is about more than the need to discharge or unpack unwanted parts of the self, but also to meet identification/disidentification needs. This position departs from critical race

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analyses, such as those furthered by Fanon (1986) and Chestang (1972) as well as racial socialization theories, in emphasizing the universal needs met by projection. It also reiterates that maternal messages about Black male endangerment, as well as any other message, are inextricably tied to the psychical needs of the mother. As Volkan (2004) pointed out, additionally, this maternal world has been invaded by the unresolved and unacceptable traumatic feelings of the previous generations. Consequently, maternal messages communicate more than the need for cultural pride and cautions about safety as King and Mitchell (1990, 1991) and Reynolds (2010) suggest. These messages provide a window into the mother’s complex matrix of intrapsychic, interpersonal, and social worlds.

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Chapter III

Methodology Introduction This qualitative study utilizes a psychoanalytic case study methodology (Tolleson, 1996) to understand and describe the meaning of Black male endangerment for Black men and their mothers. I believe that understanding the unconscious transmission of attitudes specific to race and gender from mothers to sons in urban environments will better equip clinical social workers in treating these families in mental health therapy.

Even more specifically, this knowledge will inform clinicians about how these attitudes inform Black men’s understanding of themselves and their self-esteem. To fully understand this phenomenon, the study addresses a central research question: what is the lived experiences of Black men that have been influenced by maternal messages of endangerment?

This chapter describes the study’s research methodology involving a detailed discussion of (a) the rationale and research approach including discussions of the qualitative design, social constructivist paradigm, hermeneutic epistemology, and psychoanalytic case study methodology; (b) description of the research sample; (c) overview of the research design; (d) methods of data collection; (e) analysis and synthesis of data; (f) ethical considerations; (g) issues of trustworthiness; and (h) the role and background of the researcher.

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Rationale and Research Approach This study utilizes qualitative research to explore the lived experiences of mothers raising Black sons and those sons. By definition, according to Denzin and Lincoln’s (2011) SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, Qualitative research is a situated activity that locates the observer in the world.

Qualitative research consists of a set of interpretive, material practices that make the world visible. These practices transform the world. They turn the world into a series of representations, including field notes, interviews, conversations, photographs, recordings, and memos to the self. At this level, qualitative research involves an interpretive, naturalistic approach to the world. This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomenon in terms of the meanings people bring them (p. 3).

As reflected here, the aim of this type of research is to develop complex and detailed understandings of something (Creswell, 2007) as well as to create complex explanations for its occurrence (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2008). The lived experiences of Black men and their mothers, exploring the racialized and gendered aspects of mothering, is one such phenomena requiring this level of attention.

A social constructivist paradigm is vital to this study by providing a necessary guide to understanding participants’ meanings and experiences and the research as a whole.

According to this paradigm, truth and knowledge are social constructs unique to any one subject rather than absolute or fixed. As such, it privileges the individual subject’s construction of meaning and the experience of that meaning (Creswell, 2009; Berger &

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Luckman, 1966; Bloomberg & Volpe, 2008). This is an essential component of this research to capture the situationally specific, socially infused realities of mothers raising Black sons. Creswell (2009) further adds that social constructivism holds that experiences and meanings cannot be detached from the sociocultural and historical contexts from which they are found. This sociocultural and historical context extends to the researcher themselves, as they are forever shaped by their constructions of reality. As such, this study acknowledges my position as the researcher being undoubtedly influenced by these constructions and ever-changing contexts.

From a social constructivist paradigm, there are certain philosophical assumptions made in this study. Ontologically, referring to the nature of reality, social constructivists assume that multiple realities are constructed through participants’ lived experiences and interactions with others. The mothers’ thoughts about Black male endangerment, for example, are expected to have been influenced by her interactions with others in the past and present. It is assumed that current conditions in the U.S., especially those pertaining to incidents involving Black men, influence the meaning of Black male endangerment for mothers.

Epistemological assumptions refer to how reality is known, and from a social constructivist paradigm, there is the belief that reality is co-constructed between the researcher and participants, all shaped by individual experiences. Thus, my role as the researcher is assumed to influence the data collected. Creswell (2013) shows that axiological beliefs, or the role of values, from a social constructivist perspective focuses on individual values being honored as well as negotiated among individuals.

Methodologically, social constructivists seek constructions of truth in lieu of an objective

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reality. This information is then used inductively to develop a pattern of meaning (Creswell, 2013).

Focusing on five mothers and their sons, I chose to employ a unique case study methodology described by Creswell (2013) as “instrumental” and “collective” and psychoanalytic by Tolleson (2009). It is instrumental in that it seeks “to understand a specific issue, problem, or concern and the case or cases selected to best understand the problem” (Creswell, 2013, p. 99). It is collective because I selected multiple case studies to illustrate the issue of the meaning mothers assign to Black male endangerment.

Further, Yin (2009) adds that the scope of case studies “is an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon in depth and within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident” (p. 18). Using individual narratives of the proposed five mother-Black son dyads, I aimed to capture the maternal meanings of Black male endangerment within real-life contexts.

This case study methodology is termed “psychoanalytic” because of the theoretical lens used to understand the lived experiences of both Black sons and their mothers.

According to Tolleson (1996), the psychoanalytic case study values depth of reflection and meaning. More specifically, this research values a “theoretical pluralism” rarely captured when researchers employ “the dogmatic use of theory . . . [imposing] her own theoretical agenda in a way that strips the subject of his uniqueness and complexity” (p.30). Hoffman (2009) adds to this understanding by asserting the importance of the researcher’s “psychoanalytic voice,” admonishing that “that voice stand up for the full

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richness, complexity, and mystery of each moment of human experience and for its manifold unrealized potentials” (p. 1065).

Research Sample Participants in this study were comprised of five adult (age 21 and older) motherBlack son dyads (five mothers and five sons for a total of 10 participants) with each mother-Black son pair representing an individual case. Mothers of all races, classes, and sexual orientations were sought to achieve what Straks, Brown and Trinidad (2007) term “theoretical sampling.” As they explain, this “involves recruiting participants with differing experiences of the phenomenon so as to explore multiple dimensions of the social processes under study” (p. 1375). Inclusion/exclusion criteria for sons included: 

Adults over age 21;



Agree to ask mother to participate in the study;



Identify as a Black man raised by the mother a part of the dyad; and



Agree to be interviewed multiple times and audio-taped each time; and

Similarly, inclusion/exclusion criteria for sons include: 

Identify as the mother of the son participating in the study; and



Agree to be interviewed multiple times and audio-taped each time.

Research Plan Following general case selection guidelines for conducting case study research, I interviewed five participant dyads, totaling 10 participants (Creswell, 2007) as the

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primary data collection method. The rationale is that this small sample size created a deeper level of analysis for more compelling formulations (Tolleson, 2009). Because the present study has the overarching objective to describe maternal messages of endangerment for Black men, the recruitment process focused on Black sons who agreed to ask their mothers to participate in the study. Employing purposive sampling techniques to acquire a varied sample, these recruitment efforts included networking with personal and professional friends, colleagues, and associates for referrals. Radio shows and blogs aimed at reaching Black male audiences were contacted and sent recruitment flyers. I also networked with organizations and businesses known for having large numbers of Black male engagement; such as barbershops, fitness gyms, sporting leagues, and churches.

Lastly, Facebook and other social media platform groups purposed for Black men were contacted and informed of my study.

After mother and son participants were identified, a screening interview by phone was conducted for each individual. During this time, I assessed general demographics, interests, inclusion criteria, and willingness to participate as well as provided participants with detailed information about the study, intended uses of data, participant rights, and confidentiality policies. At that time, all 10 participants were introduced to and read the informed consent form and allowed time to ask questions and make comments. After this document was signed and received, participants were given a choice to select a pseudonym for identification purposes. For those who chose not to do so, I assigned one to them.

In summary, the following research planning steps, from start to finish, were taken in sequential order:

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1. Recruited/identified son-mother dyads meeting inclusion criteria; 2. Administered screening interviews; 3. Presented and explained informed consent form before collecting data, and confirmed a thorough understanding; 4. Administered first mother solo semi-structured interview; 5. Administered first son solo semi-structured interview; 6. Administered second mother solo semi-structured interview; 7. Administered second son solo semi-structured interview; 8. Transcribed, coded in vivo, and analyzed data; 9. Disseminated findings; 10. Wrote report; 11. Administered mother member checking solo interview (optional for participants); 12. Administered son third member checking solo interview (optional for participants); 13. Revised report; and 14. Disseminated.

Data Collection In line with psychoanalytic case study data collection methods, my objective during the interview process was to elicit rich, thick descriptions aimed at inviting freedom of association that listens for latent meanings. As noted by Tolleson (1996), this approach “parallels…clinical interviewing methods” in that despite the interview protocol, participants are encouraged to freely elaborate on aspects of their experience most

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important to them. Above all else, I aimed to collect data that carefully followed each participant’s line of thinking, elucidated the importance of their responses, and explored both the global and latent meanings of their narratives. My experiences with the participants during the interviews were also collected and transcribed (contained as notes).

For the five mother-Black son dyads, each representing an individual case, the primary data source was narrative interviews. Specifically, I employed in-depth, semistructured, and flexible interviews to obtain narrative data that were meaningful to the participants. Runyan (1984) explains that when “attending the particularities of thought, conversation, actions, subjective meanings, and social contexts, narrative qualifies as an idiographic method par excellence” (p. 182). Each participant received two individual interviews, lasting 60-90 minutes, that encompassed broad, unstructured, open-ended questions about their experiences (Creswell, 2014). Creswell (2013) notes that this method ensures that participants are given space to share important information.

Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed afterwards. The location of the interviews were decided by each participant, as they were offered the choice of meeting by phone or in person at my office, their home, or some other agreed upon private setting.

The Socratic method of questioning was employed to achieve both critical and creative thinking about the lived experiences of Black men and their mothers. According to R. W. Paul (2006), the following six types of Socratic questioning include:

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Table 3.1: Socratic Questioning

Types of Questioning 1. Questions for clarification:

Examples 

Why do you say that?



How does this relate to our discussion?

2. Questions that probe assumptions:



What could we assume instead?



How can you verify or disapprove that assumption?

3. Questions that probe reasons and



What would be an example?

evidence:



What is . . . analogous to?



What do you think causes . . . to happen? Why?

4. Questions about viewpoints and



What would be an alternative?

perspectives:



What is another way to look at it?



Would you explain why it is necessary or beneficial, and who benefits?



Why is the best?



What are the strengths and weaknesses of . . . ?



How are . . . and . . . similar?

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5. Questions that probe implications



What generalizations can you make?

and consequences: 

What are the consequences of that assumption?



What are you` implying?



How does . . . affect . . . ?



How does . . . tie in with what we learned before?

6. Questions about the question:



What was the point of this question?



Why do you think I asked this question?



What does . . . mean?



How does . . . apply to everyday life?

Such lines of thinking informed the development of the following interview questions with the hope of yielding detailed, nuanced responses reflecting implicit and explicit thoughts and experiences regarding maternal messages of endangerment. The following question guided the interview with mothers regarding their thoughts of the research study, her life, and experiences of danger. She was encouraged to speak freely (i.e., “I’d like us to follow where your mind goes with these topics) to allow unconscious material

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to emerge. Sons, on the other hand, were given more structure and asked directly about their perception of maternal communications of endangerment.

(Mothers) 1.

Can you help me wonder about your thoughts about this topic, Black male endangerment?

2.

What comes to mind when you think about your life as your son’s mother.

3.

Help me understand your thoughts about danger and your son’s life.

(Sons) 1. What was it like as a Black boy or young man being raised by your mother in this community, then and now?

2. Thinking about the direct and indirect messages received from your mother about being a Black boy in your community, what did these mean to you? How did they affect you?

3. How would you describe your mother’s worry for you as a Black boy growing up in this community?

4. Has your mother ever had “the talk” (a conversation about how being a Black man can or will impact your life) with you, and if so, can you explain how it went?

5. How did “the talk” affect your thoughts about yourself and others? What do you remember feeling at the time?

6. How do you think your mother’s feelings about you being a Black man influence her parenting?

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To triangulate the data, I took field notes before and after each interview to capture my thoughts, feelings, and observations not documented from the audio-recordings.

Memoing, the process of recording notes about significant events, was also done throughout the research process. As Bloomberg and Volpe (2016) attest, “By recording what you think is going on, you can capture new descriptors as they emerge through your reading and coding, which descriptors seem to overlap, and which descriptors are not appearing, thus needing to be eliminated” (p. 204). Both processes of taking field notes and memoing add significant sources of data to the overall research process.

Following the major findings of themes and descriptions, I employed the process of member checking to ensure that the participants’ voices are adequately reflected. This entailed offering a third interview or a summary of the major points of their interview for all 10 participants. As Creswell (2014) explains, this strategy helps the researcher “determine the accuracy of the qualitative findings through taking the final report or specific descriptions or themes back to participants and determining whether these participants feel they are accurate” (p. 201). Member checking does not involve participants reviewing raw data but rather parts of the finished product (i.e., major findings themes, case analysis, etc.).

Plan for Data Analysis After collecting and transcribing data from each case, I employed a multi-step process using a psychoanalytic theoretical framework for the interpretation and analysis of the data. Regarding this analysis, two points are noteworthy to mention here. First, because the present study primarily sought to explore the lived experiences of Black men, data

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from mothers were not subjected to analysis and interpretation, but served as a contextual milieu. As noted above, mothers serve as social agents tasked with the interpretation of safety for their children. Her narrative material recreated the familial, cultural, and social parameters that conditioned her son’s experiences of endangerment. This social work framework, the person-in-environment, was essential to the present study.

The contextual milieu was intended to explore the mother’s life in rich and thick ways, and in particular, her personal, interpersonal, and sociocultural experiences; this information was summarized at the beginning of each case. Each interview was predicted to be different and based on the mother’s responses to any one of the three semistructured questions.

The first step of analysis for the son’s data involved transcription verbatim, a wordfor-word documentation of the participant’s interview. Coding in vivo, the practice of assigning a label to parts of the interview transcript using a word or short phrase taken from that section of the data, followed. In addition to looking for frequencies of certain words or phrases, I noted outliers that enhanced an understanding of the participants’ experiences. Next, I explored and located patterns or themes of experience within and across cases. The raw narrative data were reviewed for particularly meaningful themes relevant to maternal meanings of Black male endangerment. Tolleson refers to this stage as “parsing data through intensive coding” (Tolleson, J. October 14, 2019, personal communication) and developing meaning categories, “particularly thematic patterns” that emerge from the interview data (Tolleson, 1996, p. 105). Such a process entails using an interpretive lens in which the researcher “moves progressively from the idiosyncratic to the more general, from the concrete to the abstract” (p. 95) to ultimately create rich and

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dynamic ways of understanding how Black men experience maternal meanings. Lastly, my experiences with the participants during the interviews were noted and served as data to be explored and analyzed.

Within-Case Analysis The first level of analysis focused on data gathered from each individual case and occurred following the collection and transcription of all narrative interviews. Here, the individual subject’s psychological experience captured in the narrative interviews is the individual unit of analysis; it is prioritized and analyzed to illustrate its inherent truth, distinction, and meaning to the subjects themselves. Employing a ground-up approach common in case study fashion, the participant’s raw data; their words and behaviors, were analyzed for meaning. Themes were identified and meaning categories generated.

Their manifest content and stated words converging with my own psychoanalytic interpretations about underlying latent messages served to become meaning categories from which to understand their experiences.

Cross-Case Analysis Once the individual subject data were analyzed, I used a cross-case analysis to examine meaning categories across cases. This comparative process allows for the understanding and synthesis of themes inherent to the collective of sons being studied.

To achieve this process, individual case themes were first listed and categorized or labeled. Next, I compared themes across cases, identifying broader, more encompassing

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themes. Finally, I searched for comprehensive themes representing all case units. As with the within case analysis, codes were interpreted using the social constructivist and psychoanalytic perspectives noted above. Oversight from committee members was solicited to ensure that psychoanalytic theories were used appropriately in analyzing the data.

Ethical Considerations Important among ethical concerns is the general protection of human subjects in every foreseeable way. In particular, I was deliberately mindful of three main ethical issues, making every effort to avoid the unintentional misuse and abuse of participants. First, Black Americans have historically been misrepresented by social science researchers and their lived experiences pathologized (Aron, Corne, & Mishler, 1994). This is especially relevant here because of past research that has unfairly attributed deleterious behaviors of Black men to their mothers (McLanahan & Garfinkel, 1993; Moynihan, 1965; Parish, 1991; Parish and Taylor, 1979; Sampson, 1987; Steinberg, 1987; Zimilies & Lee, 1991).

Because I share this same race, additionally, it was important for me to capture the participants’ experiences, rather than my own. As Ridings notes, “there may be a temptation to self-disclose or one-up your experience with subjects during interview…and this should be resisted” (J. Ridings, personal communication, May 3, 2019). Further, I aimed to listen to their lived experiences while keeping in mind the unique, idiosyncratic cultural, geographic, and social contexts within which their lived experiences occur. I was especially careful not to pursue or advocate certain perspectives

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over others in the data by memoing my thoughts, feelings, and impressions throughout the research process.

Secondly, there can be the temptation for qualitative researchers to hear and interpret data from a given theoretical lens, foreclosing the authenticity of other meanings. Yin (2018) explains that this is a human tendency, commenting that “Independent of the method choice, all researchers are prone to this problem because they must understand the issues beforehand” (p. 86). This was addressed by allowing the data to guide a theoretical understanding instead of the converse. Peer debriefing also aided me in this task.

Thirdly, the topics of parenting, childhood issues, and race can potentially evoke emotionally charged discussions and psychological discomfort, including feelings of vulnerability, anger, and anxiety. To minimize these risks, I began the interviews with discussions of these risks, ways to handle such emotions when and if they occurred, and reminded participants of their option to leave the study at any time. Additionally, my phone number and office hours were given to each participant should they have experienced untoward feelings following any of the interviews or during any part of the study.

Incentives for participation included the participant’s opportunity to share his/her meaning of Black male endangerment, experience of mothering and being mothered, and contribution to academic research. As such, no other incentives were offered.

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Issues of Trustworthiness Issues of trustworthiness in qualitative research pertain to establishing credibility and dependability of data by using triangulation and the researcher’s ability to explain the transferability of findings. From the social constructivist paradigm noted above, credibility refers to the accuracy with which the researcher portrays the participant’s experience. Dependability, on the other hand, refers to the researcher’s ability to track steps, processes, and procedures used to collect and interpret the data. Transferability shows how likely the research findings help the reader apply such information to similar situations (Bloomberg and Volpe, 2016). To address these issues, I took measures to ensure the credibility, dependability, confirmability, and transferability of the study.

Credibility To ensure the accuracy of data reflecting the participant’s experiences, I employed a number of techniques, including: 

Use of clinical techniques during the interviewing process, including attending skills like reflecting and summarizing, to ensure that I captured best what the participant expressed;



Triangulation of data collection methods, making use of narrative interviews, field notes, and memoing;



Member checking, the process whereby participants, where possible, offer feedback of their interpretation of the data (Bloomberg and Volpe, 2016). As Yin (2018) explains, participant comments are often included in the case study; and

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

Peer debriefing, a process in which colleagues are asked to examine my field notes, to enhance accuracy of accounts.

While qualitative research design, such as the case study methodology, is not concerned with direct causal relationships, this study inferred that events occurred as a result of some earlier event described in interviews, field notes, and/or memoing. Yin (2018) suggests that the researcher concern themselves with questions such as “Is the inference correct,” “Have all the rival explanations and possibilities been considered,” “Is the evidence convergent,” and “Does it appear to be airtight?” (p. 235). Addressing these concerns, I used pattern matching to compare the findings with predicted and rival explanations and against theoretical assumptions set out in the beginning of the study.

Being deliberate in seeking out instances in which the data disconfirmed my assumptions was also important.

Dependability Bloomberg and Volpe (2016) describe dependability as “whether one can track the processes and procedures used to collect and interpret the data” (p. 163). To help others replicate my efforts, I demonstrate in Chapter V an audit trail, a thorough explanation of how data were collected and analyzed.

Confirmability According to Bloomberg and Volpe (2016), confirmability in qualitative research refers to research being traceable to its origins. To achieve this level of trustworthiness,

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the audit trail noted above is transparent, reflecting the field notes and ongoing memoing documented throughout the study.

Transferability Bloomberg and Volpe (2016) advise the qualitative researcher to demonstrate how and to what extent their findings can transfer to another particular context. To this end, I provide thick, rich descriptions of the mother and son experiences. Also, I offer the reader detailed information about their lives, their person-in-environment context. As social work pioneer Mary Richmond proclaimed, the social worker should be “no more occupied with abnormalities in [the] individual than in the environment . . . no more able to neglect one than the other” (Cornell, 2006).

The Role and Background of the Researcher As a researcher using a social constructivist paradigm, I took an emic point of view to the research; that is, I aimed to understand how the participants perceive the world around them, and as Bloomberg and Volpe (2016) describe, I “[sought] to discover and [understand] meaning of experience.” This translates into utilizing an ongoing curiosity about how mothers perceive their sons within a racialized and gendered society. To achieve and maintain this level of thinking throughout the study, I worked to be flexible and open to change in my understanding of the phenomenon.

As noted above in Chapter I, I acknowledged openly how my personal values impacted my understanding of the participants’ lived experiences, including that (a) I was

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a Black son to a mother who has a history of being raised in a Black community and culture in an urban environment; (b) I have studied extensively sociological and psychological issues affecting Black Americans in the U.S.; and (c) finally, I have 20 years of clinical social work experience and training providing individual and family therapy to Black Americans. These experiences undoubtedly shape the assumptions noted in Chapter I.

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Chapter IV

Findings Introduction For the present study of maternal messages of endangerment impacting Black men, I interviewed, separately, five Black men and their mothers on two different occasions inperson and by phone. These interviews lasted 90-120 minutes and a third interview was offered to each male participant for member checking, to which only one participant agreed. The first interview followed the interview script while the second less structured and aimed at eliciting clarifying thoughts.

The cases were structured differently for the son and mother participants. As noted in Chapter I, the mother’s material was not subject of analysis and served to situate the son’s life—it created a contextual milieu to better understand his experiences. Efforts were made to be as thorough as possible in detailing these women’s lives, but nonstructured and organic to allow an unconscious freedom of thought to emerge. Many of the topics covered and documented for the mothers included understanding her early childhood and significant life experiences, her memories and experiences of raising the subject, her thoughts concerning Black male endangerment, her experiences of being

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endangered, the role of men in her life, and other issues that organically developed during the interview.

The son’s interviews, conversely, were more structured and directly tied to Black male endangerment. His narrative data began with an introduction of his life with a subsection on significant childhood experiences and thoughts regarding Black male endangerment.

True to the hermeneutical epistemology grounding the study, a brief section on my personal and reflective experiences of being with the participant is added. Interpretive categories of meanings are noted wherein within-case themes are identified.

Psychoanalytic and social science theories guide the analysis. Thick and rich participant statements are woven into and throughout this chapter to offer the reader an enhanced understanding of the participant’s life.

Mother of Case #1: Opal.

“Dammit, I don’t want no more kids” were Opal first thoughts after learning of her pregnancy with Ed, the subject of this case. She was 25 years old at the time and jokingly recalls her mother’s words swiftly: “This is yo child and you gone be raising him.” Her mother had basically assumed responsibility for her first child born five years prior and now this child would be Opal’s responsibility. In love with Ed’s father, admittedly naïve, Opal worked to chase a dream of having a family she had never known and that would never come true in the way she initially imagined. Twenty-five years later for this interview, she reflects on her life as Ed’s mother.

Now 49 years of age, Opal remembers a quieter time in the southwestern city in which she grew up and still lives—a time when kids could play outside; a time when murders

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were not occurring on a daily basis; a time when people looked out for one another. Far from what she remembers as a child, this city now feels unpredictable, scary and dangerous, especially for her sons. In such an empathetic tone, she expressed, I worry about if something going to jump off of what he's doing. Just because of the times and the way that society is treating him and looking at him now. It seems like it's gotten worse. Worse because, when you're looking at the news it's always somebody getting shot, they stopped this one and the in third for no reason and they got shot because they pulled they wallet out. He got shot because he pulled his phone out. She got shot because she wouldn't stop recording what was going on. Just different stuff, different things have gotten worse now.

Opal has three biological children, Ed, Benita, and Kenny. Both Ed and Benita are adults and Kenny is an energetic and high strung 13-year-old. Both Kenny and Ed reside with Opal in the home where she was raised in a predominantly low to working class Black neighborhood. Benita lives in another city and is doing well for herself. Opal has worked as a customer service representative at large company for 30 years. She is presently in a relationship with a man and is content raising her children.

Raised in the 1970s and 80s, Opal remembers her childhood being a time of rap music, MTV, crazy hairstyles, and going out. Life was much simpler then. “People just liked going outside, you know, walking around,” she recalls. She is the oldest of two children born to working class parents who often fought. She laments about this time, Well, actually, my mama and my daddy had domestic violence, it was in that house all the time when I was growing up. Even after I got grown and had Alicia there was a few times that me and my dad actually had a fight. We actually, physically fought.

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The source of this fighting was her father’s alcoholism. She remembers him being physically there but absent in every other way. “He would get drunk, and there would just be constant arguments,” she recalls. Looking over her life, Opal remembers few examples of positive male role models as a child within or outside the family. The church was the only exception, as she remembers here: Well, I had men in my church that were good father figures, because when I was growing up, I guess from the age of 12 or whatever, I was always in church and always had something to do with church. I was real tight with the pastor's wife and all that, so he [the pastor] had a part in it. I was tight with both of them. Then the youth leader, I got real tight with her. She married the minister of music, so I was tight with them as well, and they were fairly good figures. But as far as in my family, really not none of them [men] that were really good figures.

Opal’s mother, Mrs. Hall, was the bedrock of the household, ensuring the family’s financial, physical, and emotional safety and survival. She was also a woman known for her tremendous caring and giving to others. It was typical for Mrs. Hall to look after kids in the neighborhood offering food, babysitting, and money to those in need whether she had it or not. At times, Opal felt as though people took advantage; nonetheless, her mother continued giving. Opal reflected on how inspirational her mother was to her: My mama took care of everything. My mama was your mama. Everything that was done, she did. Yes, there was a man in the household but she was both the mama and daddy both. There wasn't too many folks mama didn't like but even if she didn't like you, if it was something you needed, she got it for you. I used to tell her, “You know they don't mean you no good.” “I don’t care.” she'd say, “You still with them?” And

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I'm like, “No, couldn't be me, not going to do it—nope, I'm not doing that, nope.”

Opal remembered feeling angry toward her father as a child, which justified violent behaviors she acted out at school. Captured in the following statement, she believes that these feelings led to a violent way of thinking about herself and others.

At first when I was younger, of course, it made me not want to fight. I was bullied in the fourth grade, and it made me not want to fight back and all of that because that's all I saw in the household. But then after a while I was like, “You know what it is and you got to fight to survive.” So I started fighting so I didn’t get bullied no more. It made me be like, “I'm not going to take shit from nobody.” So, if something happened, I always had that response.

Opal recalls attending an all-White school from kindergarten to third grade with few, if any, problems. “And then in the fourth grade my mama decided to put me in the school with the niggers in the neighborhood,” she jokingly explained. It was a culture shock.

Opal remembers coming home in tears on multiple occasions because of the verbal and physical assaults from the other students. Targeted for her shyness at the time, she had to learn how to respond aggressively. She remembers her mother’s threat: “If you come back to this house crying one more time, you’re going to get it [physically punished] from me.” During these times, Opal recounts learning that being Black meant that one had to assert themselves for survival.

One of the most devastating events of Opal’s early life was the death of her younger brother, Scotty. During the height of the gang epidemic in 1993, he was killed in a gunplay accident with friends at the tender age of 21. This tragedy started with a slow build-up of events, as Scotty had been straying from the house for years. Opal explained:

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I guess, freshman year in high school, he just totally changed. He decided he wanted to sell dope and mama told him he couldn't live in the house and sell dope. At 14, Scotty was a gang member and had his own house. He was something awful, he was terrible. He'd be into anything and everything. He was just nuts. He died . . . really, I can't even really tell you what happened because I wasn't there. Of course, I can't even tell you if the story we got is true or not. Something about they were playing with an automatic gun. They was playing with it and it had an infrared light on it. They kept beaming each other with the infrared light and the dude that had the gun at the time, hit the trigger . . . it was a hair trigger and instead of hitting the infrared light, he shot Scotty in the head over his right temple, just above his right eye.

Hit with this reality, Opal’s world was forever changed and she began to see herself and her reality differently. The world had proven to be a deadly place for people in her community; her only means of surviving was to live life constantly aware of the potential dangers. Her comments about the impact of Scotty’s death exemplify this sentiment: I grew up a lot more. I mean, after that I . . . Before then, me and M [best friend] was always in the clubs and all that. I grew up after that a lot. I stopped doing a whole bunch of clubbing and stuff and started sticking at home. By the time I was 25 I was done with the clubs. Normally that's when you really get started. Oh my God, it was over for me at that point because we started at 19 and it was crazy. But then when Scotty got killed, it was like, okay, yeah, you need to slow down. Even though I wasn't living the same lifestyle, I just I had to do something different.

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Reflecting on Scotty’s death illuminates Opal’s view on Black men and endangerment. Responding to my first question about what the topic brought up for her, she explained, Them [Black men] are endangered from the way that society looks at them, the way they are handled in the corporate world as well as private, personal, and corporate, the way they are looked at, the way that they are handled, the way that they are approached, the way that they are done in society period. And the way that they deal with the way that they've been treated as well.

After burying Scotty, Opal learned that he had a baby daughter named Tisha that would soon be born. Tisha’s mother was addicted to substances and incarcerated at the time so Opal and her mother felt compelled to raise her. At this time, Opal was 25 and involved with Kevin who would eventually father Ed. Kevin was the love of Opal’s life in the beginning phases of their relationship and a source of hope for the fantasied family for which she had longed. A year after they met, Ed was born. Opal worried about having another child. Her mother had assumed responsibility for her first child but made clear that this baby was Opal’s sole responsibility. Reflecting on it here, she remembers: Well, the first time when I got pregnant (with Benita), my mama cussed me out and after she cussed me out, we was cool. But with Ed, it was just like, “Okay, you got one, now that one is you.”

After learning of her pregnancy with Ed, Opal recalls imagining a child who would resemble her brother. She explained, Opal: I wanted him to be Black skinned, have Black lips, real pretty hair, just like my brother. I wanted him to look just like my brother. And when Ed came out, he

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looked just like that except Scotty didn't have pretty hair, but Ed had to have some of mine. He had nappy hair (laughing). But he's just like my brother. He looked just like him.

Interviewer: So, that kind of helped you remember your brother?

Opal: Yeah, yeah. I was going to name him after Scotty, but then I thought about it, and I said I liked the name Ed, so I named him Ed Scotty.

As an adult, Opal grew to understand that manhood is inextricably tied to a man’s way of treating significant females in his life. She reflected this in the following statement, Any man who loves his mother and is always there ready to do for his mother would do the same for his wife. Any man that's there and always protective of his sister, cares for his sisters, even if they get on his nerves, but as soon as something happens and they join in on his fight, they going to be good to their wife or their girlfriend because that's how they are to their mother. Any man who don't have nothing for their mama, and fight with their sisters, you have to conclude you beat your wife. No we aren't going to have that.

Even considering her relationship with Kevin, men were sparse in Opal’s adult life.

Her eldest daughter’s father was rarely around, offering minimal support and guidance to the family. She explained, “There was not a relationship with Benita's daddy for long. He wasn't in the picture long. Ed's daddy was the longest relationship I had and it was off and on all the time.” These encounters bred frustration and anger, as evidenced by her recollection of self-initiated violence. “He (Ed) didn't see any violence but he knew there was violence in—there was violence on my behalf, it was me. I was violent, it wasn't him being violent to me, I was the violence,” she recalls.

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Opal took very deliberate steps to interpret her romantic relationships to her children, especially during their younger years. She remembered being very cautious about how men were presented, purposively shielding them from certain men she encountered. She explained: I didn’t deal with too many men when they were growing up, not too many honestly. I used to say I may have dealt with a lot of Negros but my kids have not. I've never been the type to have men come in and out of my house where my kids can say “that's uncle so and so or that's uncle so and so.” No, my kids only know. Ed knows his daddy; he only knows Benita's daddy by association. Benita only knows the kid's daddy by association. And then the man I'm dealing with now, them is the only three men, They aren't the only three men I know but they're the only three they (my kids) know.

With her relationship to Kevin, Opal worked to shield Ed and Benita from conflicts they experienced. She explained, Ed doesn't know any of the arguments we had. We argued but he didn't know about it.

And he could tell when there was tension or when we mad at one another. But as far as us sitting there cussing each other out and all that kind of stuff, he never saw that type of stuff—he's never seen that. As far as being in his life, his dad was there but he wasn't there. Because Ed would go over to his grandma's house all the time and his dad would be in and out. He wouldn't be there when his dad would be there, it would be him and his grandma. So, honestly, no real big influences on his life.

Opal feels that Ed had few males in his life that were of any positive influence. Kevin

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played a minimal role but caused a great deal of emotional distress to both of them.

Reflecting on Ed’s adolescence, she recounts: Well, for a long time he [Ed] was angry at his dad, and me and him would have discussions, and he would tell me “I don't never want to be like him, he ain't taught me nothing, he can't teach me nothing.” I said, “He teaches you things every day, he teaches you how not to be.” After a while I guess that sunk in because he was like “Well, it is what it is.” I can't change him if he don't want to change. They have a good relationship now but for a minute it wasn't really good because his dad was never around and wasn't ever doing much. He didn't teach him. Ed’s dad didn't know how to work on cars, so he couldn't teach him how to work on cars. He didn't really teach him nothing about being a man. He didn't give him the talk so I gave him the real talk. Ed’s dad wasn't really there so really the influence came from me, my mama, and his dad’s mom.

Opal felt the need to help Ed manage his feelings of anger toward his father by interpreting Kevin’s behavior. As the following statement suggests, she worked to listen and acknowledge Ed’s feelings, explain his father’s behavior, and guide him to manage negative feeling states: Yeah, I did [have to help Ed understand his father]. Because he would be like, “He don't ever want to be around and he ain't never around” but Kevin didn't have his dad around either. After Ed, he didn't know what to do, he didn't know what to do because his dad was never around. His dad never lived in a different state. And Ed's like “but he lives in the same state and I see my granny more than I see him.” I said, “Ed, right now your daddy don't know which way is up, he don't know which way to

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go, he can't take care of himself so you know he can't do nothing for you.”

By the time Kevin became involved in his son’s life, Ed was grown and getting ready to go to college. Feeling the need to help Ed process these emotions, Opal added: I guess I had to take him back to church because you ain't supposed to be mad at folks.

You ain't supposed to hate people. And you're supposed to remember that. I got to the point to where I had to say “I don’t want you to go to hell but if you have to, I don’t want him to be the reason. Ed you've got to let it go, the Bible says you're supposed to go work on yourself and then you can try to work it out with that person that hurt you.

If you do what you suppose to, by the time you work it out, you can forgive them and not be mad at them no more. If they want to stay in that same space, you can let them stay in that same space. You deal with what you suppose to. Shake the dust from your feet and go on. I'm okay, but whatever it is you want to do, that's on you. I'm not mad no more; all this frustration and anger and wanting to do all this foolishness, I don't have time for it no more.”

So when I got to that point I was like “Hey, this is what you need to do, that is your daddy, you only get one just like what they say about your momma you only get one. You going to make it work, you going to do what you got to, You going to do what you're supposed to and if he don't want to do right, then you did what you supposed to and you can go about your business, and it's okay. You did what you was supposed to, if he don't want to be right, that fine, that's good. That's on him, it's not on you anymore. Like I say, you can only be in control of what you do and how you react to stuff.”

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Opal feels that she and Ed share a lot in common, especially regarding their personalities. Reflecting on her anxiety over him, she feels this commonality helped her to worry less about his well-being, especially during his childhood and adolescent years compared to his younger brother. Reflecting on it here, she explained: I pick my people. I'm one of those people where I sit back and I watch people and I have to see how you going to be or what you going to do before I'm going to be your friend, if I'm going to let you be around me. And Ed is the same way, it’s not that he is standoffish, he's just trying to see; he's looking at you trying to see what's going on, see what type of person you are and that's what I do too.”

Speaking more to the differences between Ed and Kenny, Opal adds: Kenny has to be up and moving about. He's a DJ. He's in a fine arts group where they sing, they dance, they write music. He could write a book. This kid gets on my nerves (laughing). He always has something going on with someone else whereas Ed, he's like “Nah, I'm good right here.” Ed was a different kid. He was a quiet kid. He didn't do a whole bunch of crying when he was a baby, he didn't do a whole bunch of running around when he was older, he didn't do none of that. Ed's always been a laid back kid. Honestly, he never got in no trouble. He never did nothing; he really didn't deal with people much. As long as you had some food and cartoons, he was good.

Until he went college for two years and was on his own it was pretty much the same thing. Now he just gets on my nerves (laughing).

Opal worries about her son’s endangerment for several reasons, but among the most salient, because of present day experiences for Black men. She explained, Well, it used to be I didn't worry about Ed or Kenny, I answer for them now. I

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didn't use to worry about them but I do now with them being grown and being out. Just for example, the other night I was laying in my room, and the way that my bed is faced, if I look—I have a door in my room, if I look out that door I can see flashing lights or whatever. I saw flashing lights and my first instinct was get up, go to the living room and see if Ed's car was at home, that's because I saw police lights.

Simply because once before he was coming home through the neighborhood, driving and the police saw him coming through the neighborhood so they followed him to the neighborhood, all the way to the front door. And when he got out of the car they asked him why was he speeding. First of all, he said he wasn't speeding. He said, “Mama, I was coming through the neighborhood on my way home from work. So, when the police stopped to ask me why I was speeding, I said I wasn't speeding but I was coming home.” He pointed at the house as he stood in the front yard. He said the officer said, “Well, you have a good night” and drove off.

Just that particular incident . . . he's coming home from work. It would be different if he was swerving, if he was flying, if somebody was hanging out the window, but he was just coming home and just that, them doing that, I'm thinking “okay, let me get up and make sure his car is at home, or see if his car is at home.” He wasn't here, and now here lately I just worry about him being out just because. When you're looking at the news it's always somebody getting shot. They stopped this one for no reason and they got shot because they pulled their wallet out, he got shot because he pulled his phone out, she got shot because she wouldn't stop recording what was going on. Just different stuff, things have gotten worse now.

And nowadays you don't have to be doing nothing for something to happen to

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you. You ain't got to be doing a drive by for the police to shoot you. You ain't got to be in a gang for somebody to come through and just shoot just because they want to.

And now-a-days you ain't got to be doing nothing to be shot and killed or even just to be arrested. You ain't really got to be doing nothing.

On August 23, 2012, Mrs. Hall was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer; nine months after treatment, she died. The woman who had been the most significant force in guiding Opal’s decisions was gone. It was a situation that overwhelmed her ability to tolerate and grieving took years. Her children were shaken into disbelief, struggling to make sense of a world without the strong arm of a matriarch.

Thinking about the future, Opal fears what society will bring to Ed, as captured in the following exchange: I just don't want him to get caught up in the propaganda. Before mama died, she told Ed and Kenny that they were going to be great men so they're doing a lot of stuff and every time they do something, that's what I hear. So, the only thing I really hope he don't get up and do what he want to do as far as the music and just let people run over him. I don't want him to have people in his life that's going to use him and abuse him. Really that the only thing I'm worried about . . . It's not that he's trusting, it's just that when I think it's more so on me because I don't know anything about the business.

So, you want to say “You need to do that.” I don't know, so I don't know what to look out for so it scares me because I don't know what to look out for, and he don't know either (crying). So I just want to make sure he has people around him that does what

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they're supposed to.

Speaking to the change in her voice and sounds of crying, Opal explained, “I guess, it's because I don't know how to help him in that part.”

Case #1: Ed Ed is a 24-year-old heterosexual identifying Black man residing in a major southwestern city. He lives with his mother and younger brother in the home where his grandmother raised his mother in a quaint all-Black neighborhood. He has an older sister who lives in another major city. Ed is currently unemployed but actively looking for work. He spent three years studying vocal performance at the collegiate level but did not graduate. While he has several friends that are supportive, he is not involved in any serious relationships at the time.

Ed feels that his life has been one rollercoaster ride after another. He remembers vividly sitting in a health class his freshman year of college looking at a video that the teacher unexpectedly played. “Man, this video pegged me like it was reading my life story . . . I felt like somebody was in my mind peeping my thoughts,” he exclaimed.

Depression was the topic of that class session, and thinking over his life, he had felt that type of emptiness since early adolescence. People around him struggled to understand and appreciate feelings of this sort, especially family, so talking about it was often futile.

Exacerbating these emotions were his thoughts and ideas of manhood instilled by others from such an early time in his life. “Men are supposed to be strong,” he remembered his mother saying. These ideas and thoughts led to a bottling of emotions and isolation from

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others. Talking about his story during the two interviews, Ed acknowledged, “Man, this is therapy for me.”

In his own eyes, Ed lives a simple life: he gets up between 9-10am, practices on his music, and looks for a job. He has a select group of friends he has known since childhood, but admittedly, he is not close to many. “I’ve never really been a person who has a lot of people around him. Most people I know don’t really know me, for real,” he went on to explain about his way of assessing people, “I was always a visual person or I would see somebody doing something and then see the outcome of it and be like, ‘Okay, I know for a fact I can't do that,’ or ‘That won't work for me’.” Peers closest to him attend the same church and befriended him long ago. He went on to share, “I guess it was easier making friends in church . . . they weren’t critical of me like people in school.”

Significant childhood experiences.

Growing up, Ed was raised by his mother, Opal, and grandmother, Mrs. Hall. He is the second of three children to his mother; all three siblings have different fathers. His father, Kevin, was minimally involved during his early childhood years, causing confusion, anger, and resentment. Due to these factors, Opal expressed a great deal of anger and violence toward Kevin that she would later try to explain to Ed. The family lived in the comforts of the home his grandmother provided and he saw his mother and grandmother work diligently to provide for his financial needs. Emotional needs were of a different nature, as Ed laments, “We really didn’t talk about emotions . . . I mean, I knew my mama and them loved me, but we weren’t emotional people.”

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Ed remembers asking his mother why his father did not participate more in his life, especially when they lived in the same town. His mother helped him quiet much of the anger resulting from those times, as he noted here: She just told me to always not to be angry, because I was always mad about not having a super male figure in my life. Or having a few celebrities or my pastor or people that weren't really related to me as male figures. She would always try to tell me to not be angry but watch my dad; watch his mistakes and learn from him that way, that there's stuff I can learn from him . . . I remember my mama saying stuff like, “Chill out, you'll be all right. There's stuff you can learn from him without having full conversations with him. Don't become hateful. Don't be so angry.” She'd still tell me that without saying to stop being angry about this. There's a look she can give me and I'm just like, “All right, let me chill. Let me shut up.”

Ed explained being a quiet kid close to his mother growing up. “I just didn’t get into a lot of stuff, I was mostly at the house with mama.” He would spend time with trusted friends with whom his mother knew well, but in general, he was distrusting of most people. Ed feels that he, in some ways, inherited this suspicious attitude from his mother, noting here that she would emphasize how to observe people: Watch how he move, watch how everybody move, watch how I move. And then, we didn't see anything, but it was just the way she would react to certain things, or how the outcome of it would be. I could just sit and watch and learn from anybody really.

School was a source of frustration for Ed, and interestingly, very similar to his mother’s experience of elementary school. He struggled to make friends because of his perception of himself, commenting, “I always thought something was wrong with me . . .

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I guess if people tell you something long enough, you start to believe it.” He remembers being teased about his appearance in elementary and middle school: Just being a fat kid and being dark skinned, super dark, and having White teeth and that's all you can see in the dark was my teeth. Just my physical appearance really. My hair was nappy. Sometimes I was ashy, I didn't necessarily care about my appearance at one point, which was a bad decision. Just stuff like that.

Thinking back to these times, Ed now feels that these early experiences shaped his depression that developed during his early teen years. He recounts about those moments, I was just in a place where I didn’t see anything positive about myself . . . and it was hard because I really couldn’t talk to anybody about it. My family, you know they loved me, but they didn’t understand . . . especially my father’s side of the family.

They would say stuff like, “Man, you going to college, you not in jail, you doing good.

It’s like they couldn’t understand so I didn’t bother them with it. You know Black people with stuff like mental health—they not really ready to understand. My mama and grandma were a little better, but for real, I had to handle this by myself.

Following high school, Ed chose to attend a local university, and while it was located in the same city where he lived, he decided to live on campus. There, he studied vocal performance and enjoyed many of his experiences. After the second year, however, it began to feel isolating and overwhelming. “My depression set in and I just couldn’t stay motivated,” he explained. After seeing his grades plummet, he found himself on a call with his mother, pleading “I got to get out of here.” It was an emotionally desperate time for Ed that taught him to begin acknowledging the power of his mood. “I knew I had to start changing things in my life after that,” he noted.

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Ed now aspires to be an R & B artist similar to singers from the 1990 and 2000s era.

“Even though I was just being born during that time, I just feel this connection to that type of music . . . artists like Music Soulchild got me into singing in the first place,” he explained. While college proved unsuccessful for him, he thought of it as an opportunity to learn more about his craft. Even interpersonal relationships, especially those of a romantic nature, seem to be overshadowed by this love for the arts. Ed explained having three girls he had feelings for throughout life, one of which continuously pursued him.

Speaking to this relationship, he noted, “My feelings for her have changed from friends to more and then back again to friends . . . even she says she’s felt that way about me.”

Looking at others his age, he feels that they are making grave mistakes by having kids this young in life, explaining, “the kids around me were having kids and so I was like, ‘yeah, I’m just going to wait till I can afford it, wait until I could take care of myself.’”

Black male endangerment.

Responding to his thoughts regarding the topic of the study, Ed feels that Black men are endangered by the very nature of their existence, noting about today’s society: It's hard being a Black man working no job. It's hard being a Black man walking up the street. It's hard, without being labeled or being seen as a threat or anything like that. Or seen as a burden. I know I don't get seen as a regular individual and I'm pretty sure there's other people out here that see me as a regular individual, but I guess, the vast majority of them don't. Or they'll have some preconceived notion of what I am.

And if I do interact with them, they'll handle me as such as that, what they think of instead of just seeing me as a human being. So yeah, they see me more so as a threat.

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As a Black man, not just me specifically. That's any Black man. Me, you, my Daddy, my brother, anybody.

Ed was kind, considerate, and articulate during both interviews, helping me to feel immersed in the stories of his life. His conversation was polite, and on many occasions, I had to remind him to be as genuine as possible; he became worried when using expletives. After the first 10-15 minutes of the first interview, his behavior seemed to relax, and he began talking with less concern of my perception. This comfort led to rich and thick descriptions of his life narrative, and by the second interview, he had disclosed feelings about his depression that few significant others knew about.

Ed’s behavior during the second interview evoked in me a number of empathetic and compassionate feelings documented in the field notes. I recall feeling chills as he talked about having isolated himself from others during the darkest times of sadness. It was the notion of his aloneness that felt particularly impactful, hearing that few people knew, or even know today, the depth of his pain. My own experiences with such depressive feelings rose to awareness, triggering habitual reflexes to begin helping. These experiences, together, led to a feeling of Ed’s suffering. Containing my emotions and remaining grounded in the research role became challenging during these moments.

Categories of meaning.

Six categories of meaning were evident from Ed’s interviews, including (a) messages of contradictions; (b) survivalist paranoia; (c) a narcissistic defense; (d) irrationality; (e) maternally induced anxiety; and (f) the prioritization of maternal worry.

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Messages of contradictions about his feelings.

Ed spoke to situations in which he heard and responded to maternal messages of contradictions regarding his well-being. On one side of this contradiction, he heard his mother allude to the normalcy of his anger regarding the unfairness of life, especially regarding uncontrollable situations such as his dad’s inactivity noted here: She [mother] would know why I got upset, I mean, she knew why I was mad at my dad or not having no male figures around because I would always ask her, why he don’t come see me when he lives in the same city as me. She knew why I was mad and she’d tell me, “I know it’s wrong and it ain’t fair but you’ll be alright.”

At the same time, however, Ed heard his mother forbid angry feelings and aggression associated with these situations. Consider the following statement about his mother’s admonishments about his emotions: “Don't become hateful. Don't be so angry.” She'd still tell me that without saying stop being angry about this. There's a look she can give me. And I'm just like, “All right, let me chill. Let me shut up.” My mother kept me in line. Even without her being around my father. Even when I would feel certain things build up, I would just be like “all right, you got to chill or separate to, or figure out a way to communicate with that person. Or just don't lash out or be sitting there with a messed up face looking crazy.”

Ed heard both latent and manifest messages about his emotions, especially anger. The explicit communication was that he had cause to feel angry, but implicitly, he heard his mother forbid the expression of his feelings. Her acceptance of his behavior was conditioned by compliance to these unspoken rules—he felt bad and later guilty when

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allowing his emotions to surface. Without targets for these feelings, Ed was forced to internalize them, turning the anger against the self.

These contradictions also existed in messages about his sense of self-worth, as Ed remembers many times his mother communicated ideas about his specialness but also the need to conform. Consider the following thoughts regarding him being unique: My mother would tell me that we were unique, in that we were special in the way that other people view us is not how we should be ourselves. And that was just basically an opinion of somebody that you didn't understand who we were as Black men. I always, like I said, walk in pride and have my head high, because I was a Black teen.

Ed felt these messages about his uniqueness were exaggerated at times, and more about his mother’s way of coping with the loss of significant relationships. He explains, And another point of her being like that, I knew the situation with her brother made her like that as well. Because when my uncle passed and they're 19 and stuff like that and just her . . . . The males in our family, or most of them are, or were either locked up, on something, or had passed. So when each family member would have a male, I guess they viewed it as a prized possession, because you know, the ones that were already brought into the world and already faced obstacles or, lives were ended or anything. So I guess she viewed it as me being precious gold, and I needed her to do everything she could to maintain me. I mean my life, me being on the straight narrow, I mean all the other males had lived a hard life. And she had already lived through the outcome of that. So, she didn't want that for me. So part of her being overbearing was just her being protective.

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Ed received the message about his need to become his family’s saving hope for a Black man who survives endangerment. In this hope, he is tasked with assuaging his mother’s grief over her brother and becoming her fantasized object of manhood—a man who resembles her brother but avoids the mistakes that he made. Leaving little room for his aspirations, these latent expectations reinforce a unique version of what Winnicott (1949) termed the False Self.

At times, Ed remembered receiving contrasting messages from his mother that emphasized his control over parts of his life. In many ways, he remembers them being reflections of his mother’s frustration, as noted in the following thoughts: And then even when I approached her [mother] about it, she was just like, “Well, just put some clothes on. I mean, put some lotion on, comb our hair, exercise. Stop eating, lose weight.” Just stuff to help to secure me and my emotions and my thoughts and myself.

While described as supportive solutions to problems, these messages left Ed feeling blamed. He heard that it was his fault for eliciting criticisms from his peers and that it was his responsibility to affect change in these areas. Lacking confidence, he internalized these messages as inherent deficits.

Ed took in messages about the legitimacy of his emotions but felt the danger of expressing or acting on them. He reflects here on his mother’s cautions about acting on his feelings with girls, “If you have a kid, you on your own the whole night, I ain't helping you with nothing, better keep it in your pants and act like you got some sense.” Really, it was more so

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that than understanding how. . . . It's funny, I had my dad to school for that, it was more so on the responsibility side with her.

Evident here is the extent to which Ed’s mother saw endangerment as the most salient aspect of any life decision, incorporating interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships.

Such thoughts often left him feeling anxious about the experience of emotions. This was highlighted in the following statement: Just interacting with people in general will make me tense. Am I picking the right person to be friends with or am I . . . . And it wasn't just my mother. It was my grandmother as well she was a big hand to. They were both telling me just watch the people I was around. So I didn't really have that many friends because of that. Because they told you that people were nasty and just kind of stuff like that. You know, people do messed up stuff. So that just had me on P's and Q's.

These contradictions speak to a split consciousness occurring in which Ed is forced to see himself as both a subject and an object. He is a subject in that he experiences firsthand his emotions about and reactions to real life situations. Conversely, his mother needs him to observe himself—to constantly be aware of how his behavior can pose significant dangers. In this way, he is an object to be studied, censored, and silenced if needed. As an object, Ed has been messaged that his emotions are and must be peripheral to the more important reality of his safety. His depressed feelings are thus a manifestation of this dynamic—as an object, he becomes the perpetrator of his own oppression. Similar to the False Self, Ed maintains these split parts of himself to remain loyal to his mother’s need to see him as endangered.

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Survivalist paranoia.

Ed expressed feeling that the world is an unsafe place requiring the constant scanning of his environment—anxiety and projections about the future are built-in components to this feeling state. He relates this suspicion to messages received from both his mother and grandmother about others’ intentions, especially his father. As Ed got older, he remembers hearing these messages applied to other people and situations. Explaining how his mother taught him to observe others, he shared, Watch how he move, watch how everybody move, watch how I move. And then, we didn't see anything, but it was just the way she would react to certain things, or how the outcome of it would be. I could just sit and watch and learn from anybody really. It wasn't necessarily her. I was always a visual person or I would see somebody doing something and then see the outcome of it and be like, “Okay, I know for a fact I can't do that,” or “That won't work for me.”

On some levels, Ed felt protected by safety messages initiated by his mother, as detailed here, I would get picked on a lot at school. So some of the things she would tell me would secure me. And some of the things that the kids would make fun of, it was the things that she was securing. And I was like, “Okay, I know you're lying about that.” But you know, it was certain things that I wasn't comfortable talking to her about, that she didn't know about that she had to secure. That they would make fun of them and it would hurt a little bit, but I would get over it eventually. But it was only because, me and her hadn't had the conversation about . . . . Everything else that they would make

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fun of, I never paid attention to. Me and my mom and my grandmother would have very detailed conversations about things like that.

Illustrated here, Ed’s vacillation between feeling endangered and protected by maternal messages led to confusion about others’ intentions. Similar to what Grier and Cobbs (1968) term adaptive cultural paranoia, Ed’s cognitive development and way of thinking about the world around him became intertwined with anxiety. In this way, anxiety became a necessary part of how he thinks about himself. Here, he shares how he was impacted by the constant need to survey his environment, Just interacting with people in general will make me tense. Am I picking the right person to be friends with or am I . . . . And it wasn't just my mother. It was my grandmother as well she had a big hand in it to. They were both telling me just watch the people I was around. So I didn't really have that many friends because of that.

Because they told you that people were nasty and just kind of, yeah.

Ed went on to reflect on how these messages helped to shape some of his thoughts, but his own self-perception played a role in how he felt about himself and others. Referring to talks he and his mother had about potential dangers, he notes, They secured some of the thoughts of myself and then it was only because of myself.

It wasn't because of outside things, just a preconceived notion of my own thoughts.

You know, you are your toughest critic? It was more so that, not being a little bit of outside the painting. Like I said, referring back to the nasty evil people in the world. I would get picked on a lot at school. So some of the things she would tell me would secure me. And some of the things that the kids would make fun of, it was the things that she was securing. And I was like, “Okay, I know you're lying about that.”

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In many ways, Ed’s sense of himself came from feeling endangered through the eyes of his caretaker. He also brought to the relationship a gentle and mild-mannered temperament designed to relieve his mother’s anxiety. This comforting presence was different than his brother’s more rumbustious, energetic style that more often heightened her worry. Viewing himself as endangered and entertaining his mother’s incessant messages of fear enacted a care for her most primitive needs—the need to protect her child; however, it was a gift that came with a price, shaping a pattern of self-loathing. As he relates about his self-esteem, this internalized feeling of endangerment created feelings of incompetence lacking in self-esteem as well as a message about his limited agency over his environment. Without power or the ability to affect change, Ed’s depression mounted.

A precious gold reminder of the past.

Ed remembers his mother commenting on his specialness as a way to help him understand untoward conditions he could not control. Referring to White dominant culture, he explained “She would tell me that my brother and I were unique, in that we were special in the way that other people view us is not how we should be ourselves.”

Opal seemed to craft this form of specialness for her sons to defend against societal norms aimed at threatening their self-esteems. Similar to the messages of contradictions, she needed Ed to see himself in varied ways, especially in ways that dissuaded expressions of anger that could yield dangerous results. Being special was a layer of protection meant to help him retain a sense of innocence and uniqueness. In some way, it

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became a part of his way of experiencing himself, a self-state, that supported a fragile ego.

Ed also reflected on learning over time other reasons his mother treated him in such “special” ways growing up, and that this knowledge came after understanding her significant life events, such as the loss of loved ones. He reflects on this knowledge here, I knew the situation with her brother made her like that as well. Because when my uncle passed and they're 19 and stuff like that and just her. . . . The males in our family, or most of them are, are either were either locked up or on something, or had passed. So when each family member would have a male, I guess they viewed it as a prized possession, because you know, the ones that were already brought into the world and already faced obstacles or, lives was ended or anything. So I guess she viewed it as me being precious gold, and I needed her to do everything she could to maintain me. I mean my life, me being on the straight narrow, I mean all the other males had lived a hard life. And she had already lived through the outcome of that. So, she didn't want that for me. So part of her being an overbearing was just her being protective.

And now hindsight, I understand why. Like I said, I understand why she is the way she is and why she steered away from things, because of society. And I didn't understand back then because I hadn't went through everything yet, I was young. And plus, I was in the house so she didn't really, I was in the house younger. I didn't start leaving until I got teenaged years. I didn't start being social, until I was old enough to go out a while.

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While Ed feels honored to be thought of as “precious gold,” there is a dynamic existing here that requires his compliance and active involvement. Here, he feels unconsciously called to serve his mother’s intrapsychic needs for the unresolved grief over her brother. Specifically, he is assuming the role of his idealized uncle fantasized by his mother to gratify her struggle over loss. In addition, he acts as the reservoir of his mother’s past fears connected to her brother—he feels that he must avoid at all costs becoming his uncle. Akin to Winnicott’s False Self; however, this vacillation between positions requires that his own needs for independence be denied, causing an existence lacking in purpose. From this situation, the following internal conflict ensues: meet the needs of his mother and pay the ultimate price of losing himself. This dilemma overwhelms Ed’s need for living an unimpeded psychic life and shapes his expectation of other interpersonal relationships. Fending off the possibility of demands from others, he keeps people at a distance only to eventually feel alone, silently depressed.

Irrationality.

Ed explained having to learn how to understand and contextualize his mother’s anxiety as he got older into adolescence. He saw that physical closeness and his autonomy impacted her fears, as evidenced by this statement: I see how I'm starting to see her worrying more than before. And I guess because before I was right next to her, I was up under her and now I don't necessarily have to be that way. You know, I'm more so okay with being on my own and moving out on my own as of, sometimes it'll slip my mind, to check in with her and stuff like that and she'll worry. Or if I'm out too late she'll call and worry. And I know it's only because

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of today's society and what we deal with as Black males here. So I mean, it's kind of irritating at times because it's just like I'm not really doing nothing or, you know exactly what I'm doing, But I just know that's just how she is and she sees the value in.

Again, here, Ed wrestles with how independent to be from his mother. He desires to detach from her label of being endangered but worries about her tolerance of such decisions. Independence, thus, is linked to disloyalty and seems to explain his difficulty surviving in college. However, at the same time, dependence is overwhelming and becomes intolerable.

Balancing irritability and understanding was another theme heard throughout Ed’s interviews. He felt that his mother’s constant checking in, questioning about his whereabouts, and monitoring of his behavior were not always rational. He explains about his irritable feelings, It would only be because she would know exactly what I was doing or I would tell her exactly where I'm at and she would still call anyway, still question, or it's just, “Hey, I just told you.” It's like cheap double-checking. So especially now that I'm trying to, I have a slowly building music career, I'm trying to do something with that. So now it's kind of been stuck a little bit more. I understand it, completely understand it. And sometimes I just bust back at her, just to get a rise out or just to mess with her (laughing).

It became apparent from the interviews that Ed experienced anxiety when critiquing his mother’s emotions—there were several times when I reminded him that his emotions were valid in their own rights. Demonstrated here is the extent to which this anxiety has become a mainstay in his expression of emotions, especially anger. To express anger,

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frustration, or irritation means to hurt and disappoint. These emotions are thus internalized as Freud theorized and turned against the self, the etiology of depression.

Maternally induced anxiety.

At times, Ed felt these maternal messages to be overbearing and counterproductive because they induced worry in his reactions. He illuminates this point here as he shares thoughts about his mother’s worrying: [It’s] kind of, overbearing. Because I'm so, I feel like I'm old enough to carry myself without, I feel like every person my age, 24 would think that. But I know it was a lot of things out there that I don't know. Oh, like I said, I do understand why she is the way she is, but it can be a little overbearing sometimes. Her worry will make me worry sometimes. I could be driving and she'd be like, all right, well be careful about this or watch out for, I want to tell, I forgot and I keep driving the whole time. Or going to school and make sure you pay attention to interacting with girls, make sure you pay attention to this and this and this. Then I would go and interact with a girl. It's nervous the whole time, I'm trying to pay attention to the stuff that she told me to pay attention to . . . . That's the only thing, I say is overbearing about it cause she knows like everybody I come in contact with, almost everybody. But at the same time, like I said, I know it's just because of how society is, and how they treat Black teens.

Ed seems to experience a merging of thought with his mother’s beliefs about endangerment, and struggles at times to know the difference his thoughts and those of his mothers. This sort of introjection dominates much of his inner world, conflicting with other internal self objects and maintaining a persistent level of anxiety about the future.

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When this anxiety becomes overwhelming for Ed, which it often does, hopeless feelings emerge yielding chronic levels of depression. While working to remain optimistic about his future, especially that pertaining to his music career, there is a part of him—a self state—that refuses to believe in hope. In some way, he is thus wedded to the belief that the future will bring doom.

The prioritization of maternal worry.

The final theme heard from Ed’s interviews centered on his thoughts about his mother’s worry. From an early age into adolescence, he remembered withholding feelings about puberty and sexuality based on the perception that as a woman, she would not be able to understand or offer meaningful support. It also seems apparent that through these needs, Ed longed for and acted out the desire for a closer, much deeper relationship to his father—these needs for understanding his body from a man’s perspective signified the importance of his father in his life. On some unconscious level, maternal worry was restricted to Ed’s most immediate safety. This sentiment was captured in the following statement early during the first interview as he described his early years of wanting to know about his father: When I was younger it was let me see, certain things she didn't really have the answers for. So I knew it was either too early for me to know or you know what I'm saying, for me to understand. So as I got older the conversations started to get a little bit more deeper regarding to my understanding and stuff like that.

Reflecting on particular topics withheld from his mother, Ed explained,

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It would be puberty things, stuff that she didn't, physical things that she didn't understand and coming from a male standpoint that I knew that she would have to go to somebody else to they have a conversation, or ask questions about, I didn't want to just throw that on her. And I knew that that conversation would come from my father and we did have the conversation and then she doubled back because she didn't trust the conversation that he had with him or me. We doubled back. I just didn't approach her because I knew, well, I assumed that she didn't understand because I was a young man and she was an older woman and I needed to speak to another male so I can get a full understanding of the things that I was going through, such as puberty, my emotions with girls, you know something I couldn't control around that time. I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about.

During the second interview, Ed related that he usually withholds information about his depression with his family because of perceptions that they will not understand.

Thinking back to the height of his depression in college, he shared, I was just in a place where I didn’t see anything positive about myself . . . and it was hard because I really couldn’t talk to anybody about it. My family, you know they loved me, but they didn’t understand . . . especially my father’s side of the family.

They would say stuff like, “Man, you going to college, you not in jail, you doing good.

It’s like they couldn’t understand so I didn’t bother them with it. You know Black people with stuff like mental health—they not really ready to understand. My mama and grandma were a little better, but for real, I had to handle this by myself.

Ed understood about his family their priorities regarding his well-being. He and his mother shared an understanding that her job was to protect and care for his most

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immediate, acute needs for safety, leaving out those pertaining to interpersonal relations.

In some ways, this created an imbalance of support for his emotional needs, further neglecting the True Self. As his efforts go to assuring his mother of his understanding of endangerment, Ed lacks a sense of purpose and identity. Furthermore, he has internalized this prioritization and a belief that his feelings are unworthy of recognition. His statement at the beginning of the second interview captures beautifully this sentiment, “Man, this interview is like therapy for me.” Illuminated here is Ed’s experience of maternal messages of endangerment being effective at reducing acute situational dangers but stoking a more enduring pattern of life long psychic stress.

Mother to Case #2: Marva “He’s my little guy,” Marva reflected. “He always gravitated toward me. I don't know, he was like my little buddy. Everywhere I went, he went. Anything I said, he said. I could teach him anything,” she continued.

Marva, a Black woman of 50 years, was excited to talk about her son’s life and what it meant to her. She thinks of her life as simple: she’s the mother of two children and a wife. Her children, Connor and Kendra, are nearly adults now. Connor is completing his senior year at a major university three hours from St. Louis where Marva resides. Kendra recently started her freshman year at a college in a nearby Midwestern city. Marva is married to 51-year-old Nathan, the biological father to Connor and Kendra. This summer, they will have been married 26 years and live comfortably in a home they own in a mostly Black neighborhood.

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Describing herself as someone who likes to understand things from all different perspectives, Marva explains that she is someone who tells people how she feels. She has worked as a social worker since finishing her Bachelor of Social Work degree in 1993, and through her current role at a major medical school, she gets tuition reimbursement for her children’s education. Social work has always been her passion and she does it well; people from high school always told her that she was easy to talk to. Nathan works in a similar field as a Neighborhood Stabilization Specialist and he holds graduate degrees in criminal justice and business administration. Ideally, Marva would love to own a social service agency and work together with her husband to help others. The couple owns a few rental houses that they would eventually like to use as part of that small business.

Marva’s family originated from a small town 60 miles outside of St. Louis where she was raised. The family moved to Webster when her mother was just a teenager. “It was the big city they were looking for,” she explained. At the time and even today on some level, Webster is a segregated suburb of St. Louis where Black and White parts of town are separated by railroad tracks. Marva speaks to this history here, They grew up in a little tin shack. It's still up there, we can still see the roof. We actually have property not too far from there. But there were 11 of them and they needed room. They expanded. So my grandmother and grandfather moved to Webster.

And he got a job as a brick layer in Brentwood. That's where it all started. So we stayed in Webster—North Webster. North Webster, all Black. We had the first county Black high school. Douglass High School. Have you heard of Douglass? The first Black high school. We were right down the street from there. That was our whole little world. Even now, you say you're from Webster, everybody assumes you're from the

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other side of the tracks so to speak, because in old Webster there are railroad tracks and you can tell one side from the other. But even though, it was still a decent upbringing.

Thinking back to her early life experiences, Marva reflects on her first memories as the youngest child of nine. There are 10 years between her and the closest siblings in age, who were twin boys, and her eldest sister is 27 years her senior. Her mother was 40 years old when Marva was born, who was the product of a brief but cordial relationship with her father. This came after roughly a 20-year marriage to the father of her siblings, who abused alcohol and refused to financially provide. Once they divorced, her mother moved to Webster and split her children amongst relatives until she secured housing a year or so later.

Marva was the apple of her father’s eye. She felt spoiled in not only monetary ways but the attention her father showed was consistently reliable. Most memorable were the times he sat down to talk to her about things—serious conversations that felt intimate.

She remembers one significant time, I remember my dad telling me things, especially about how to behave. One time, I told him about a girl that I couldn’t stand in school . . . because she just got on my nerves—and I was telling him, “Daddy, she get on my nerves—and she’s ugly, and dumb, and stupid, and Black”—you know, referring to her skin color and he just went off. I mean, he really went off on me, saying that “You don’t talk about somebody being Black—Black is Black, and nobody is better than anybody else.” He used to ask me why I saw color like that, asking what color had to do with somebody’s personality. But I remember that like it was yesterday. Those talks were memorable.

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Her father was a good man respected by the community who worked hard to treat people fairly. He even took care of her siblings, teaching Marva that men were supposed to provide and protect their families. This type of nurturing and protection from men came to be a common experience. From her father to uncles and even her brothers, men always evoked feelings of safety. Relating to these experiences of men, she notes: Father was fun to be around. He and my uncles always got together. He used to work at Hertz rental car. So he would come over at least twice a week and then on the weekends he was definitely there. Like when we were playing out, riding bikes up and down the street he was sitting on the porch . . . my brothers also played a role, definitely. But even more so than them, I had some great older cousins that used to babysit us that were males. I had them and then my uncles. So all of my mom's brothers were always around. Uncle Kenneth, Uncle Leva, uncle everybody . . . my brothers became more like dad figures than brothers growing up. And then definitely those cousins that we were close to.

Thinking about her relationship to women, Marva reflects back to her mother as a constant support and eventual best friend along with her eldest sister who acted as a surrogate mother. She explains here, My mom was my best friend. I didn't realize this until I had kids. All of the advice she gave me was right. I hear myself sounding like her now. She passed away about 11 years ago. I have two sisters. One was the oldest of everyone and then the other one was the fourth oldest. I was definitely closer with the fourth oldest because she was more like a sister while Helena was more like a second mama, so I can't tell her everything (laughing).

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Marva’s experiences with nonrelative females; however, was less than positive. She felt that same age girls were too catty, leading her to be suspicious of their intentions.

Boys felt much safer as confidants, which is why she was always thought to be somewhat of a tomboy. Even dating in high school seemed abnormal because Marva thought of her male peers only as friends.

Marva met Nathan during her freshman year in college at a large public school a few hours outside St. Louis. They dated exclusively until graduating and then married in July of 1997. “Connor was born July 23rd of the next year. We actually brought him home on our wedding anniversary—the 26th of July,” she recollected. Thinking about herself and Nathan as parents, Marva feels that they could not be more different in their worldview when it comes to race and the way they communicate these values to their children.

Nathan, as Marva described him, grew up in an all-Black environment and was rarely exposed to White people. He holds very narrow views of White people according to Marva and lacks an understanding of the world as diverse and integrated. When discovering her pregnancy with Connor, she had a very specific plan about his upbringing and presentation of the world. Describing the differences between her and her husband on this topic, she explains: I grew up around White people. My school was probably 40/60 White. Nathan had two students that were White, and then his whole neighborhood was Black.

Everything that he knew was the Black experience only. He really came into knowing and being around White people when he went away to college. Other than that, I guess he was taught to stay away, they're bad. They're only out to look at us negatively. Where me, my experience was totally different than what his was. So that

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kind of brought us together. I wanted Connor and my daughter to have that same experience. I guess I shouldn't say majority, but that same experience, to know the world as it truly is and not just the Black experience.

Marva expressed wanting her children to know about the diversities of the world in which they lived. She also felt it important for them to know that goodness transcends beyond race, and that there are Black individuals just as harmful as White people.

Danger, in other words, could come at the hands of anyone.

When learning that she was having a boy, Marva explained initially feeling disappointed because she wanted a girl. She had wanted a girl as her first child because of the perception that girls were much easier to raise. Her attitude changed; however, as she details here, I just prayed to God that he was healthy. But having a boy, I was excited because knew Nathan was going to be excited because he was going to have a boy first. Boys tend to be easier. I had heard they were easier. Because they didn't have the attitude, you don't have to watch them, and they can't get pregnant. All of that good stuff. So I was okay with that part. I was just like, “I don't know what to do with a boy.” I had been around girls, girls, girls. But he was easy. Connor was so easy and laid back.

Reflecting on what made him an easy child to raise, Marva remembers Connor being “A female’s baby . . . he always gravitated toward me.” They shared a special bond from the very beginning of his life; they were inseparable. “Everywhere I went, he went,” she explained. Thinking back on it, she believes that their bond was closer than that of her daughter. This closeness developed, in part, because Nathan worked late during Connor’s

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infancy, leaving just Marva and Connor alone together. Even today, this bond continues as Connor seems to favor talking to Marva over Nathan. Describing it here, she explains: He'll be forever my little guy. He sends me different little songs, “This song made me think of you.” In the middle of the day out of nowhere, he'll send me a song. Me and him are probably closer than he is to his dad. Just because I think it all started way back when. Plus, me and him just got a bond that's just there. Where by the time Kendra came, it was all of us and she was learning so much from Connor that she didn't need me as much because she wanted to keep up with her big brother. So she picked up on stuff like that, where with me and him, I was teaching him stuff right off the bat.

As Connor got older, especially into adolescence, Marva felt it important for him to be involved in activities with others different than himself. Sports created these spaces and Connor showed amazing promise in baseball. He was quickly noticed and recruited by select teams. While happy for these opportunities, Marva wanted to ensure that Connor stayed grounded and remembered where he came from and who he was. Here, she explains in more detail why she worried about these activities, I worried that he would get the big head, that he would kind of forget where he came from. With a lot his sports, because he was so good, he played a lot of select ball. So he was usually the only Black player on the team. Or he got chosen because he was so good, but he got chosen to be in these elite teams, and then he would be the only Black and he was kind of out place. But then over time, it kind of helped him in a way because he could kind of maneuver. He knows how to maneuver; he knows how to talk to them. He knows a little bit more about what they're into, where the average

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person who didn't have that experience would just be kind of lost. So we'll see what happens with that. Yeah.

By the use of the word “maneuver,” Marva is speaking to Connor’s ability to manage interpersonal relations with peers from a variety of different cultures, but most importantly from the dominant culture. This was her goal for her children since their childhood—teaching them how to move into and out of various racialized spaces with fluidity and comfort. Success in this way meant Connor being able to survive and thrive in an environment driven by dominant culture rules. She felt that his participation in these sports teams allowed for growth-enhancing opportunities for mastering requisite survival skills. Marva explained the importance of these activities: I think he's seen a lot and experienced a lot through sports. Being the only Black kid on the team or one of few, or taking a White player's spot because he was so good at it, he got the spot over them and then how everybody else treated him around that issue.

Definitely has experienced that. I worried about how that would affect him going on in life. But I was kind of glad it happened at a young age because then he can remember it and that experience of racism. He definitely got some of that.

Reflecting more intently on these times; however, she remembered moments of racism that were hard to tolerate as Connor’s mother. A memory of his baseball coach emerged during the first interview: Connor was the only Black guy on the team. Didn't even try out for that team. He was at a batting cage, minding his own business, practicing for another team. They saw him, found out who we were, and contacted us the same night, “Hey we really want your kid to play for us.” Got on the team. Went out for the team, but at first, the coach

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wasn't . . . because the coach didn't pick him, it was the organization that picked him.

Wasn't going to play him, so he benched him a lot.

We [Marva and Nathan] got mad and told them we're not going to keep spending this money if he's not going to get to play. We're talking about $3,000 a summer.

Three to five thousand after we traveled to all these cities. Put him on a team, got out there, he played, did very well. Everybody's excited. All the White parents were excited until some of the kids had to be pulled because they kept putting him in different spots and he kept killing those spots and doing well. So they were like, “No, we've been with you for this long, and he's not going to play.” So he [Connor] got a chance to see that also.

Finally, the coach said, “I need you to go out there tomorrow” and didn't think he could do it. Connor did exactly what the coach said he needed to do, he did, and he won the game. Even the players were like, “Put Connor in. Put Connor in.” Because they wanted to win the tournament. “Put him in.” But because of other people on the team, and the coach being prejudice himself and having never wanted him on the team, he experienced that also. Yet, I was always worried about those things killing his spirit.

Looking back on these experiences, Marva saw that Connor was significantly impacted by these times; following high school, he elected not to play sports. However, she felt that these experiences were necessary reflections of the harshness of life that Connor needed to know. Marva felt it was her job as a mother to expose him to these realities. Even aside from race, Connor learned that there would be unhealthy people of whom to be aware. Marva recalled a time involving a Black coach:

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Connor had a Black coach who had a love hate relationship, well I guess two Black coaches that had a love hate relationship with him. Some Black people are just ignorant. As in White people as well. But they're just ignorant and they will do ignorant things and they're going to take it out on you, and your family, or because of your family. So Nathan and a coach had words one time, so now I'm going to take it out on you. Take it out on the son so now you can't play this game, you need to sit out.

Those type of things.

But he had those words because of something he truly did unfairly to him. He gave him a gift and then took it back because he wanted another player to have it.

“Well you messed up that play so now you don't get to keep it,” it was this special bat, pretty expensive bat. Took it and gave it to somebody else. So we went out that same night and bought him that same bat, and so he didn't like that. Because that was his punishment because he didn't . . . it was crazy. So that type of stuff.

Marva remembers those times as situations allowing for serious conversations about safety to take place between herself and Connor. His father, Nathan, preached a different message about White people being dangerous and untrustworthy, often spewing angry sentiments. Marva; however, worked to help Connor understand his feelings about being mistreated and ways to manage his emotions. She remembers on many occasions refuting his father’s thoughts about unfairness and advised her son in the following way, I'm like, “Yeah, but there's a different way to handle that. You can't be mad at everybody.” I had to try to teach him because I didn't want him to learn all that over there. So I had to bring it back. So that's why even then, he would tend to tell me or not tell him at all, because he didn't even want that to surface out there on the field.

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Connor went away to college in the August 2015 at State school in a small conservative town that Marva referred to as “Trumpville” three hours from St. Louis. She denied feeling overly anxious during this time but aware that this move was another step for her son. Reflecting on this time, she recounts: I wouldn't say it necessarily brought anything up [anxiety], it's just that when it was time for him to go away to school, I had to remind myself, “He knows this. He's been through this. He's able to recognize racism or recognize somebody being prejudice.”

All of this, he's able to do that. I have seen him take up for himself, stand up. And tell somebody what he was thinking, whether he cussed them out, he wrote a letter, he did an email, he went to the principal's office, whatever he needed to do. He usually handled stuff on his own. Just being confident that he knows how to handle himself when it was time for him to go away to school was really good.

I worried in the sense that he picked Springfield to go to school in. Me myself, didn't think there was a lot of Black people in Springfield. There really isn't. So worried about that. Worried about him being away from us. But just would he go down there and get so excited and be that college kid, that go down and get drunk, and then he's in somebody's car and they leave him out in the woods, that kind of stuff. So worried about that.

Managing this anxiety did not come easy for Marva; in fact, she felt anxiety like never before during Connor’s freshman year. She recalls constantly lecturing him about his safety and to be aware of those around him. Describing herself as “on pins and needles” back then, she explained.

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I'm like, “Don't leave your drink nowhere. Make sure you with somebody when you go to the bathroom. Make sure this. Make sure at the football game, don't be coming across campus too late.” All of that. We went over that, over and over. Every time, “Mama, I know. I know.” By the second or third year he was like, “All right. Let's get it over with. What you going to say, Mama?” So I wrote it all down for him. So yeah.

I think he knows.

Managing these emotions was not an easy feat for Marva. She coped by praying and sending Connor dozens of text messages and calls. She now recognizes that this behavior was excessive, but explained that she needed to know that Connor understood her warnings about his safety, and their constant discussions helped her to assess the degree to which he understood and took seriously those messages about his safety. These discussions created for Marva a sense of assurance that helped her to feel better about his well-being when he was away. There was also a sense of intimacy in these moments, as she explained stopping everything to have these conversations. Even when he is home on breaks, Marva holds these conversations about his need to stay cognizant of the fact that people will judge him based on his appearance. She explained it by noting, “So the things that I've been telling him, he's seen, he's heard. He's seen other people’s experiences so he takes heed to it, he listens. Which is good. Which is really good.”

Another instance that helped Marva see firsthand Connor’s understanding of the seriousness of these issues was a situation involving him being stopped by the police. She remembers it well, stating:

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Even when he got pulled over before, he got pulled over coming from Springfield or spring break or something, and he was like, “Can I call my mom?” And he put me on speaker phone immediately. He was so nervous that the police, that he actually got on there. He's like, “Your son is fine. I keep telling he's fine. Nothing is going to happen to him. We just searching the car and we're doing this and that.” He was a passenger in the car, but he was the only Black passenger in the car. So he's even experienced those type of things. Yeah he was worried, yeah. The police was worried because he didn't want him to get too nervous and actually do something that's going to make him. He's like, “I'm nervous for him so I want to get on the phone to let you know he is fine. He's going to be okay.”

So yeah. So he was nervous then. So like I said, things have always been calm, but then just something happen, and it's like oh okay. That's what they were talking about.

This is from that. So glad he's always been a listener. Even though he don't want to hear it, but we've had to repeat it several times. Like I said, it's always me that will do more talking. Nathan is just now getting into the talk. Just talking and talking and talking.

These messages of safety were also implicit in the home. Marva talked at length about her and Nathan’s attempts to educate their children about race. They recently made him watch a movie depicting a true account of a Black man being killed by a police officer after reaching for a hairbrush. Remembering the Mike Brown riots, she explained the importance of Connor never forgetting that incident. She took him on many excursions around Ferguson to survey the rioting damage and discuss its implications.

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Marva explained that outside of Connor’s race and gender, she worries about his personality causing unnecessary risks with a harsh and unpredictable world. Unlike her daughter, she sees Connor as a high-spirited young man, full of energy and curiosity.

While these qualities can be useful in life, she worries that he may be prone to question those in authority who see such behavior as subordinate. She also worries that his behavior, at times, may be too accommodating to others. She notes about his need to be more assertive, But sometimes you got to get with people. Now I did have to teach him that too. Can't always be nice. Sometime you got to read somebody and do you what you got to do to get them up off of you. He got that from his dad. But that was more so that. And now I'm like, but sometime you have to go that way. I don't want that to be you. I don't want you to be the angry Black man all the time, but you're not going to be someone that someone's going to walk over, either.

Connor is prone to being nice, prone to be helpful. But he can always recognize when someone does him wrong or is trying to do him wrong, and then he will get with you very quickly and swiftly. And then he'll go back to being his, yeah. That's a good thing, because I don't want you to be nice, nice, nice, nice. Kendra is the same way.

Kendra, she's not going to give you a chance to even, because she's going to see it a mile away. But him, he's so nice and laid back. That's why I'm like, “I never want something to go over your head. I want you to be ready for it.” Yeah.

Reflecting on her hopes for Connor’s future, Marva expressed that she wants more than anything for him to be a successful, responsible man who honors the family’s values of togetherness and commitment over less important relationships. Firstly, she hopes that

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he will graduate on time and secure gainful employment. She hopes that he will from there start a family that he can raise. Ultimately, Marva wants Connor to contribute to society in a way that honors his strengths and abilities.

Case #2: Connor Connor is a 21-year-old heterosexual identifying Black man currently in his senior year at a state university three hours outside of St. Louis. In his own words, he was born to loving parents, Marva and Nathan, in a well-cared for and supportive environment. He has a younger sister with whom he feels close and a large extended family. He is studying urban and city planning and criminal justice, hoping to one day start his own business as a contractor. “One day, I hope to work on different city projects and help certain communities in the city before eventually becoming a special investigator for the police department,” he explained.

Significant childhood experiences.

Connor feels blessed when thinking over his life in that he was given all that he needed growing up. As the oldest of two children to his parents, he had always been taught that family was important. “It’s just the way things are for us, you do for family no matter what,” he asserted. He remembers being close to his sister as a child despite their many battles and arguments. Now as she completes her first year at a competitive liberal arts college in Chicago, he feels quite protective of her. In his own way, Connor felt close to all his immediate family—his mother, father, and sister. He and his mother, however,

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have always shared something special, a relationship more intimate than the others. “I mean, she’s my best friend now,” he explained.

Connor thinks of himself as a typical kid growing up. He went to a racially diverse school and felt accepted by his peers. Looking back on it, he believes he was of average intelligence, although others praised him for being bright. “I loved sports, though, and I was pretty good at it, he declared. Connor remembers enjoying nearly all types of physical athletics: football, basketball, and among them all, baseball. He was identified early by coaches as having a natural gift for hitting, and by adolescence, he was being thought of as someone with the potential to make it big. “I loved baseball, you know, playing since I was 4-years-old with t-ball,” he admitted. Because of this promise and his parents’ support, he was playing on select teams by his teenage years and thinking of sports as a professional career. He felt driven back then and remembers his mother’s words of advice: you have to be better than the rest. “This is what motivated me the most, I think . . . her words because they made me work hard. Now, it’s just a part of me, you know, this type of drive and determination,” Connor acknowledged.

By the end of his high school career, Connor’s ambitions for professional sports had waned and he began thinking of other aspirations. “It’s not that I stopped liking baseball, it’s that I realized that it probably wouldn’t happen for a guy like me whose five foot seven,” he expressed. He also wanted a life in college free of the commitments baseball required. As much as he misses the activity, he feels confident in his decision and has enjoyed the last four years of his life.

Thinking into the future, Connor hopes to one day marry and start a family. Reflecting on these plans, he goes on to share,

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I’d like to start my family here in St. Louis, you know, have some kids and eventually move to the East coast. I think raising a family in St. Louis would be easier because the cost of living is so much lower here compared to other places. And, there’s a lot of need here in the city. There’s so much opportunity that St. Louis hasn’t tapped into and there’s a lot of communities I’d like to help.

Connor admitted to not being involved in any romantic relationships at the present time, choosing instead to focus on finishing his degree.

Black male endangerment.

Connor feels endangered based on being a Black man and he has learned that the perpetration of this danger can come from anyone, regardless of race and/or gender.

Speaking to the evolution of his insight, he remembers how his perceptions changed once he went to college. He explains, .” . . when I got here I realized that it is a dangerous place out here and people will harm me. Or people will find their way to irritate or frustrate me.” This led to an association of the following experience in high school that confirmed his feeling of endangerment: I know in high school, my senior year actually I was with my friend Dontez. And he is Black as well, and we were in Webster Groves hanging out with some of our friends.

And it was about a 10:00 at night, and we were just driving, going to our friend's house. And the police pulled us over. Okay, we weren't speeding or anything; nothing was wrong like that. And when the officer came up to the car, we were like, “Hey, what's the problem? What can we help you with?” And the officer literally just said, “It's time for you guys to leave.” We were just baffled by it because my friend Dontez

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actually lives in Webster Groves and it really caught us off guard and really rubbed us the wrong way.

Connor was a compliant and willing participant from the very beginning of the recruitment process. Helping to advance thoughts on race and gender, especially for Black male subjects, was one of his many interests and he spoke to this passion throughout the interviews. As we progressed through the beginning 30 minutes of the first interview, I noticed that he seemed hesitant to speak critically of his mother. I emphasized statements of being curious about any and all feelings that he had and there being no right or wrong way to respond. As he seemed to relax this guard, I felt myself wanting to offer reassurances that it was okay. Unlike the majority of the other subjects, I found myself longing for a deeper, more intimate connection with Connor and wondered on many occasions about his level of anxiety. When talking about his mother’s talents and strengths, he spoke verbosely. Speaking to his irritation and frustration about her messages of safety, conversely, he offered little in the way of elaboration. When he was able to talk about these feelings, he would quickly end the statement with comments about his childhood naiveté and lack of appreciation for how his mother acted. Because of these issues, I wrestled at times with knowing how much coaching to provide to relax his fears.

Categories of meaning.

Six categories of meaning were evident from Connor’s interviews, including a (a) systematic teaching of cautiousness and safety; (b) maternal anxiety experienced as acts

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of love; (c) maternally created safe spaces; (d) internalized maternal voice; (e) survivalist paranoia; and (d) maternally induced anxiety.

A systematic teaching of cautiousness and safety.

Connor experienced his mother as cautious in the way she raised him. While this was not apparent to him as a child, he now looks back on the situation feeling that she used certain strategies and tactics to parent. Consider the following recollection of this dynamic, From an early stage she was always very cautious and very careful about where she placed me as far as sports and school and all that kind of stuff. And was really beneficial for me because I feel like I was able to connect to a lot more people because she was there and guiding me through it. And there was a lot of situations where I had to really persevere and really had to better myself as a person to overcome it. So I really applaud her for that.

He would later learn that his mother’s intentions were about his safety, whether shielding him from some experience or exposing him to aspects of reality to later prepare him for some experience. Similar to the findings of Stevenson, Cameron, and Herrero-Taylor (1998), these racial socialization strategies were designed to promote a sense of cultural pride and provide protective messages communicating an awareness of societal oppression.

Through maternal messages, Marva created an environment in which the term endangerment became aligned with safety, providing Connor a template through which to understand himself. In other words, he needed to feel endangered to feel the sense of

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safety his mother created. Intertwined with anxiety, this endangerment became a backdrop within which he also learned how to think about the world around him and others. Important here is the synonymy of safety and cautiousness, illustrating Connor’s experience of his mother caring for him. As an adult, Connor now looks at these maternal messages as lessons or her attempts to educate him about the world. Whether direct or indirect, he heard and registered importance pieces of information. Consider the following statement about one of these direct messages: I remember actually a direct quote from her [mother], she said, “Being born Black, is one strike. And being born a Black male is two strikes.” And that always has kind of resonated with be. Because I was. . . Some people thought I born into disadvantage because of the person that I am. But through her teachings and my father's as well, it really has made me overcome those so-called difficulties and everything of that sort.

But yeah, that's a direct quote that I remember her saying quite often when I was a kid.

More implicit messages about caution came during his high school years about friends from different cultural backgrounds. He explains here about his mother’s warnings, For the most part, I understood because when I went to high school and there was a very big White population at my high school. And so she was like always remember these people are your friend and everything, but they don't understand your struggle and don't know what exactly you've been through what you're going to go through in life. So I understood where she was coming from when she said it. But at the same time, like I said before, it really didn't really resonate with me until about my freshman year of college when I really understand what was going on.

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Maternal messages appeared to prescribe a “struggle” for Connor to experience in relation to others, and these struggles required preparedness. He heard in these messages the need to be increasingly aware of his surroundings and the importance of scanning his environment for danger. Similar to the adaptive cultural paranoia Grier and Cobbs (1968) noted, he internalized a part of his mother that mandated fears of the future, a sort of functional anxiety designed to manage uncertainties and the unknown. Looking back on these moments, he describes the genesis of these moments, I think it [mother’s worry] was definitely prevalent and it was definitely obvious that she was worried for me. I think as a child I was naïve and ignorant to the fact that there had been danger around me, but she was always very cautious of it. And so without trying to scare me and make me fearful of the world, she just broke it down with you—you have to be 100% aware of what's going on at all times. Where you are, who you're hanging out with and just be aware that something could go wrong. You have to know how to maneuver yourself out of that situation.

Considering his mother’s messages today, Connor hears this same admonition to always be aware of his environment. He notes about her messages to him as an adult, I think it's definitely the same, but I think she realize that. . . I think her teachings are hard and I took her advice and used it and applied very well to my life. I definitely think there's still a worry, but I think she understands it. I understand her teachings and I am aware of them and I apply them every day. I don't think she has worry.

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Maternal anxiety experienced as acts of love.

Reflecting on the difference between his childhood and adulthood experiences of his mother’s messages, Connor talked about his mother’s worry feeling like active forms of love. This experience happened as he entered college and began to witness firsthand mistreatment based on his race and gender. As each encounter occurred, his mother’s words rang in his head and they became a way of thinking about his mother’s persistent concern for his needs. The expression of endangerment through maternal messages became enactments of love. Connor reflected on it here as he described his mother’s parenting, I think it [mother’s worrying] made her parenting a lot better actually. I think because she had to be so cautious of me and what I was doing that it made her into a better mother for my sister, because my sister's three year younger than I am. So when my sister came into the picture, I could see that some of the things that she taught me she was going out of her way to make sure that my sister that had those same principles in her life as well. So I would say just her constant worry and her concern for me made her a much better parent.

Hearing Connor’s experience of these maternal talks suggested that these situations created moments of bonding couched in messages about his safety. Such messages afforded the pair opportunities to talk seriously and deeply about his life in a way that was not easy to capture. A more latent meaning; however, suggests that endangerment became for Connor both the way to express love for and receive love from his mother. In other words, the pair experiences love through the vehicle of safety talks. For Connor and his mother, these talks are an adult version of the bonding that occurred during his

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childhood, allowing for the maintenance of space they shared since his earliest years.

Describing times in which his mother spoke to him about the Mike Brown shooting, he expressed the following: Yes, she has actually. On two separate occasions come to mind. The first one was right after the Mike Brown shooting. That one really hit home because I have family and I have friends who live out there. And I frequent that area pretty often. And she was just like, “That that could have been you.” And just if we really sat down and discussed things in this world are going to happen and you're going to be scared but you have to keep a level head essentially. You have to make sure that you are okay.

And then the most recent event was actually this past summer. We watched a Netflix documentary called “Now They See Us.” When that documentary was on, I actually teared up during that documentary because it was so deep and so impactful.

Later during the first interview, Connor relayed the need for more of these moments with his mother, further suggesting his continued need to connect through the use of safety talks. He explains about these conversations, I would say the one this past summer, I really needed a refresher almost. It's not that I forgot the one in 2014, I believe. I can't recall when the shooting was exactly. But it's not that I didn't recall the previous one, but the one they showed did that summer was. . . I'm halfway through college at the time and I thought I was a lot more grown up than I actually was. She really just sat me down and humbled me almost just to say that things haven't changed that much. There's been improvements but not as far as we need to be as a nation and as a people.

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Connor talked about complying with his mother’s messages of safety in a way that suggested both a symbol of respect and honor for her expectations and a way to feel responsible as an adult. Here, adhering to his mother’s safety messages became a symbol of maturity. He shared it in this way, I think her teachings are hard and I took her advice and used it and applied very well to my life. I definitely think there's still a worry, but I think she understands it. I understand her teachings and I am aware of them and I apply them every day. I don't think she has worry.

Times in which Connor struggled to honor these messages were particularly distressing and guilt inducing. Taking on a superego function, these maternal messages were internalized and used to guide Connor’s expectations of himself. As with the secondary identification Etchegoyen (1985) identified, he took in his mother as a separate object, internalizing her socialized experiences of the world. Installed in the ego, these experiences became what Vaughans (2016) described as a cultural introject—a message shaping the psyche about one’s safety requiring anxiety to function.

Connor’s experience of the situation noted above in which he and his friend were stopped and ticketed by the police illustrates the importance of maternal safety messages.

These communications became an essential part of his sense of self and identity; they became ego-syntonic. Using their bonded relationship, his mother facilitated the integration of endangerment messages with Connor’s sense of himself. Consider the following statement about how his mother’s safety messages affected his life, I think it made me a better person, maybe the person I am today because when I enter a situation as far as dangerous situations or anything really like that, I've always

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thinking back to the teachings and the upbringing that she had for me. It really just kind of makes me aware that the world that we live in today is not as equal as we would like it to be. But at the same time I still can succeed because I've had to put in the extra work and the extra time to get to where I need to be.

Maternally created safe spaces.

Connor remembers feeling physically and emotionally connected to his mother during many of their conversations about his safety. She had a way of carving out space for the two of them to exist that replicated the times they spent alone during his infancy. These conversations seemed important for many reasons, but for Connor, the act of closeness seemed significant. This closeness had a way of holding him and demonstrating love regardless of how old and mature he felt. Reflecting on an experience this past summer, he related, I would say the one this past summer, I really needed as a refresher almost. It's not that I forgot the one in 2014, I believe. I can't recall when the shooting was exactly. But it's not that I didn't recall the previous one, but the one they showed did that summer was . . . I'm halfway through college at the time and I thought I was a lot more grown up than I actually was. She really just sat me down and humbled me almost just to say that things haven't changed that much.

Much like that emphasized by Sullivan (1953) about the human subject being forever tied to an interpersonal field, Marva maintained these safe spaces that allowed Connor to feel a sense of equilibrium. Without such a milieu, he feels lost and engulfed by an unpredictable world.

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An internalized maternal voice.

As noted above about internalization, the mother as an object is installed into the child’s ego, thereby shaping the psyche. This process first occurs before the infant can differentiate themselves from the mother, and later develops after the ability to differentiate. Connor’s mother as a socialized being has been installed in his ego and is inextricably tied to his way of experiencing himself, the world around him and the future.

Outside explicit messages, he has received imbedded meanings about being a subject and an observing object at all times—a subject in the sense of recognizing his own feelings, but an object that must be aware of how his feelings can impact his sense of safety.

Whenever sharing these insights with his mother, he feels rewarded with and affirmed by her attention and acknowledgment of his need to be aware of his environment. This maternal influence was captured in the following exchange during the first interview, Interviewer: How would describe your relationship to your mother?

Connor: I would say it's phenomenal.

Interviewer: What makes it phenomenal?

Connor: I mean we talk on a daily basis. I'll talk to her about anything and everything, whether it be my classes or a girl I like at school. Or Maybe I'm struggling for a test.

I mean she's my best friend now. It's amazing the relationship that we have.

Connor’s thoughts in the statement below speak even more directly to this organizing maternal voice that appears to order his thoughts about the world before him. Apparent here is his internalization of her thoughts and emotional presence that comforts in times of distress; in this way, endangerment has become predictable, and thus, manageable.

Thus, his mother’s words of safety become a mechanism of soothing to regulate anxiety

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about being endangered. In this way, Connor unconsciously takes an incompatible idea regarding his safety and creates from it a message of love. He explained, I mean, honestly I would just say that my mom from birth, she's always been there.

She's always loved me, obviously, from my greatest moment to my darkest moment.

And I really love her and I really appreciate her for that. Because I know especially growing up and even currently like I make a lot of mistakes, but she's always the one person who I can call. I can talk through it and she's always there to coach me through it and let me know it's going to be okay. Just keep trying, keep pushing. Don't give up.

That applies to so much more than just my schooling right now. It applies to my life. It applies to my future job. And it just really shows that she will always be there for me, and I will always be in be in debt to her for the amazing life that she has given me.

Apparent in this sentiment appears to be a struggle in Connor’s tolerance of his mother as a whole object, thus leading to the next category of meaning, internal conflict.

Internal conflict.

Such a significant voice also shapes Connor’s expectations for himself, and consequently, his feelings about himself. As House (2017) notes, the infant will make efforts to metabolize and digest caretaker communications, which become a part of the developing ego. Those messages that cannot be digested; however, present the ego with an incompatible idea, and thus, cannot be integrated into the psyche. Left to be repressed into the unconscious, these communications cause an inner conflict. Many of Connor’s understandings of maternal messages fit this description of being incompatible. He talked about feeling terrible whenever he violated the internalized voice of safety instilled from

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years of conversations with his mother. Yet, Connor felt loyal to the natural feelings of anger and frustration evoked by certain situations. He associated to the following memory of a time when he and his friend, Dontez, were apprehended by the police.

Feeling conflicted over how to respond, he detailed his emotions, I remember feeling very irritated and frustrated that I couldn't even say anything or stand up for myself because like my parents always taught me, do as the officer said drive away. Do everything he required us to do right then. You can deal with everything else later. And so I didn't want to talk back. I didn't want to say anything negative towards the officer. It really made me just irritated and frustrated.

Connor received the message that because his feelings could be the source and cause of great danger, and thus, he was not allowed to them. Owning such emotions now comes with the price of feeling disloyal and irresponsible, communicating that he is not entitled to his feelings. “It’s not that I felt bad about myself when I don’t listen to those messages, it’s that I felt bad about the situations I put myself into,” he explained. Here, he has taken ownership and responsibility for the painful emotions connected to his mistreatment—a way to control the uncertainty of potential danger. He is forced to see himself as both a subject and an object.

Another source of internal conflict apparent from the interviews is Connor’s difficulty tolerating his mother as both good and bad without feelings of guilt. As I noted about my own reactions to his interview, he wrestled to critique his mother in constructive ways, failing to give voice to his own feelings of frustration. These emotions were turned against the self, as evidenced by his statements of being too naïve as a child. Messages of endangerment have become a milieu in which he can feel protected and nurtured, but

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they also foster and maintain a False Self limited in its ability to express one’s full humanity. To feel this loving nurturance, Connor must adhere to the rules of endangerment despite what other emotions may contradict these feelings. The consequence is a split-off part of himself.

The threat of maternal loss.

As Connor gets older and more independent, he finds himself worrying about his mother and her happiness. There seems to be fewer special moments now that he is nearing the end of his college career. His mind fantasizes about something bad happening to her and how he might cope. Latent meanings of this fear involve the threat of losing an object to which he feels dependent upon for emotional survival. It also alludes to the extent to which Connor and his mother are paired and connected through a perception of his endangerment. In other words, their love and expression of love occurs through the enactments of safety messages. He speaks to his own fear of her endangerment in the following passage, admitting, I do. I worry about her because she's getting a little bit older now. And there's certain things that come with age and I'm just worried for her. And even with her job and how stressful it is for her, I just fear that one day something negative, something terrible could happen. And I'll be getting a call here in Springfield and just having to rush home. I worry about her on a constant basis, for my whole family, but my mom especially, yes . . . I just want her to be here as long as she can.

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While such fears illuminate a natural worry about losing a caretaker, the above statement also reflects the individuation that maternal messages of endangerment discouraged.

These messages appeared helpful to Connor in offering specific advice for his safety, such as the moment when he and his fraternity brothers were stopped by the police. In that moment, Connor knew to call his parents on speaker phone to serve as witnesses over the situation. However, Marva’s communications fostered a dependence that Connor now struggles to discard. That he is now an adult and most likely to be endangered, based on maternal messages, he struggles to imagine a life without this support.

Mother of Case #3: Patricia Patricia led me through a narrow hallway to her bedroom. “You see over there, that’s my wall of Black men,” she said proudly. She pointed to nearly ten black and white framed pictures of Black boys and men positioned alongside her bed. By the poses and hairstyles, it was apparent that these photographs were from different times in history, but they were all of men who meant something to her. Her son to the left, nephew at the bottom, and brothers on the right—it was a collage of strength and accomplishment for Patricia. This success best characterized the sentiment of her interviews—there was a sense of pride in her voice because she had successfully raised her son, Que, the subject of this case. Reflecting on how it all happened, she tearfully shared her story.

Patricia is a 55-year-old Black woman currently residing in a quaint cottage home in an all-Black neighborhood in North County St. Louis. Born and raised in the heart of St. Louis City, she alone raised twins, Quanisha and Que, during the 1980s and 90s.

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Finances were a struggle at times, but Patricia proudly survived working in hospital registration departments and hospice care and currently works at the Veteran’s Administration building handling educational claims. Her life is quite contented with a big extended family, three grandchildren, and Sunday dinners at least two times per month.

It was following World War II when Patricia’s father migrated to St. Louis. “He was a country man from Ripley, Tennessee,” she explained, and one of the most hardworking and determined individuals she had ever known. Despite having minimal education, he worked to provide a very comfortable life for her and her two brothers. She recounts about his personality, He was a hard-working man. He was, let's say, back then when they grew up, the highest grade that they attended was the third grade. He worked hard for everything that he got, and by him working hard, he really didn't have time for us, but he also made sure we had whatever we needed . . . He worked two jobs. He owned his own company back then. He retired from Swift Packing Company. That was in East St. Louis from a long time ago. He owned a couple cabs, and he had what we used to call a bar. Now they call it a tavern or a bar. And he also owned that too back in the '60s and '70s, yeah.

Patricia’s mother raised her until the age of two before having a mental breakdown.

She left the children with their father and he soon thereafter married. It was not until adolescence that Patricia learned that her stepmother was not her biological mother. This explained the constant tension she felt from this woman, as she described here: When my dad, he brought us over to his wife, apparently she didn't accept it, because

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she didn't know anything about us. And then when he brought us over, it was like, and as you get older, you kind of think. He named me after his mother. He named my brother after him. He named my other brother after his brother. It was, to me just being a woman back then, it was probably just too much for her to bear. Yeah.

Looking back at that time, she remembers prayer being the dominant way of coping with her stepmother’s hatred. She explained in detail with a memory about this time, God played a role in my life ever since I was younger. I remember my stepmother. I was telling my kids the other day about this, because usually once or twice a Sunday I'll cook, and everybody, all the kids come over. And I was telling them that I just begged her and begged her. Because I thought, as I say, I thought she was my mother.

I didn't know why she hated me so, because she used to say, “Oh, you look just like your mother.” And I would say to myself, “I look like you?” But I wanted to get baptized, and she would never let me get baptized.

And this old lady at the church, I guess I was about seven or eight, she said, “Let her go up there.” Because I guess she heard me every Sunday asking to go up there.

So that's one thing, she would take me to church on Sunday. And then I was young, but I listened to the word, and I felt like nobody loved me. And then it kind of made me sad. And then I heard that song, When Jesus Loves You, and then I said, “Oh, Jesus loves me.” I've been with God ever since.

As the head of the household, Patricia’s father, Mr. Caster, emphasized the importance of family. Regardless of any tension and conflict that may arise, he preached that at the end of the day, family must be there for one another. Describing the importance of this value with her brothers, she explains,

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Just like any other siblings, we fought, but it always was us. And my father instilled in us, anything ever happen to me, that's all you all are going to have. We've been like that all our lives. We're still close now . . . I think [it was important to him] because him not telling us about our other siblings, and I don't know, family was important to him. His brothers. He was close to his brothers and sisters. I remember on the weekends, we used to close down the bar, and we'll get in the car, and we'll go to Gary [Indiana] to see his brother. We'll go to Chicago, and we might go down South somewhere and see some of the other relatives. Family was just important to him, and that's what he instilled in us, family.

Patricia had a close relationship to her father and he came to depend on her in ways that he struggled to trust others. As she grew up, he enlisted her support and knowledge in his businesses because of a grave distrust for White people. Education for him was of supreme importance, symbolizing freedom in a system known for injustice. She recalled these times, noting: And my father just instilled in us, you work, you take care of your kids. And education was important to him, because like I said, he had a third-grade education. But he had businesses. And some things he couldn't comprehend, and it really would make him mad, because he couldn't comprehend and understand it. He always thought that, I'll say, Caucasian people always tried to get over him.

Yeah, because when I was younger, he used to have this Jewish company to do his books. And he always hollered and screamed. He had a very filthy mouth. He was like, you can do it. “You know what they can do. Just look and see what they're doing.” And he made me, and he taught me, I was probably nine or ten, learning how

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to do checks and balancing stuff. And keep up with his ledgers, because he felt that he shouldn't pay them all the money. And he felt that, I was probably in fourth or fifth grade, that I could do it. He got his last schooling when he was in the third grade.

That's what I instill with my kids. Education is important.

Mr. Caster’s fondness for Patricia did not come without strict discipline, as she remembers vividly fearing his punishments. He was an ironclad enforcer of rules and believed that to disobey was a sign of disrespect. She explained about these feelings, I think most of mine [respect for authority] was instilled in my father. Like, when people were saying they want to be with other people and stuff, I was afraid of my father. I know what he would do to me if I did wrong. So it was nothing that somebody could force and tell me what to do, I didn't care what you say. Because I think my daddy bigger and badder than any of you all are.

Life for Patricia and her brothers was privileged in many ways, especially for Black families at the time. Growing up in a segregated St. Louis, her father and stepmother lived a middle-class lifestyle. Reflecting on it here, she related, I was living out there in Wellston when that was the Black people's downtown. In my generation, we had JC Penney's, Jupiter's, Woolworth's, all those other stores out there. And that's where we shopped until they built Northwest Plaza. Now it was Riverview. Because I remember when we used to go to Riverview when Stix, Baer and Fuller used to be Famous [Barr]. Like I said, when we grew up, my daddy had a little money. And his wife would dress up, and she would go to Stix, Baer and Fuller, and she would dress us up to go. And we would go in there, because mostly White people went in there.

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On Patricia’s 13th birthday, she would come to see one of the darkest days of her life.

Her father, the man who raised her, was robbed and critically shot at the bar that he owned. As he struggled to survive in the hospital, he entrusted her with his last words.

Tearfully recalling this moment, she explained about the incident, He knew who it was, because I remember, being young you'll be hearing everything, that he thought he was going to survive. Because they shot him in his neck, and [he said] “I'll take care of it.” He had that kind of personality, “I'll take care of it. I'll be all right.” And he died.

In an instance, Patricia had lost the father figure she had always known. This man created for her and her brothers an experience of the world as safe, protective, reliable, and dependable. His strength, even violent at times, conveyed this safety as captured in this memory, Yeah, because my father always made us feel safe. I remember, I have stories. I remember one time my father, he had a Cadillac. He had some horns on there, so when he'd come down, and somebody had stole his battery out of his car. He parked his car on the side of the house and put the bed by the window. And he kind of left the hood up there. He wanted them to come back. He heard the hood raise, and the guy trying to . . . I remember it so well, and I probably was about eight or nine. And a guy was trying to get the battery out of the car, and my dad he kept guns. He heard him, he ran out, and the guy was running. And only by the grace of God he didn't kill him.

Because he went down, and my dad was kind of a heavyset man, and his pants had cracked, and he was aiming. The guy dropped the battery and went away. They say you live by the sword, you die by the sword. And he [daddy] was that type of person.

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This sense of protection was echoed by other men in Patricia’s life. Her uncles, male cousins, and even brothers worked hard to personify masculinity as care, attention to need, and meeting the needs of those they loved. She finds herself puzzled about how some people come to depend on government benefits, reflecting on her own past here: Yeah, [I learned from my family] that you take care of your family, take care of your kids, because those are your responsibility. I remember when I was younger, I didn't know anything about welfare or anything until I had Quanisha and Que. Because I figure, if you have children, you're supposed to take care of them. And then I learned this thing about welfare. I'm like, “how do you get that?”

Yeah, because we didn't grow up like that, like I said, your parents, they took care, they made sure you're fed, made sure you're clothed. I told Que, I said, I remember we were the first one [Black family] on the block back in the '70s. We had TVs and radios. We didn't have no window up all the time. We had a alarm system. One of those alarm systems you put the keys in. I said, so we didn't ever, as Quanisha said, you let us know you talking about if we go to school we can go to school free. You're still paying these bills.

It was not until after her father’s funeral that Patricia learned that her birth mother had three other children who lived with their fathers in East St. Louis. These siblings explained that her mother had passed, and that her father, Mr. Caster, had raised multiple families at the same time. In essence, she and her brothers were born while he was married to his wife, Patricia’s stepmother. This explained the tension Patricia always felt from this woman.

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Following her father’s death, she and her brothers would go to live with her paternal aunt. Things were different there, as Patricia began to experience how lower-class families lived. She reflected here about this time, It was a change. Because, and as I got older I kind of understand why my father had us being close. Because he used to say, “Ain't nobody going to treat you like I treat you.”

And then it happened. People were raising us just because of the money.

The structure remained the same; however, as Patricia’s aunt kept a similar routine as her father. She remembers getting up in the morning and going to school for the most part, not much else. Staying true to her father’s values, she explained about her years as a teenager, “I went to school and worked. Like I said, we all did, because my father instilled in us work, work, work.”

Patricia was a teenager when she met Que’s father. “It just happened. It wasn’t any type of relationship or anything. He stayed two doors down from my aunt. We just grew up together,” she nonchalantly explained. When she realized she was pregnant, it was not long before she understood this man’s commitment to their relationship and future family. In fact, she initially opposed the pregnancy, threating to abort the baby when “he ran and told my aunt, and she was like, ‘I’ll help you,’ Patricia explained. Her aunt went on to help despite Que’s father being inactive throughout her children’s lives. Reflecting on this man today, she notes, “I disliked him for that reason, and today my brothers still hate him. But I'm one of those, it is what it is, and you can't make nobody do anything if they don't want to do it.”

It was not until the delivery that she found out she was having a boy. She recalls the moment,

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I was on the operation table. I went to the emergency room, and they took the ultrasound and everything. And I had to have a C-section, so they opened me up. I was going to my weekly and my monthly visits and all that. And they found out that Quanisha was hiding behind Que, so I found out on the table. Que weighed about 2 pounds and some ounces. And Quanisha weighed about 1 pound and some ounces.

They were preemies. They were some real preemies.

Reflecting on her initial thoughts of being a new parent, Patricia recalls feeling more concerned about what she needed to do. “Boy, I got to buy another bed,” she remembered thinking as she laughed. She knew that she had the support of her aunts with whom she was living, so there was not a worry about physical or financial help. However, Patricia did not want children; she knew what it felt like to lose a parent and raising a child came with too many risks and responsibilities. Explaining this sentiment here, she notes, Because the way I was brought up. Because I didn't have the mother, and then my father got killed, I didn't want that responsibility that anything would happen to me and they would have to be out here dependent on somebody else . . . Yup, and I used to pray to God, will I end up . . . I was like, Lord, just let me live long enough for my kids to be able to take care of themselves so they won't have to depend on nobody else.

Raising Que and his sister, especially during the early years, was not a problem.

Patricia recounts them being good kids who rarely got into trouble, noting, “We used to call Que professor when he was younger because he just loved reading books and knowing everything,” she jokingly explained.

She went on to say, When he was younger, if he didn't understand or comprehend something, then he

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would cry. “Why can't I understand?” Que, you're young. You aren't supposed to understand. “But why can't I?” But he's a good-hearted person. He tries to help others.

And he gets along with mostly everybody.

Even into adolescence, Que was said to have been problem free.

Patricia’s brothers took an active role in her children’s lives, especially with Que, as she recalls here, They [my brothers and his children] all grew up together, and with Que not having a father figure, those were his father figures. Every Saturday, my brother would take him to the barber shop if they need to do something, and what his uncles are doing for him. And as Que grew up, when his sister had, his twin had a child, he would do the same thing. That's his duties. He would tell Quanisha, unless you get married, tell any man that you have, I'm going to take him to the barber shop. I'm going to make sure of that.

Patricia explained the commonality of these behaviors amongst her brothers. “They looked after me and looked after my kids. Like I said, their kids were my kids, and still today,” she related. Even Que’s older cousins looked after him in protective ways during his adolescence. She remembered how her nephews shielded him from their negative behaviors, Like I said, we grew up on the North side, and my other siblings, they grew up in East St. Louis in John de Shield (a housing project). So they [Que and Quanisha] were experiencing going around everybody. I remember when they was younger, my nephew, they [Que and his other male cousins] used to run around with him all the time. When he [Kendrick] got ready to do his dirt, he'd tell Que, “You got to go

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home.” Que said, he'd make him so mad, but he (Kendrick) started throwing bricks at him and punching him in his chest and stuff to make him go back home, because he didn't want him to do the same thing he did.

When it came to discipline, Patricia was a verbal parent. She rarely spanked her children, and cannot remember a time when she hit Que. When it came to cursing; however, she was prone to spewing a few expletives. Laughing about a memory, she explained, “because I remember Que and Quanisha, they'll tell you, ‘when we was young, we didn't know which mother fucker you were talking about.’ They thought, is she talking about you or me?”

Like her father, Patricia valued stability and education. Destined to flee the crime ridden north city area, she moved several times during her children’s early years until finding a safe apartment in a suburb of St. Louis, University City. Prior to that move, she enrolled Que and Quanisha in the school desegregation program using her brother’s qualifying address. Recounting the various moves before University City, Patricia recalls this time, I never did change their school, because they were in the deseg. program, so I used my brother's address, who just called me, on Bessie Court. He stayed on Bessie Court. So they went out to Parkway School District. They didn't ever go in the city, because when they were younger, and they said they was going to put him in the city, I was like, “No, I ain't going to put him in no city school” because the area was still bad over there between Athalone corner. There was a school back there they were going to go to, so I put them in Catholic school.

And then I was reading up on it and found out about the deseg. program, so I said,

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I'm going to let my kids go out here where these White people are out here in the Parkway School District. When they first did it, I used to drive them there, go pick them up. And I was like, there was too much wear and tear. And then I had a job too, so I couldn't take off early. I just prayed on it and let them just catch a little bus on out there.

When they started, I guess it was in first grade, because they went to Ascension which used to be in the city. It's closed down now, a Catholic school. And they went to Parkway School District. And they got a chance to meet different people. Because I used to tell them, “You ain't going to be around Black people all your life. You need to learn how to interact with other people.”

Responding to a question about worrying for her children in a distant school, Patricia explained, “You pray on it.” She was more excited about the opportunities this change would bring, as she reflected on it here, They got a chance to meet different people, different backgrounds, millionaires, close to billionaires . . . and they loved it. I remember when Quanisha was about . . . see this will tell you that kids don't know about color. She was about 10 years old, and this little girl said, “Why do you always play with those people? Why you don't ever play with us?” She was, like, “What people?” “Those White people.” She said, “White people?” See, she didn't know the difference between White and Black, until some of her people that's on the bus that told her. And that blew my mind when she told me that. I was, “You really don't know the difference, do you?”

Patricia purposely exposed her children to diversity and felt that limiting them to certain experiences was a form of entrapment that eventually led to danger. As captured

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in her statement above, this danger was especially prevalent for people exposed only to groups from their own racial and socioeconomic class. She knew her children would learn from their environment, as she stated here, “Like with all people—they learn things.

When you used to tell a child, the sky is red. If you tell them it's red, they're going to believe you.”

This push for exposure to diversity was an experience Patricia fought hard to provide for her children. As Que grew older and more independent, she saw this exposure being even more important to his well-being. To be successful, she knew that he needed to understand the differences between groups of people and the decisions that people make, even those individuals within his family. Patricia often talked to Que about his male cousins who lived in East St. Louis to underscore the importance of these differences.

She remembers having a conversation with Que in which she gave the following advice: Don't follow behind people. People influencing you to do something. If you want to do it, you want to do it yourself, and don't do it because everybody else is doing it.

This is like smoking weed. I know all your cousins and everything smoke weed. You got uncles and aunts that smoke weed, but don't do it because they're doing it. The consequences of you doing it, you're not going to be able to do things that you want to do in life. So I know they experimented with it, but they don't smoke weed. Quanisha don't ever smoke weed or drink. She might drink occasionally. Que, he'll drink, but drugs, I never had any problem with them and drugs. Hopefully, that's because their people influence, but I know all their cousins, everything that they hung around with and still hang around with now. Everybody smokes weed—aunts and uncles. But they never did have an impact or influence on them to do stuff like that.

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As Que became a young man, Patricia knew that he would encounter harmful situations just because of his sex and gender. “Black men,” she explained, “are endangered with their lives with what’s going on in the world now.” She went on to note, They're endangered with their education. Really to me it doesn't matter what background. It could be their education, growing up in the streets, Black men doing illegal things, and all the crime and the impact that it has on our Black young men in their lives.

Worry was always a dominant emotion for Patricia when thinking about her son’s life.

She explains in detail here, You always have those worries. Like you hear them saying all the time, you teach your child when the police stop you. I remember he was younger, and we stayed in University City. They were going across the street, they were just going to go to the store, and the police stopped him. And he was asking him, what was he doing or something like that. And then Que, he wasn't used to nothing like that. He was just saying where he was going, and he was going to go to his mom. I remember he told him that, “I can put you in the computer system and tell you are part of a gang.” That was his first experience.

The second most horrible experience, he still experiences now sometimes, when the police used to pull him over. Because he's a young Black man, pull him over, because most likely you ain't got no driver's license, you ain't got no insurance. And at least two or three times a week, he'll tell you, he will get pulled over.

I remember one time, it was probably about three years ago, his twin and Que was in the car. It was Que, my grandson, and his son. And the police pulled him over, and

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he was, “Granny, the police pulled us over, and Uncle wasn't doing anything. And he told him that he stopped before the line in the street, and he could give him a ticket.

But my uncle wasn't doing anything. Why he pull him over?” I told him, “You'll find out when you get older. They pull you over. Just give them the driver's license and your insurance card and keep your hands on the steering wheel.”

Compliance with authority was the primary advice Patricia gave, and continues to give her son about protecting himself in these situations. Without control over how you are perceived, she feels that the only power he has is his ability to comply with whatever directive is given. She explained, I remember one time he came to me crying, “Why're they always messing with me?

Why are they always pulling me over?” And I was like, because you're young and Black. You just give them the driver's license and your insurance, because they expect you not to have it.

Patricia feel that because her son will forever fit some police officer’s description because of his skin color, he will always be endangered. “It hurts me, but we're in 2020, and things are still the same. Because you can go out here now, and the police will pull you over,” she lamented.

Prayer is the primary way Patricia copes with the stress and torture of the unknown related to her son’s safety. “You pray . . . because anything could happen, I mean anything,” she noted in a cavalier tone. Speaking more to the impact of her prayers, she detailed a story about Que and one of his cousins from East St. Louis, And you have to pray. People are, “I pray for my kids.” You have to pray for your kids, every time they go out the door. And you got grandkids growing up, and you

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think, oh God, I got grandkids going. Que got a son, my daughter has a son. It's just hard out here for these Black men, don't care how educated you are or what background that you have. You're still a Black man.

Like I said, he was a good kid, and if somebody meets Que, they'll tell you he's a classy young man, he's really good-hearted. And that's the kind of kid he was. And you know how people are, like well. I know he did a little stuff, because he hung around with his cousins and stuff, and he was a kid. Kids are going to do stuff.

I remember one time, his cousin Kendrick, they had said that he had robbed somebody, and thank God that they saw him on camera. He was at the gas station when the robbery happened, so the police had surrounded my house and came in. And they was like, “We're looking for Kendrick.” They're looking all around and stuff. And they were talking about, “Who's Que Caster?” I said, “My son.” And the White officer pulled up one of Que's picture. You know, they can get your picture off your license . . . and he was like, “This looks like Kendrick.” And the Black officer said, “No it doesn't, they don't look alike.” And only by the grace of God, Kendrick got out of it, because he was on camera. He went to a bowling alley, and he stopped and got some gas. And there were cameras in the bowling alley. And I remember when he called me, he was like, “TT, they said if I say I did it, they're going to let me go.” I said, “Kendrick, if you didn't do it, don't say you did it.”

They end up, that's when his mother was living, because his mother passed away, Kendrick's mother did. And they pulled up the surveillance camera and saw where he was at during the time of the robbery. But somehow or another, his ID was in a car that the police pulled over, and showed the ID to the lady. And the lady said, that was

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the one who robbed her. And they were trying to say, “Que, no. Que don't look like Kendrick. Kendrick don't look like Que. They're just two Black men.”

Prayer was a daily ritual in Patricia’s life—there was nothing else that allowed her to feel this sense of peace, and on some levels, it appeared to be a way of grounding that helped her focus on the realities of the present. She went on to describe it in the following way, He [God] never put me in any situation I could not handle. And if I couldn't handle it, that was His will. And I never put myself in any kind of situation that I couldn't handle or that was just, most of my situations are just life. It happens. If I can change it, you can change it. If you can't, you just, I learned in life you just have to move on.

Not only did these prayers save her son’s life, Patricia feels that they shaped him into the God-fearing man he became. With a smile that illuminated the room, she talked at length about the wonderful person Que was to so many. Sharing about his life, she explained, Yeah. And Que is a God-fearing man. He goes to church. He used to volunteer at church all the time when he went on the East side, but now he doesn't do much volunteering as he did with the Boys Club. God-fearing—that’s how he achieved all the things he achieved in life.

Patricia feels that Que’s choice of working in the helping profession was a result of this religious upbringing, as he is now a licensed clinical social worker employed as a therapist in an elementary school. He spends much of his time helping others, serving as a mentor. Patricia described one of his most impactful mentoring relationships here, sharing,

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He loves to help the kids. Because I'm giving and caring. Like I told you, we were brought up with giving and caring. You care about how that's your cousin over there.

You care about . . . and Que, he might discuss it, he had a cousin who killed himself probably two years ago . . . and Que was like his mentor. He would pick him up, take him to the barber shop, talk to him. And he had mental issues. And like I said, mental issues run in my family. His mother had them too. And it was like on the Fourth of July, and he took Que's gun and killed himself. And like I said, my kids and their cousin, they grew up together—they’re close. It took him [Que] a while to get over it.

He had to go to counseling, and he's doing a little bit better. It’s hard. Like I said, they all are, they're cousins, they grew up together. Ain't like you see your cousins every now and then. They would pick him (mentee cousin) up, take him. If he needed clothes or anything, he'll [Que] buy it for him. He need somebody to talk to, he'll come through the night and talk to him. Because like I said, he had mental issues. And Que said he remembered, because he had taken him to the barber shop, because they go to this barber where they have appointments. And he told him, he said, Que keeps his gun in the glove compartment. Que said he remembers now he (mentee cousin) said, how he left his earplugs in the car. And Que said, that's probably when he got his gun. He never did look in there and see.

Although Patricia feels that she has a good relationship with her son, she admits that he is not the most expressive person. She wishes he would call her more often than the once or twice per week contact she currently receives. “This is your mother. I still stay at the same address,” she jokingly tells him. Patricia feels that Que puts a lot of pressure on

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himself to be better and measures his ability against those men he saw growing up. She explained further, For Que, it'd have to be really hard on his heart and in his head for him to say something to you. He won't even talk to his wife sometimes . . . and at the same time, he put a lot of pressure on himself too. Because I remember one time, Que's one of those people, he feels, I remember one time . . . how long him and his wife been married? They'd been married about 10 years, probably longer than that. But anyway, he didn't like because his wife made more money than he did. I was, “Que, are you serious?” He said, “Yes, I am.”

I think there's something that he thinks because he is the man, he should be the breadwinner. But I think he kind of accepts it now. She's a nurse. He just one of the men in our family. As he grew up, he wanted to provide for his family. And that's one thing, my brothers, one of them he wasn't married to the mother of his kids, but as I said, he had them all the time. And he provided for them. And my other brother who's married provided for his child, and his wife already had a child. It was just like it was his child. So he was around men that provided for their families.

As Patricia has gotten older, she is changing the way she helps others. She finds herself pulling back and now questioning if people truly need her help or are they trying to manipulate her generosity. Speaking to the way she used to help her family, she explained, And I learned everybody's problems ain't your problems. I used to put a lot of people's burdens on me, and Que does too. He kind of backed away from it for the last couple years. Yeah, because you figure that you're family, try to do all you do to help.

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Sometimes people are in the predicament they're in because they choose to be.

Because you want more, they might not want more. Yeah, you have to learn that. Help when you can.

Yeah. And I learned, as you grow older, you learn. I grew up with my two brothers.

Or I didn't grow up with them, but I do have a relationship and a bond with them. And I used to, as Que used to say, my sister, one sister, she got five and the other one got five. But their kids had a kid. I used to say, always make sure because they're kids who had the kids. They're uneducated, and they had no jobs. But I always felt like kids should have a Christmas and they should have a birthday. So I used to, as Que would say, I used to play Santa. I used to make sure that everybody had, I would make sure they had what they wanted for Christmas. I mean, I used to do that.

Yeah, I remember one year I bought everybody bikes and these electronics. I used to do it, but I figured out, you just do too much, because they don't want to do anymore. I figured this. If you're on assistance, go to school or try to do better, but most of them they have a learning disability. I understand that. But there's no way that you have Section 8 and you should be homeless because you did not pay your rent.

Stuff like that.

For the future, Patricia hopes that Que and Quanisha will continue prioritizing family.

At least twice a month, everybody comes to her house for dinner and to watch TV. The room is filled with family, and even though they run out of chairs sometimes, people find places to be comfortable. This sense of togetherness is what motivates Patricia—it is one of the few dependable and reliable parts of her life. As we concluded the interview, she walks me to the living room to point out a collage of family pictures on the wall. “You

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like those…now, let me show you some of my favorite pictures, my Black men pictures,” she explains.

Case #3: Que Que is a 34-year-old heterosexual identifying Black man residing in the same town where he was raised, St. Louis, MO. He and his wife, Shalonda, are raising a teenage girl and 8-year-old son. He works at a large school district as a clinical consultant providing psychotherapy to students, and as a licensed clinical social worker, he very recently started a small private practice where he focuses on helping children and adolescents with behavioral problems. Helping young men of color has always been a passion for Que, and as he gains more experience, he is beginning to understand the multifaceted need of this population.

“Life is pretty good for me . . . I’m in a good space,” Que related as he thought about his present situation. He and Shalonda will soon celebrate their 10 th wedding anniversary this year, and the couple recently purchased a home together in the desirable suburb of Kirkwood. Both gainfully employed, Que considers his situation to be a blessing even with the challenges inherent to it like the responsibilities of being a husband and father. “I never learned about owning a home when I was younger,” he professed, explaining that he is learning as he goes. Overall, Que acknowledges that the many years of hard work, focus, and determination have finally paid off—he is now reaping the benefits.

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Significant childhood experiences.

Que grew up in a loving home surrounded by relatives. There was his mother, Patricia, who provided the majority of care to him and his twin sister, Quanisha. His two paternal great-aunts, Katie and Kathryn, played an enormous role during his childhood. They were also the custodial caregivers for Patricia when she was orphaned after her father’s death.

Each aunt took a grandmotherly role in Que and Quanisha’s life. “I got my aunt Katie,” Que gleefully exclaimed. These women provided much of the day-to-day care to the children, and being the matriarchs that they were, they supported and housed Que’s uncle and several other cousins.

Que experienced his mother as a woman with a plan who made things happen; she sacrificed her needs for those of her children. Even though Que remembers his aunts being supportive, his mother was the true parental figure responsible for his care.

Reflecting on her personality, he notes, [My mother]—she's still has always been my primary caregiver. And feelings and reflection I think to a certain extent were just not something that we did a lot. It was kind of like I said, my mom's parents died when she was young. So for her it was always like, “All right, what do I have to do? How do I make these moves? How do I reach these goals?”

When asked about significant men in his life, Que explained remembering several multigenerational relationships with supportive men during his childhood. His aunt’s boyfriend, Kevin, played a major role in teaching him how to be a man, which impressed Que because they never married. Speaking directly to this experience, Que shared the following story:

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So my uncle, uncle Kevin, my great aunt's boyfriend, whatever you want to call him.

He worked in a factory and retired from it. But he was literally, he was a builder. So whether it was a doghouse or add-ons to the house or whatever it was, he can make and build anything. My first bikes and all that—he was the one who was doing that.

He was the one that when it came time for me playing with Lego sets, he would show me how to do those things. So especially as I think back on that time was like somebody who could work with their hands and build and labor and that sort of thing.

Yeah. I mean, so just in a real way, and everybody knew this about me as a kid. I was never really super interested in those kinds of things outside of doing those things with him. Working with my hands it was never something that I was really interested in. But I think I always saw that as an older male, because even there were other men in the neighborhood and a lot of them were his age too, is that was a part of who they were and what they did. They fixed on things around the house. They went to work and a lot of them worked in factory jobs or things that had to do with manual labor.

And so I think for a while I did see things like that and sort of like he's real masculine.

Sort of role.

Que’s biological father was physically present and accessible, but inactive. He shared with me about their relationship, His mother, my grandmother, lived around the corner from us when we stayed with my great aunt, and the two of them knew each other. So, it’s not like I didn’t see him . . . it’s just he was not active or really didn’t try to be a part of my life.

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Even as Que got older and grew into young adulthood, he saw his father a handful of times and rarely felt the need to communicate. This inactivity, overtime, shaped a distance that became normal.

“It was my stepfather who really raised me as his son, not my biological dad,” Que explained. He, Samuel, and Patricia met when Que was just five years old and remained together until his adolescence. For unknown reasons, the romantic relationship ended roughly 12 years ago but Samuel remained active in Que’s life until his death a year ago.

Looking to the ceiling as his mind seemed to wonder, Que commented, “We spent last father’s day together at the hospital before he passed . . . he was 76 years old . . . that was a hard time for me.”

Que grew up in multiple environmental and geographical spaces: he lived in the predominantly Black north side of St. Louis City, attended a nearly all White school through the desegregation program, and spent long stretches of time in East St. Louis visiting relatives. He remembers each location coming with implicit and explicit social rules that when not followed, caused worry. He learned to code switch before even learning what the term meant. Speaking to this time as a child, he explains, All right, you go through the day, all right, you're back on the school bus, you can speak, act and this other kind of way. Yeah. And so I remember I wrestled, I honestly, I didn't wrestle with it for a really long time. I did it, I just did it as normalized. And then there was an instance where we were at recess and we did a mixed recess [with several grades and classes]. I don't know why, maybe at an assembly or something that day. And one of my people out there and they're like, “Que, why you talking like a White boy?” Right? And there was this thing if I did it and I was conscious of doing

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it, but was very careful not to mix the two or whatever. And I remember that from that distinct moment that sort of being this thing around all right, how do I navigate this space?

Growing up, there were few people in Que’s life with whom he felt safe discussing these matters. Family members were always loving but he felt they would not have understood. Additionally, Que felt ashamed of this desire to accommodate others’ sense of comfort. On the other hand; however, he felt this performance functioned to protect him in some way. Referring back to the above experience, he noted, In that moment, I remember just feeling really embarrassed. Yeah. Really embarrassed. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right, you caught me. Yeah, I was doing that.

Yeah. And I don't remember exactly what grade or anything like that, that, that was.

But I do distinctly remember and I guess developmentally it tends to happen too, around middle schoolers. That'd be in a time where I really it felt like I wanted to, but also felt like I just needed to, and I very consciously, it was sort of making decisions around like all right, who's my peer group? Who's my primary peer group? How do I navigate these spaces?

For the most part, Que remembers feeling well treated by others in the different spaces he inhabited, whether at home, school, or in East St. Louis. He and his sister were often complimented for their behavior and he vividly recalls another student, a White male peer, offering the following compliment for his non-Black disposition: “I really like you, you’re not like the other Black kids.” Soft skills, etiquette, and a warm personality were all the reasons Que feels that White people enjoyed and appreciated him. His attitude, very much like today, invites curiosity while tempering conflict.

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During the transition from middle to high school, Que met and bonded with Dr. Campbell, a Spanish teacher sponsoring the Bridge program, an afterschool class designed to provide support and mentoring to many of the desegregation students. A time of critical importance in Que’s life, this teacher helped him feel connected to his culture while offering him a sense of belonging in an environment where few people resembled him. Remembering this time and Dr. Campbell’s influence, he explains, Dr. Campbell, who kind of took all of us in sort of under his wing—Black men, right.

To kind of put us under his wing and as we went towards high school and he and I got actually really, really close. And he and I had a lot of conversations. He, I and also the group of kids who we worked with, because we talked a lot about like culture and academics and he taught Spanish actually, right? So it was just always really interesting and he was always the one. He reminds me of the movie Higher Learning, do you remember Higher Learning? Professor that Laurence Fishburne played? It kind of reminds me of that . . . But he was always the one pushing us to think beyond in honors courses in academia and pushing yourself and excelling, and leadership and those sorts of things. So we started to have some of those conversations among ourselves.

Not only did this relationship provide one of the sole spaces in which Que could think and talk about his emotions, it ignited a passion in him that led to a profound interest in civil rights, human behavior, and psychology. These conversations gave him a language to understand his own dynamics of gender and race intersecting with class. Speaking to this experience, he explains, Yeah. It was interesting for me because at that age I was really interested in spaces. I

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thought about myself and the thing about college a little bit more. But I started thinking a lot about race too. So in my freshman English class we had to do a project where you research somebody, you do a paper on them, but then you have to do this 5, 10-minute monologue on them. And for some reason, randomly I picked George Jackson who was a member of the Black Panthers. And so I read one of his memoirs and then it just sent me on a spiral of learning and thinking about those sorts of things.

These learning experiences seemed to give Que a voice that connected his split off selves—it helped to merge intellectualism with Blackness in a way that valued who he felt himself to be. On many levels, learning felt like an escape that allowed him to imagine himself in a multitude of ways. Akin to what Dr. Campbell provided, learning created a space for Que to understand himself and his experiences. It was not until entering college that he would feel a true emersion into this type of space.

Que’s interest in studying race helped him process from an analytic perspective his own personal dealings with injustice occurring in the community. Specifically, this analysis allowed for an intellectualization of discrimination that defended against the emotion caused by it. Reflecting on a time when he and his cousin were apprehended by the police, he explains in the following statement the internal dialogue that reframed his understanding of the disrespect and harassment he felt, Yeah. It was interesting. I guess the big, the first one when it literally hit me, hit me that I can't remember was actually the first time I got pulled over I was actually in her [mother’s] car. She brought me her car, but I was in her car that night, newer car and all that kind of stuff. And there were like three people in the back seat, passenger, driver. We were leaving the movies and parked on the side of the road for a couple

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hours and officers pulled us over. They were making jokes and just all sorts of things, right? And they pulled us over because of a taillight—because the taillight wasn't in.

But then I remember they gave me a ticket or whatever for the taillight and then they gave me one for obstruction of view, because there was an air freshener on the mirror.

And I remember as we were sitting out there on the curb or whatever and these conversations are happening and he's [the police officer] saying the thing about the air freshener, like searching the car and just all these sorts of things really almost kind of looking, sitting there, looking at this whole scene play out and just really reflecting on how that incident just played into the bigger picture and these interactions that people didn't have and Black boys and me and tend to have with police around race and you know. Yeah it was really interesting, especially to see it play out in that sort of way.

Following high school, Que attended two colleges but struggled to feel connected and afford out-of-state tuition. He transferred and graduated from the University of Missouri at St. Louis, explaining “I wanted to come home and go to school, it just felt more comfortable.” Despite his mother wanting him to attend school out of state and get the full college experience, Que felt connected to his home and St. Louis. Reflecting on the importance of home today, he shared feelings that he will probably never leave the city.

“This is where family is, so I’m good here,” he explained.

Que met Shalonda on his 21 st birthday. She was the college roommate to his sister and came to St. Louis to celebrate the day with the twins. “I first liked her because she was physically attractive, you know, that’s what grabbed me at first,” he explained. He would soon thereafter fall in love with her tenacity and determination. When they met, she was raising an 11-month-old daughter from a previous relationship. Balancing motherhood,

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full-time studies as a nursing student, and a part-time job demonstrated to Que that she was a serious person. “I really liked that she was a good mom, you know, really caring . . . I hadn’t met people my age like that,” he recollects. They began dating and remain together today.

As a father to a young Black boy and teenage girl, Que works to stay mindful of how to understand his children and what his family needs from him. He wants to give them direction with certain life issues that he felt was missing from his life. Lacking certain experiences; however, he fears that he will not be able to help them in the right way. He explains his thoughts about this matter in the following statement: So yeah. And again, for me it's just interesting to navigate it as a father of a really young Black boy, right? But having a teenage daughter, so I think a lot about Black boys, but I have a daughter and I also have to think a lot about Black girls. I never had a Black girl experience. And it's just been really interesting to think about how that translates with them. Again, because for me it was like we grew up on the North side fast. I spent a lot of time in East St. Louis, went to school in West County for them, their [my children’s] life is, I live in West County, I go [work] to school in West County. A lot of my family lives North City, North County, some in St. Louis. But their [my children] life is pretty much West County, mostly White people and . . . like what amount of information do I give them and how do I give it to them to navigate the different spaces that they're in. It's been really interesting.

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Black male endangerment.

Despite having had positive experiences growing up, Que still feels a salient level of threat based on his race and gender. He describes it as anxiety that is ever present, but not a constant fear. Rather, it is a constant need to be aware of his surroundings because of his identity. He holds in mind the understanding that people will perceive him in a variety of ways—as a danger to their well-being or as someone different than the other Black men. Whatever the perception, Que knows that it comes with a consequence for which he often bears responsibility. His actions and motives are of little importance here, but for his own survival, he must be concerned about carefully and successfully managing and resolving others’ perceptions of him as a human being. Addressing this anxiety, he states, Yeah. At the time, I don't know. I do know now there's definitely a level of anxiety and fear around it. Even to this day, I mean I don't have any warrants. I don't have a police record. Like none of that kind of stuff. I work a nine to five. I have no issues with the legal system or anything like that. But I still do tense up anytime I'm around police. Which is weird even because I'm a social worker and so I interact with them a lot, right? Because I work with kids and I work with a certain population of kids who interact with the system a whole lot.

But there's just always this level of anxiety around it for me. A little bit less when I'm at work. Last week I was driving down the street and just so happened to be a car was behind me, it still tenses me up. Yeah. So I don't know, I can't remember exactly what it felt like in those moments, but I know now that it still created this level of anxiety and fear over my life. Like, any second now you go turn on the lights and I have to pull over. Like there's just that feeling or thought. Or like you're going to say

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or do something that because I've just had a lot of those interactions. Both like overt but also some really covert ways in which police or even people involved in the legal system have directly stated like you are this and I'm that. Or we are this and you are that.

Beyond the perceptions of the dominant culture, Que sees the Black community most endangered by the limited resources available to its members. When survival for basic needs overshadows the ability to feel and the inherent need to express one’s self, he feels that people inevitably suffer. Speaking to his motivation for becoming a social worker, he explains, I think a lot of us as Black people, we think a lot about survival for ourselves, our race. We may not always even think about our race and surviving as a whole. But like us and our kids, survival mode and then, but being able to recognize like all right, I don't have to necessarily think about survival now. I have to think about thinking about life on another level and happiness and communication and understanding feelings and expressing feelings, and those sorts of things. I've just recently learned how important happiness is. And how important it is to be able to identify and express your feelings. Just how important those things are. I've really learned that over the last few years how important that is.

And I think for me it has just given me a whole different approach to my work.

Because again, like I said, when I first got in this work and even growing up, my whole thought was like all right, Black boys got to stop going to jail and dying. And Black girls have to stop getting pregnant at such an early age, right? Which are very much basic, somewhat survival sorts of things. But not thinking about how just the

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human being and emotions and communication and attachment and all those other things really play into it. And so I think I guess a big overarching theme and piece for me is just the importance of humanity of human beings with Black people. And like how we're interacting with one another, especially when it comes to our kids and our families and our community.

Because of Que’s giving and polite disposition as well as his curious way of thinking about himself, he was an absolute joy to interview. He, at times, got lost in his associations to material, permitting himself to freely explore and reminding me of the joys of clinical interviewing. This attitude and presentation allowed for the creation of a psychic space that is essential to clinical work. Together, for example, we honored his need for pauses between questions that eventually gave way to memories unrecalled for years. He had a way of playing with his reflections, sometimes changing his mind in midsentence, and wrestling with feeling a variety of ways about several things. For these reasons, I felt encapsulated in the data and ended the interviews feeling that they could have gone on forever. Overall, Que brought an openness to the interview process that allowed us both to wonder aloud and explore.

Categories of meaning.

Five categories of meaning regarding messages of endangerment were evident from Que’s interviews, including (a) manhood influenced by the family legacy; (b) the simultaneous need for and fear of the White world; (c) the dynamic and evolving nature of endangerment; (d) the bonding nature of safety conversations; and (e) specialness.

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Manhood influenced by the family legacy.

From as early as Que could remember, his mother helped him understand and make sense of complex experiences and situations, especially those involving his safety. She had a way of purposely exposing him to positive male figures in the family and community, leaving him to interpret manhood as protective, family oriented, brave, and gentle. This model started with memories of her own father, a man of great discipline and determination who Que came to know intimately well through countless stories about his life. Reflecting on her feelings about Black men, he explained about his mother, Her father died when she was early teens, something like that. But she always talks about her dad. Even to this day, she still talks about it and is really proud of her dad, is really proud of like her last name. Her last never changed—she’s really proud of that.

And she talked a lot about how again, no matter what, he was their provider. He was an entrepreneur and had different types of jobs, he actually died, he owned a bar and was killed in his bar. And so for her, the thing that she always talked about with that was taking care of your family, making sure that your family and I was taken care of financially, but it is protected, right? If that has to happen physically or in other ways, just making sure that your family is taken care of.

Que’s deceased grandfather’s legacy shaped the family’s standard of male behavior, and as such, his uncles modeled these values in their own lives. He remembers how this paternal prototype of masculinity influenced the understanding of his own responsibilities, voicing, She's [mother] got an older brother and she's got a brother that's a little bit under her.

And so and even with her younger one is still kind of had that same mindset too

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around those things around protection. Especially when it comes to protecting my sister or protecting my family, protecting our name. That's a big part of what men do.

Unlike the no excuses kind of thing within that too. Not that things don't come up, but that can't be an excuse not to do what you have to do to make sure things happen.

It is this same standard to which Que holds himself accountable and causes anxiety when it cannot be met. A huge part of his understanding about himself, a somewhat self-object representation, is grounded in meeting this familial obligation. Influenced by his mother’s experience of her father as well as his uncle’s behaviors, Que developed the inner representation of himself or personification that Sullivan (1953) described that focused on protection and provision.

Que saw that his mother’s memories of her father influenced her worries about him, and this anxiety increased as he got older, especially when he started to drive. On many levels, it felt like her concern was conditioned by memories of her father’s struggles in adult life. Recounting a situation in which this transference was palpable, Que explains, Because like my grandfather, he's from Tennessee and had an experience, couldn't go back down there because of an experience with some White folks, right? With it, he couldn't even go to his mom's funeral sort of thing. Not exactly sure what happened, right? But interactions like that or she would talk about how her dad would have these different businesses in a way that the White community would interact with him. And just again, different stories relate to him or even my one uncle who again got involved with a lot of stuff pretty earlier. Honestly, I don't think about even my other uncle who went to the Navy, and like her sharing stories kids being in the Navy in the '80s, early '90s, and some of those experience of racism and those things.

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I think for her, I guess she never said—until I got to that age—said a lot about like, I'm raising you this way because you're a Black boy. As I got older, she would reflect some of those stories back and talk about them. But I can only imagine that those experiences again, because she was really close to her dad and even now still close to the idea of who our dad was and what he represented and experiences that he had and how it shaped her. So I definitely would assume that me being a boy that there's that relationship between those things.

As outlined in these statements, Que assumed a role in his mother’s psychic life that preserved memories of her father. Through coming to know his grandfather through the countless stories, Que maintained a psychic identification with his struggle. The endangerment that Que came to know belonged on some level to the experiences of his grandfather. Keeping himself safe and adhering to maternal safety messages unconsciously honors this man’s life and legacy.

Que learned early that his mother valued education and wanted him to live a financially productive life. She also felt that being professionally trained was an essential form of preparation for the unjust world that he would undoubtedly face. This was often a topic his mother preached as he matriculated through school, many times not having the motivation to excel. Here, he reflects on a time in high school when his mother saw the need for him to excel to assure a stable future, Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I remember my English teacher my sophomore year. He decided that he wanted to nominate me to go onto the honors track and there were literally no other Black kids in the honors track. He actually nominated me and a friend of mine.

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And when I checked there were no other Black kids in the entire school. And there was 2,400 kids in our school, in that track. There was actually one who was a senior, and so when I came home, I was having a conversation with our buddy. And I was just, for me it was just nerve wrecking, right? Because there's this idea of . . . and I know the people who are on that track. I've been with these people, I've known them, really smart, capable people, all of these sorts of things. And so now it's all right, I've been excelling at this level, but then to ask me to go in here and really compete essentially head to head and be compared directly to these other group of like, in my mind, more capable, smart intellectual people. And I was like, “I'm not really interested in that.”

And she [mother] was the one that ultimately was like it's your decision. But she was the one that really pushed me and say, “No, nobody is smarter than you. Nobody is more capable than you. You can get in there and you can do it. And if somebody else believes that you can and they've seen those other people work, then why wouldn't you believe it.” Right? And then again, even in the same way, and I think that was a huge catalyst for me. Because even to this day she loves to tell people about my different career moves and things, she's like, “Hey, he partners with Wash. U. and does these things. He's Parkway Hall of Fame and he's supervised people who've gone to Ivy Leagues and all these sorts of thing and he's been able to hold his own in all these spaces.” And so for her, this is something that she really enjoys that I've been able to prosper in these spaces.

As evidenced by the reflections noted above, Que received maternal messages that his life would involve difficult experiences that needed to be overcome. His role as a Black

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man was to remain vigilant and prepared, and above all else, survive the harm that would come. Implied in this message is the economic harm that his grandfather faced because of his limited education, and the unconscious need to carry on this man’s mission to be financially independent. Que remembers his mother exposing him to other Black professionals who had achieved this level of independence, noting, Yeah. Again, something I reflected on way later was I think it was really important for her to put people in our lives. So again, my kid's pediatrician who was also my pediatrician is a Black woman. In schools, like we went to Parkway, but she also tried to figure out ways that we would connect with if there were any Black teachers or people like that. We did after school or summer programs, different things that she always wanted to connect us to—what people call now prosocial supports. And making sure that there was no excuse that you didn't have a skill or a time. I mean we were in kindergarten and we went up to Franklin Park to learn how to swim. Because again, as I think about Blackness, talking about Black people, for a lot of them, it don't matter knowing how to swim. And she was like, “No, you got to learn how to swim.” And just those different things that she made sure of—like you're going to have these skills, you're going to have these ways to navigate. Even talking to her later on about the experience with Parkway, it is mostly White, right? So there's also folks who are Middle Eastern and Asian—people come from all over. And so for her it was really important. And she likes the fact that me and my sister can both navigate in a bunch of different spaces across socioeconomics and race and religion and not only can socialize with people from different backgrounds, but also can make moves and navigate in those spaces and feel comfortable to a certain extent too.

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The simultaneous need for and fear of the White world.

Reflecting on implicit messages received from his mother, Que seemed to hear conflicting communications about the benefits of the White world and the simultaneous dangers of it. These messages came in the form of warnings about how White people would perceive him and interpret his actions, and at the same time, how important it was to participate in White institutions. For Que’s mother, the White world held no intrinsic superiority over any other community, but its resources were undeniably essential for her children. Que learned early that his mother was committed to providing him with the best opportunities within their reach. He notes about these resources, She always tells me, and I even tell my kids now, she always said, “My job as a parent is to make sure that you all have more opportunities than I had. You have to do that for your kids and that's the job of a parent is to make sure that your kids have more opportunities than you did.”

Such messages left Que with a double consciousness about conflicting feelings toward White people: they were to be feared, but they also held the keys to success. These two distinct poles of thought were hard to reconcile, and as a result, he unconsciously created ways to marry the two. The solution was the code switching noted above that allowed him to avoid conflict by accommodating the needs of others. It was a kind of False Self manifesting in his social world that continuously left out his needs for authenticity.

Que came to learn from these childhood experiences that he needed to be prepared for the White world. He grew up hearing his mother emphasize that because of his race and gender, anything could happen to him. Speaking to his experiences of being racially profiled, he explained about his mother,

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Yeah, because again, that [preparedness] was really important for her. Because I think she knew that there are certain things that may happen to you, especially if things happen to you in the legal system that I [she] may not be able to help you with or get you out of. And so doing everything you can to not have to interact with this system [criminal justice system]. Because anything could happen once you go there.

This point speaks to the degree to which Que saw his world interpreted through his mother’s eyes that repetitively reinforced her messages. The ultimate consequence was the loss of her protection, as alluded to in the statement above referencing “I may not be able to help you.” It comes as no surprise that Que struggled to part from his mother when choosing a college from which to graduate. Showing appreciation for this protection, he explained about his mother’s messages, It wasn't a thing that she pushed on us on a daily basis or anything like that. And I think maybe part of it is just because like I said, especially I think early on, on our interactions in Parkway and some of those things, she never really had to. We got along with most people. We were—me and my sister were both like those kids to the White kids…and they’re saying, “Oh yeah, you look like the other Black kids.” But it wasn't that, all of our friends weren't the other Black kids too. We were just really able to navigate both spaces. And so I think she [mother] took certain preventative measures. She told us certain things in different instances to prevent, but she wasn't militant in her approach. And that sort of way or just consistent and making sure that she's super reinforced. I think she saw that she did give us a gem and we could apply it and she didn't have to do a whole lot of just consistent, constant, constant, constant reinforcing.

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With each negative encounter and experience with the criminal justice system growing up, Que came to trust his mother’s warnings about these dangers more and more. He elaborated on her intuition in the following statement: Definitely. I think just because I've never really seen my mom be wrong. We have a running joke that she swears she knows everything. Even if she knows nothing about it, she would swear that she does. But generally if she speaks on somewhat, speaks on it in a way that's continuous and repetitive and it's something she's really trying to push through—she’s generally been right about it. Or at least being correct and her interactions within that space and in her message and about that is at least correct for herself.

The dynamic and evolving nature of endangerment.

Que experienced endangerment as a dynamic phenomenon constantly evolving and communicating complex messages about safety in social, interpersonal, and geographical spaces. He saw his mother’s response to perceived danger and attempts to protect him change over time. On many occasions during childhood, for example, he remembers maternal messages that were confusing, implying danger about what seemed to him at the time benign. Considering his playtime activities growing up, he speaks about his mother’s rules to only ride his bike between two corner stores, We had a corner store on both ends of our block, right? And so we could freely ride our bikes, walk all that kind of stuff back and forth. Like I said, because everybody knew everybody. But it was always concretely told, you stay on this block though, right? You're not walking around the corner hanging out and all that, you're going to

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stay on this block. So yeah, it was always kind of real that there was a danger out in the world.

During much of Que’s childhood, the Black community in St. Louis began changing, and the 1980s ushered in a wave of gang related violent acts directly impacting young Black men. This local, as well as national, epidemic was of significant worry to Que’s mother. He remembers vividly an instance around the age of 5 or 6 wanting a red Cardinal’s baseball jacket that his mother refused to buy. Reflecting back on this time, he explained, I was born in '85 and so I don't know exactly when Bloods and Crips hit the scene in St. Louis. But I know in late '80s, early '90s it was heavy, right? And so that was the time again, we were on the North side. And I always remember people wearing red Cardinal's jacket. And my mom would never let me get a red Cardinal's jacket because she was like, “No, because you'll see somebody, they’ll think you're Blood or you'll see somebody and they’ll think you're Crip and then it’ll go the wrong way.” And it's in those really concrete instances because it was interesting too because on the block we lived on, there were actually a lot of older people and a lot of people who had been there for at least a generation.

It started to shift—it’s like the generation before my mom, people passed away and some people's families moved out of the neighborhood or people didn't take care of their property and that kind of stuff. But everybody pretty much knew everybody. And so things like that never even really triggered in my mind other than knowing like. But I couldn't just walk around a corner by myself. Because it was said that that was a different kind of Black. You know what I'm saying? But it didn't really hit me directly

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in those sorts of ways until, and I very distinctly remember those conversations around now you can't have this red Cardinal's jacket because there's danger it presents.

Que heard from his mother implicit worry about his growing development. He came to experience messages of endangerment attached to this development. Becoming a man, in other words, meant danger. To the White world, his development meant being perceived as a danger and threat. Around other Black people, he could easily become the victim of danger. The False Self allowed him to control these uncertainties by manipulating his environments, using code switching to reduce danger by accommodating the needs of others.

Remembering early childhood moments, Que began associating to insights never before processed; they were of implicit messages received about his physical environment that implicated a sense of danger. To appreciate this thinking; however, the reader must first know the geographical reference in St. Louis to which it pertains—there is St. Louis City and St. Louis County. The city’s nearly half a million residents are most often segregated by parts of town in each direction. The South Side is an area known for diversity and houses many eclectic restaurants, shops, LGBTQI+ resources, and other businesses. While parts of the South Side are undesirable, it is generally considered a safe and desirable area of town. The West Side is home to many of the most prestigious and historical neighborhoods and institutions in the city, including the Central West End, Washington University, and Forest Park. In some neighborhood, home values exceed million-dollar price tags. North City, unlike the two just mentioned, is home to many of the city’s urban poor Black community. In this area where Que’s family resided, crime is nearly 3 to 4 times that of the other areas while home values tank at the lowest in the

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area. The Eastside refers to the bordering Illinois cities, such as East St. Louis, that are even more dilapidated than North St. Louis. Many of Que’s extended family reside in this area.

St. Louis County consists of the suburbs surrounding the city: South, West, and North.

Parts of North County, where many of Que’s family reside, are mere extensions of the crime ridden parts of North city. Ferguson, with its known history of poverty, police brutality, and municipal corruption, is an example of one of the many townships in North County. South and West counties are generally considered desirable areas as evidenced by the expansive difference in property values compared to North county towns. The Parkway School District where Que attended school is located in West County.

Responding to a question about implicit maternal messages about safety, Que makes the following connection, So I guess it [maternal message] eventually translated. Yeah, thank you. I guess it translates in the same way too. So early on just thinking about it, and this was something I did not realize until I got older really. I remember distinctly going to Don Brown Dealership because my great aunt got a car there when I was little. As I got older, I processed that I never went past Barnes Hospital until I was an adult. Outside of on the bus and hopping on the highway for Parkway and we literally got on 40, so we didn't even go past Barnes. I'd never traveled more South than Barnes Hospital.

Going that way, right? But other than going to Northwest Plaza, which was North [county], right? And so I remember going into stores and stuff like that and a very distinct conversation [had with mother] of this is what you don't ask for, don't do this.

Don't embarrass me in front of these people and those sorts of things. But it's basically

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when you talk about going out to the mall in Northwest Plaza and all kind of spaces.

And I think even more so though, I think it's kindergarten, I mean preschool, we went to a GSL which was in the same neighborhood, North St. Louis. And then we went to a Catholic school over in North County for kindergarten. But then first grade hit and we went to Parkway, right? And so, which was out there very different, didn't know what to expect until I got out there. But the conversation [mother had with me and Quanisha] was like, “Y'all about to go out here with these White people, don't embarrass me, make sure you're on your best behavior,” those sorts of things that were directly spoken. Yeah. Yeah.

Here, Que heard and internalized messages regarding the danger of certain parts of town. These areas were associated to White people living differently than his family, and as such, he felt a sense of not belonging. When the family frequented these spaces, Que heard from his mother a constant message about being careful of his presence.

Interestingly, he now resides in the desirable, nearly all-White suburb of Kirkwood.

“Besides a new Black family across the streets, we’re the only family of color in the area,” he lamented. It was a sentiment that seemed to suggest that regardless of his happiness, this was the best and most resourceful environment he should want for his family.

Reflecting back to late adolescence, Que remembered that as he grew older and started driving, he saw his mother’s behavior become more proactive and focused on teaching him how to avoid and respond to harmful situations with White authority figures.

Remembering his first encounter being stopped by the police noted above, he explained about his mother’s response,

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But I remember her [mother] like when we had the conversation about it, she was like, “Well, remember I told you, you can't ride with that many people. Then this thing could happen and these little things can happen.” And it was just, yeah. Yeah. I think that that was the first time I remember, that worry or those lessons that she taught us, really having to deal with the consequences of those types of conversations and lessons.

Que felt that these safety conversations were his mother’s attempts at breaking down complex information on a level that he could understand. The older he got, the more serious the talks became, further communicating the danger associated with his manhood.

It was a process of learning how to fear something inevitable, but at the same time, how to maintain a sense of emotional control over it with the mind. He remembered one of these conversations during his high school years, adding, For her [mother] it was, she never broke it down too much more than sometimes you'll have police officers or you'll have White people who will look at you in this kind of way, especially White officers because you're a young Black man. And they'll assume, they're like, “You have drugs in the car.” She taught me about, I was one of the only teenagers who knew about ticket quotas and all those kinds of things. Because we also, I had a family member who was a police officer. So different things that just the inner workings of that she was able to share.

A lot of that [talks] was just like this is just how people are. This is how the way that the world works. So her why wasn't like this for me, what I would consider like this deeper dive that I've taken in understanding like racial theory and race relations and how people's thoughts are formed and shaped and all this kind of stuff. But it was

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more so of just like this is just how people are thinking. This is how people are. Yeah, yeah.

Novick and Novick (2006) theorized two systems of self-regulation to maintain a sense of safety in the face of helplessness: open and closed. The open system is attuned to reality, allows for a full experience of emotions and is characterized by competence, creativity, and love. The closed system, they explain, “avoids reality and is characterized by sadomasochism, omnipotence, and stasis” (p. 7). The goal of this system is to take control over that which is unknown and perceived to cause harm. While designed to protect, maternal messages of endangerment utilize this latter system as a way of gaining control over potentially life threatening realities.

Que remembers his mother using safety conversations to reinforce the need for him to take responsibility for his behavior and to avoid dangerous situations. In many ways, he heard her equate endangerment to decision making, which is aligned with a closed system of self-regulation. In this way, the onus lies on the one responsible for affecting change in the behavior of others. Relating to his cousins who grew up in East St. Louis with far fewer resources than he had, he recalls his mother explaining, She [mother] will reflect on, okay, you see, like you remember those talks [we had] and then you see this action, and especially with positive things or the way things go, all right, see why? We'll talk about other family members and other people we know and she's like, “But see, they didn't necessarily have this lens, or have this conversation. And so you see why this can be beneficial.”

Resulting feelings include the impotency Chestang (1972) posited about the Black human subject when he cannot influence his environment.

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The bonding nature of safety conversations.

Que explained early on in the interview that while his mother was a supportive force in his life, she was not the most emotionally expressive person during his childhood.

Rarely did he hear her use the words, “I love you,” but instead he saw affection acted out in her deeds. Speaking at length to his surprise that his mother agreed to participate in this study, he explained about her, And I did, but I just knew she was going to say no because she's not a feeling or emotion kind of person. Like that is just not her, she doesn't talk about feelings and that sort of thing. But as she's gotten older, not that she talks a bunch more about feelings, but I think different instances that come up. We've had a lot of loss in my family over the last decade. And so different instances that come up and those ways in which she's had to show emotions because she just, she feels that loss. But also we joke as a family, like we review notes in the way that she cooks, right? She's a really good cook. I know everybody says that about their mom, but that's how she shows her feeling towards people.

When we're over there and like people that eat her food, she'll ask you, “Do you like it,” and she'll smile, when she sees you eating and she likes everybody coming over and having that together. And so it just becomes interesting as I get older, not that she's a ton more boisterous with her feelings and emotions, but and I don't know it might just be paying attention more to how she feels and how she responds to different things. No, I take that back. It's a little bit of that. But even now, I get super busy at times and won't call her as much and won’t see her as much. And she'll call and say, “You only got one mama.” And she won't say it like it makes me sad, but she'll give

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me everything that lets me know, there's a hole there when I don't give her that attention too.

So I think one of the things that's changed is as I got older is that she does in certain ways show more vulnerability in terms of expressing those emotions that aren't necessarily like is structured or aggressive essentially. As my sister says, I have a twin. As she says, mama getting soft as she gets older.

After reflecting between the first and second interview, Que expressed more about his mother’s way of showing affection. He noted about safety message conversations: During those talks, she was upfront and honest with us…and they would happen anywhere. They weren’t necessarily planned . . . it could be in the car when we’re driving somewhere or at home. And she wasn’t pushy with it either, she trusted us . . .

I guess it was just something she wanted to remind us of. And you know, after thinking about it, she is intimate in how she shares herself with people. It’s not expressed in words but through actions. Getting us all together the way she does . . . that’s an expression of herself.

Conversations about endangerment took this same enduring form as Que aged into young adulthood, and these talks allowed the mother-Black son pair to relate on adult, intimate levels. He reflected feeling that during these times, they came together and bonded while maintaining a parent-child respect so often revered in Black communities.

The conversations became enactments of love and attention. The following exchange highlights his thoughts about these times: Que: Yeah. Those were the times early on where it was real conversations, not just like a directive but a real conversation. Whereas when I was little, there's directives

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about how you act in a store and that sort of thing. As I got older, I think maybe for her, just recognizing that there's only so much control I have over this. It turned into more conversational than me really understanding the why's and the how's and some of that.

Interviewer: She would break it down for you, explain the why's. Okay. What would she tell you about the why's? Like, why this stuff would happen?

Que: For her it was, she never broke it down too much, more than sometimes you'll have police officers or you'll have White people who will look at you in this kind of way, especially White officers because you're a young Black man. And they'll assume they're like, “You have drugs in the car.” She taught me about, I was one of the only teenagers who knew about ticket quotas and all those kinds of things. Because we also, I had a family member who was a police officer. So different things that just the inner workings of that she was able to share.

He went on to explain that these conversations gave him opportunities to reveal vulnerable parts of himself to his mother, thereby deepening the relationship. She created an essential space that allowed him to be seen and his emotional needs prioritized. He explains about this space, noting, We really did have real conversations about it. She didn't, she never really yelled about it or that kind of thing. I guess those were early times where her and I really did have those conversations. She really did hear me out on what the experience was like.

Hear me out on what happened, and was able to still give me the like, all right, and this is why. And this is why I've told you, and how can you navigate this space in the

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future? It really did make me feel heard because she wasn't really just hammering down on it, that sort of thing.

So I generally was what people consider a good kid, right? But also dibbled and dabbled in some other stuff too. And so I think for her she felt like he's doing these things right. I'll give him these genomes. And I think that was her approach because of what she knew. If she knew how I was dibbling and dabbling in some other things, she probably would have been a little more aggressive with the way that she approached it. So I felt pretty good, but I think that was again, just based on her approach. It felt comfortable because it did feel like she was leveling with me. And wasn't trying to evoke . . . like I don't think she was necessarily trying to evoke this or at least I didn't get the feeling she was trying to evoke fear . . . It was more of an understanding of this is how the world works. And I want you to be able to navigate this space.

Que and his mother still reflect on these talks during his youth, allowing them now to relate to one another as adult parents while maintaining a bond reminiscent of childhood.

He sees these moments as transformational in his own parenting and feels that through safety messages, his mother taught him how to preventatively parent his children.

Reflecting on this moment, he shared, I think the only evolution that the talk has been taken, it was more of like a preventative sort of thing really early on. And so now, later on in life . . . I have had conversations with her [mother]. I and my sister have a lot of conversations about it.

She [mother] will reflect on, okay, you see like you remember those talks and then you see this action and especially with positive things or the way things to go, all right, see why? We'll talk about other family members and other people know and

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she's like, “But see, they didn't necessarily have this lens, or have this conversation.

And so you see why this can be beneficial.”

So yeah. And again, for me it's just interesting to navigate it as a father of a really young Black boy, right? But having a teenage daughter so I think a lot about Black boys, but I have a daughter and I also have to think a lot about Black girls. I never had a Black girl experience. And it's just been really interesting to think about how that translates with them. Again, because for me it was like we grew up on the North side.

I spend a lot of time in East St. Louis, went to school in West County for them, their [my children] life is, I live in West County, I go [work] to school in West County. A lot of my family lives in North City, North County, some in St. Louis. But their life is pretty much West County, mostly White people and . . . Like what amount of information do I give them and how do I give it to them [my children] to navigate the different spaces that they're in. It's been really interesting.

Specialness.

From as early as he can remember, Que’s mother and others in his environment mirrored to him a sense of being special because of his unique individual characteristics.

It all began with subtle messages like “They used to call me the professor because I liked to read.” Processing more of his emotions about this matter, he explained, Now I think for her, she always talked about being a Black boy, being a Black man, but I feel like she also had this way of making me feel individualized. I don't know. I guess it's special in a way because she would use that word too.

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As noted in the following exchange, Que believes that this specialness was something that his mother felt instead of anything he accomplished: All right. So I think it starts with, so me and my sister were preemies. We were born really super early. She was one pound and I was two pounds and we were born and this is '85. My pediatrician actually works, my kid's pediatrician now, my old pediatrician calls us miracle babies. And so I guess I think for her, it starts with that.

And then as she just developed and cultivated us, she just also saw us thrive academically, socially. I think for her, even with me, people always described me as being a little bit different. Like when I learned to talk, people say I wouldn't shut up, right. I always love reading and learning and questioning and a lot of those things.

So I think on one end she thought a lot about it and helped me to navigate the space as a Black man. I think it's how other people would view me, especially people who weren't Black. But I think there was also a sort of you're special or unique even outside of your race and gender. And to really push yourself too. She never used those words and said it in that kind of way. But she did treat me very much like as an individual too.

Que learned that the designated label of being “special” encompassed his mother’s encouragement. She felt he should aspire to accomplish any dream his mind would allow.

Looking back on it, it felt like a mother cultivating a sense of agency in her child that went on to shape his experience of himself as powerful over his environment. This encouragement was especially important because if buffered the more ominous maternal message about his inevitable endangerment. For Que, such agentic encouragement allowed him to be curious about his external world and envision himself affecting change

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in others. Through the many conversations about his strength and the strength of his ancestors, particularly his grandfather, his mother taught him that anything was possible.

The following exchange illustrates the influence of this encouragement: Que: I guess I've noticed that as I understood kids, I wanted to go into social work just from being in my community and really seeing those differences in, like, all right, people in West County have these big houses, a lot of them had intact families and a lot of these sorts of things and they play a lot of sports. They have all those pros, it looked like they have all those prosocial supports, right? And a lot of people in my community didn't, especially some of my cousins. I was just like, “Man, if kids like him and kids from where I'm from just had some of that other stuff, things will be a little bit different.” Right. Because I did early on . . . I was able to see and really think about. Again, because I was always examining and thinking in that sort of way. Not necessarily about emotions but just in the way that the world works and cause and effect and the way that things play out.

Interviewer: Curious.

Que: It was like yeah, it was just like all right, this stuff could be different if some of these other things were in there. I was one, like wanted to be a social worker when I was a kid for some reason, right? And thinking about that cousin and some of the other people I guess overall, and I don't know if I'm repeating this point but just really has had me reflect and think back and see, like not only do these things fit in this way, but this is how I feel about it and this is why I feel this way about it.

Because I'll notice that. So like I said, I've lost a lot of people over the last decade.

And as I processed how I felt actually still figuring out how to process some of those

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and looking at how I related to those deaths or looking at how I relate and communicate to my wife and to my kids and to people at work and socially and my family. I just started to notice and really analyzed some of the ways that we communicate and express emotions and express feelings. It made me really start to have some questions about like all right, why is this?

On an unconscious level, Que’s specialness was cultivated to defend against the onslaught of endangering attacks the world would bring. Through subtle yet firm messages, she communicated that while he could expect mistreatment from others, he could also experience freedom and joy. Such mistreatment, furthermore, was the manifestation of someone else’s ignorance—not his own, and this perspective afforded him the opportunity for happiness.

Mother to Case #4: Helen At the tender age of 75, Helen remembers being a young mother telling her eldest son, then a teenager, “I’d rather shoot you in here myself than watch the police kill you.”

Endangerment for Black men was a precarious situation during the time of raising her sons in the 1960s and 70s. She saw Black men as a threatened species vulnerable to attacks from all different directions. In such an eloquent manner in a tone sounding as if she were delivering an oration to a crowd of people, she explained: There are many forms of endangerment for our Black men. First of all, by virtue of the fact that they're Black and considered suspects in so many areas. There is an assumption of guilt whenever there is an incident where Black men are present. I feel as though they're the first ones looked at.

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There is the endangerment of society not allowing them to progress freely in this world. There is the danger . . . of assumptions that they will not be as prepared and as accepted as the majority race. Then there's the danger of being set upon by other Blacks. I have found that Black men who are educated, who are prepared, who speak the language well present a danger to other Blacks who don't fall into that category.

We have a double edge. We have to be cautious with the majority and cautious with ourselves. So all of those endangers for me.

Now a retired school principal, Helen is pleased with the family she cultivated with her sons over the past 60 years. Her eldest son, Cameron, is married with two children and works as a data processor for the military. Caleb, the subject of this case, is married without children. He works as a manager of therapists in a large public school district in St. Louis. Helen lives alone in a condominium in the heart of St. Louis and is struggling with health problems. Both sons worry immensely about her, and for this reason, call daily and visit whenever they believe she needs help. “They take care of me,” Helen jokingly explained despite her efforts at times to dissuade them. Life appears comfortable and quiet, but as she explored over the course of the interviews, her life has not always felt this way. The topic of endangerment was personal to her.

Helen was just a baby when her parents migrated from Arkansas to St. Louis. Her uncle initiated the family move years before, convincing her father of his decision. She explained, “It was during the Great Migration from the south to the north, and east, well east and west coast. He [my father] was part of that migration.” Around that time, Helen’s paternal grandfather died and her father brought his mother and other family members to St. Louis.

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A serious and committed man, Helen’s father, Mr. Franklin, lived a structured life. He was diligent in his caretaking, offering Helen the very best. As an only child, she always experienced him in protective and nurturing ways. They shared a close relationship in which Mr. Franklin taught Helen skills meant to cultivate leadership and survival skills.

“I grew up in a male dominated home,” she announced and went on to share about her father, When I think back, and this is where the emotional part comes in, when I think back to my dad, he was a strong man. Not a highly educated man, he was a laborer, but he was an honest man. [He taught me that] a man carries his own weight, that a man takes care of his family, that a man is honest.

Mr. Franklin, having grown up in the Jim Crow South, was a man of great pride but despised the injustice experienced in Arkansas. Helen remembers as a child going back to their home town for vacations with her mother but seeing her father refuse to go. She explained, “My father never went back with us until I was 12-years-old.” When he returned to his birthplace, Helen began noticing about her father a disposition she had never before seen. “To see him as we were the first time we drove down, and to hear him say, “Gail, when we get down here, you say yes ma'am, no ma'am, yes sir, no sir to everybody or to the White people who talk to you.” Her once confident father known for protection and independence became someone worried about adhering to social norms of a particular past.

In the face of this different side to her father, Helen remembers feeling confused as a child. “When I saw him in that interaction, it was hurtful and somewhat confusing because it was not the demeanor that he demonstrated here,” she laments. She would later

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come to understand about those moments the implicit message about her safety in certain spaces. He communicated a warning about White people and how her behavior had consequences if used inappropriately. She regularly saw him interact with White world but only in transactional ways, explaining, “My father developed relationships with many Caucasians, but he was the wheeler and dealer, and he taught me a lot about business.”

Such warnings required a level of anxiety that would forever shape Helen’s understanding of herself in relation to the world around her.

Reflecting back on childhood, Helen remembers the segregated St. Louis in which she lived being a special place. Lamenting about this experience, she explains, Interesting, to say the least, as long as I was in all Black environment, everything was wonderful. Our community was composed of people of every strata. We had doctors and lawyers and laborers all in the same block. And everyone knew and cared for one another.

Before the desegregation of schools, she was honored in her all-Black environment.

Bright and confident, learning came easy for Helen. This would all change; however, when her principal nominated her to attend an all-White school with only two other Black children. She was 10 years old at the time and felt that her world changed.

When Helen arrived at Ashland School, she was overwhelmed by the difference from her home environment. The administrators were White; the other students were White; the secretaries in the office were White. She felt like an anomaly overwhelmed by unfamiliar stimuli. Worst yet, Helen noticed things about the way she was treated. Her questions were not answered in the way she saw others’ being answered; her requests for help seemed ignored; the smiles that the other students got from the teacher seemed much

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brighter than when she looked into Helen’s face. “I wasn’t being taught on the same level,” she exclaimed, and recognizing this difference as a child was a complex phenomenon to accept.

Helen explained internalizing her feelings of anger toward the new educational environment, speculating that there must have been something wrong with her. She went on to share about that time, That went on for two years. And I shut down. I remember sitting on the wall at Ashland School, and I just looked at the playground full of children, and I said to myself, “I don't need any of these people. I'm just going to come to school, and go home, and do what I need to do.” I stopped working. Stopped turning in any homework whatsoever. My mother came to the school to visit. And she knew me better than I thought. And she was most upset. She worked with me, and I got back on track in terms of doing the work and turning it in. But my feelings were not the same.

The next year, the following year, I wound up with a homeroom instructor again, and this is that endangerment part. If there was a problem, it was always the Black child that was blamed. And we had a situation where he took a radio from me and would not listen when I tried to explain to him what happened. When my mother observed his attitude, she left school that day and went back to my sending school and told my principal, “I'm pulling Helen out of that school because they don't want her there.” To a 12-year-old child, that felt like failure. And I went back to my school.

At that time, I accepted mediocracy because I felt like it really didn't make a difference. Now, again, mind you, I'm putting myself in therapy with my 12-year-old self. It wasn't until I was a senior in high school and I passed by the honor's society,

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and I looked at the names and wondered to myself, “Why are you not there?” And my mind went back over the experiences that I had that led me to a point where I no longer excelled. I mean, I was angry because I was a child. You don't do that to children . . . but I decided after a few sessions with me that not ever in life would anybody put anything besides my name that was not excellent.

After completing her high school diploma, Helen followed the path of many young women of the time and married. It was her freshman year of college when she met the man who would eventually father her two sons. He was a good man, a military man, who shared her values of raising an educated and close family. That year, she bore a son, Cameron, and stayed home to raise him. She returned to school that following year before having her second son, Caleb, and similar to before, stayed home a year to raise him.

Soon thereafter, Helen graduated, became a teacher, administrator, and eventually a principal. Life seemed to be perfect.

Reflecting on her first thoughts of having Cameron, Helen explained feeling rather conflicted. A month after her son’s birth, her father died. Amazingly distraught with grief, she buried her father that year, reminiscing about what he taught her about manhood. He was the source of her strength and his life embodied the characteristics she desired for her sons. “With my first son. The joy of having a boy. A fear I had. My father had died. I had cousins. I didn't have any brothers. He had a good dad at that time,” she explained.

Helen feels that regardless of gender, raising children is the same until around the age of 7. Until that time, she explained mothers teach the basics of character, such as grooming, empathy, respect. At the age of 7 or 8; however, she remembers the

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psychology of her sons changing and their need for certain emotional resources increased. She explained in detail, They needed to start making choices and decisions that were good for them. They needed to learn to stand on their own two feet and not to be a follower. They needed to know the rules of home rather than the rules of the street.

Around Caleb’s 4th birthday, his father suffered a mental breakdown and began displaying erratic, unsafe behaviors. Explaining the causes of this condition, Helen explained, I can't begin to tell you what caused it. I do know, and it wasn't his first mental breakdown. He had one prior to our getting married. I simply didn't understand the full ramifications. And mental health was not where it is at this point. Society did not understand. They just threw a bunch of medication at the situation and let it go. So, I can't say what caused it. I don't know. I do know that he did not take his medication for a number of reasons that I simply, a lot of them I just learned recently. The impact of taking psychotropic meds. I can't say. But it definitely had a dynamic effect on my sons.

Reflecting on the impact caused to her sons, Helen remembers Caleb questioning the stability of the family during these times. “You all aren’t married . . . because if you were, you wouldn’t argue like that,” she says he would say. It was apparent that Caleb had not experienced the supportive father that his older brother enjoyed. Cameron reacted by assuming a role of helper and surrogate father figure to Caleb, while Mr. Franklin tried compensating by catering to Caleb’s needs. While Helen understood these

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responses, she worried about its effect on Caleb. Recalling one of these moments, she expressed, And I didn't realize that until one day Caleb asked Cameron, “Give me a quarter.” And Cameron reached in his pocket and gave him money. And I said, “Why are you giving him money when his mother is sitting right here?” He said, “Well, he's a child and I think children should have what they want.” But he was, again, caring for his brother.

While Caleb may have lacked the security of knowing his father as well as his brother, Helen made conscious efforts to involve positive Black male figures in her sons’ lives.

This involvement encompassed a wide variety of men, including male relatives, family friends, and men in the neighborhood. It was nothing for Helen to facilitate a mentoring activity between her son and these men in subtle, yet strategic ways. She explained about these times, I had two older gentleman who lived in my neighborhood, and I told Cameron and Caleb. I said, “You see Mr. Randall, Mr. Jackson outside working on their car. Just go stand and be sure, see if they need you to hand them a screwdriver or something,” because I knew that there was going to be lessons that they would learn. Because that's just what we do.

She entrusted others to help in guiding her sons, such as a teenager who lived in the neighborhood. He was several years older than Cameron and had lost his father around that time. Not only did Helen feel that he could inspire her son, she felt that she could help this young man in the process by being a community support. “I embraced those men as positive role models for my sons,” she expressed.

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Helen always stayed cautious of how her sons were impacted by life circumstances and worked hard to interpret for them the meaning of these experiences. On one occasion, she remembers Caleb reflecting on how he was disadvantaged because of his father’s absence in his life. With a tone of grave seriousness, she explained telling him: You're never to say that to me again because that is a ploy that the majority race wants you to believe, that you're not going to be anything because your father's not in the home, and that is not so.” And I listed off for him the men that you have that you can go to.

She felt an obligation to provide her sons with a sense of agency, the belief in their ability to affect change in their lives. This teaching extended far beyond conversations into real world scenarios involving their actions, especially civil rights activism. She involved them as youth in non-violent resistance trainings led by Dick Gregory and other activists. Recalling the impact of these moments, Helen associated to the following story: When Caleb was at Lindbergh, and he was, it was an urban sociology class that he was taking, and you know, and I know as well, in sociology classes, the concepts taught about African Americans, about underserved communities is not always accurate. As a matter of fact, it's generally inaccurate. This one course that he was taking, and they started to talk about those programs that would be beneficial in north St. Louis areas, and Caleb stopped them and said, “No, that's not true.” And he went on to talk about his actual experiences because he worked in the area. And one of the students asked, “How did you know all of that?” They had started talking about nonviolent resistance. And Caleb said, “Because my mother took us to training. We learned how to resist without violence.” “Why did your mother take you?” He said,

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“Because we needed to know.”

Helen recalls having had countless talks with her sons about their endangerment and well-being. These warnings were a part of everyday life, especially considering their daily involvement in the desegregation program. Both Caleb and Cameron attended a nearly all White school, and similar to Helen’s school experiences, she saw her sons mistreated by White authority figures. She remembers it being subtle at times, but because of her training in education, she had to educate her sons to its presence.

Remembering one of many safety talks, she recalls interpreting a situation for Caleb, He ran into difficulty because of one of his teachers. He turned in an assignment and she didn't grade it. I was so angry. I was angry. Because here I was again. I said, “What I want you to do.” I said, “I'm going to reformat this paper.” I said, “Caleb, you need to understand there are teachers there who are . . . who are going to be upset because you don't act like the kid that gets off the yellow bus. Because you speak the language, because you are responsible and do what you're supposed to do, because you have a computer at home, because your mother is an administrator in the schools.

They're going to be upset about it.” “Well, I don't think that's . . .” I said, “Okay. I'm just telling you now.”

As Caleb got older, the content of the talks shifted to include safety in interpersonal spaces. He, as Helen saw him, was always an accepting person less inclined to see himself as different. On one occasion during his 11 th grade year, a White female classmate invited him to her house to study. Before truly processing the situation, Helen found herself relaying the following message of caution: “Make sure she's told her father

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that you're Black. If you want to go study.” She went on to explain to him how young White girls act and how his mere presence would be interpreted by others.

By young adulthood, Helen saw that her work with Caleb had crystalized into an informed appreciation for the realities of the world. He began to implement the values instilled in very touching and heartfelt ways. She reflected on one of these moments that nearly brought her to tears, explaining, In his senior year, he called one day. He called the school. I wasn't in the office, and he left a message. “Tell mama everything is all right.” So okay. I turned on the television in one of the classrooms. There had been a riot at his school. When the buses pulled up, this sea of White faces was in the street because there had been a fight between two middle school kids, a little White girl and a little Black girl. And it was such a powerful flashback, and when Caleb came in, all of those emotions flooded . . . he said, “When the bus pulled up, I told the kids,” he said, “I wouldn't let them off the bus and told them they're going to be news cameras out here. When you get off this bus, do not speak, walk into the building because the image that the public will see will be us coming to get an education while these folks are in the street acting a fool.” I've never been more proud in my life because all of those things that you think your children are not listening to, they hear.

Helen taught her sons that to be responsible men, they would constantly need to challenge stereotypes and present positive images of themselves. Caleb’s actions here illuminated for her his ability to predict and plan during stressful and overwhelming times. This skill meant his survival.

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Looking back over Caleb and Cameron’s life, Helen is a proud mother. She feels that she has done what a mother is purposed to do: to raise her children in a way that ensures their protection. Cameron, now a father of two, continues to provide strength to the family while looking after his younger brother. Helen worried initially about his decision to enter the military, especially considering the mental health problems his father sustained. “It was his decision, ultimately,” she recounted. Caleb chose to attend a historically Black college two hours from St. Louis after high school, electing to study business. “I knew that he wasn’t built for business, Caleb is a humanities type of guy,” she laughingly replied. As she suspected, he would eventually find social work and devote a life to helping children in schools. Reflecting on a moment with them both, Helen explains, Let me share something with you. This happened about three years ago. And I had a cold, one of those nasty ugly colds. Just ugh. And I'd been in bed a couple of days. As usual, Caleb called me early one morning. And I talked to him, I went back to sleep.

And he called me a little later. And he says something about when I talked to you this morning, I said, “You talked to me this morning?” He said, “Yes ma'am.” I said, “I didn't know that.” I went back to sleep. Well, an hour, an hour and a half later, Cameron calls. He says, “I just want you to know I'm coming in.” I said, “Okay.”

Now, Cameron works at Scott Air Force Base. Caleb had called him because Caleb had meetings to attend. But Caleb had called Cameron and told him, “You go see about mama because she's not sounding right.” That's the kind of, and Cameron didn't, he didn't question him at all. I'm on my way. And he came in with his little bag of soup and crackers and Sprite. That's the kind of care. [Thinking about it], it's a source

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of pride. It's very comforting. And yet, because I'm their mother, I feel that I should still be taking care of them. I had to learn to step back.

Case #4: Caleb Sitting with Caleb, one gets the impression of someone of importance. Imagine the gentleness of television character Heathcliff Huxtable of the Cosby Show, the wisdom of Mike Brady from the Brady Bunch, and the strength heard in James Earls Jones’ voice— these personalities merged together equal the paternal feeling Caleb induces. Even in his appearance, there is a sharp and meticulous detail—a corduroy jacket concealing a soft wool blended turtleneck sweater in a serious dark color. Standing at nearly 6’2 feet, mountainous shoulders, with a warm nearly jet black complexion, he commands attention. Facial hair precisely trimmed with hints of gray sprinkled throughout revealing an aging youthfulness steeped in wisdom. To hear him speak, there is a seriousness to his rich and deep melodic baritone voice. His tone and dialect encapsulates the listener as if he were long passionate stokes on the strings of a cello; the music tells a story. Simply put, Caleb is a man of purpose.

At 51 years of age, Caleb resides in St. Louis with his wife. It is a relatively new marriage that he is exploring and eager to experience. He works as a behavioral therapist lead for a special education office in the St. Louis Public School system while maintaining a small private practice and co-pastoring a church. He is a self-identified and proclaimed family man who expends great amounts of time looking after those members in his family circle, namely his mother and brother. As his he and his wife prepare for the future, they are considering buying a house and possibly growing a family through

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adoption. “I’ve achieved a lot in my life that I’m happy about, but there are still some things that I wish I had,” he explained.

As Caleb thought back over his life during the two interviews, he remembers most the themes of family and determination. He is the baby of the bunch, and it always felt like his mother and older brother babied him to a fault. This began at birth because of congenital medical condition, atrial septum defect, or a hole in his heart, leaving him as a sickly baby. As this condition stunted his physical development, it would be years later before his growth would reach a normal level after the hole closed. Caleb believes that because of this condition; however, he grew close to his mother in a way that was not possible for his older problem. She worried about him and he remembers her asking the question at times, “Will Caleb be able to live because of this illness?”

Caleb’s father was married to his mother until Caleb’s 5 th birthday, at which point they separated. He was a paranoid schizophrenic and struggled to manage the psychotic episodes prevalent from not taking his medication. Fearful of how this behavior would impact her sons, his mother chose to leave and took her children to her mother’s home.

Caleb never knew his father as well as his brother and he remembers his mother trying to make up for this experience. It was not long thereafter that his brother, Cameron, began worrying about Caleb and assuming a surrogate father role.

Black male figures were sparse in Caleb’s early life with the exception of men from the church. Much of what he remembers about positive Black male figures came from stories his mother told him about his maternal grandfather, uncles, and other extended relatives. It was not until his mother became involved with who he thinks of as his stepfather, Chris, that he felt connected to a supportive man. All other male figures

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existed through stories and Caleb’s imagination of what and who these men would be in his life.

Because Caleb’s mother worked as a teacher, school was always a serious matter. She emphasized him doing his absolute best because people in the world would continuously doubt his abilities. During his elementary years, he attended city schools close to home where his mother taught in the same district. People knew him as Fiona’s boy and took careful notice of his activities and progress. He was diagnosed with dyslexia around that time and remembers struggling to read. His parent’s separation played a role in these challenges, and as a result, his involved him in counseling. “She was named Dr. Marie Gunter and I think it was a psychodynamic therapy,” Caleb recalls.

Socially, Caleb always felt awkward, especially around peers. Looking back on his life, people struggled to understand the many sides to him. On one level, he was an astute and well-spoken young man trained to respect authority. On the other hand, he was a kid who wanted to have fun and be himself. His peers, especially Black males, struggled to understand these multiple identities Caleb had to assume, and they eventually labeled him effeminate. To this day, Caleb still wrestles with being masculine enough for others and constantly compares himself to other men. He believes that much of his self-doubt is a manifestation of these experiences.

By high school, Caleb’s mother enrolled him in the desegregation program and he was assigned to attend the Lindbergh School District some 50 miles from their city home.

This experience brought many joys and moments of sadness. He was able to connect to others who appreciated his intrinsic value, but at the same time, he felt targeted by others because of his skin color. Much of this targeting came from teachers and administrators

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who refused to believe in his abilities. They seemed caught off guard to learn that he was just as prepared as his White counterparts.

Upon graduating and being heavily influenced by his mother, Caleb decided to attend a historically Black university, Lincoln, to study business. It was a decision that he would forever cherish thinking back to the many experiences in which he felt valued as a Black man. He remembers a classmate, who was Nigerian, commenting on his giftedness and the thrill of pride that he experienced. “It made me feel good about myself,” he recollected. Graduating and looking for work, however, would limit these positive feelings, as Caleb struggled to find work. Jobs that he did secure were beneath his grade and evoked feelings of incompetence and rejection. It was not until deciding to return to school to study social work that he would find promise in his career. Attending the prestigious George Warren Brown School at Washington University, Caleb earned his Master of Social Work degree and immediately began working.

Looking back over his professional life, Caleb has found joy in many of the jobs he has served. From drug and alcohol treatment centers to professional training, he has worked to give a voice to children and adolescents from culturally diverse backgrounds.

Now, as the supervisor of a team of therapists for students with IEPs, he believes that his next step is administration, possibly a principal position.

It was seven years ago at church when he met the woman he went on to marry.

Describing his initial interests, he explains, “She was attractive and a Christian, that was pretty much it.” As an accountant for the postal service, she shared many of his same values about wanting to raise a family. She at 50 and Caleb at 51, they knew that time is ticking.

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Black male endangerment.

Endangerment comes in many forms for Caleb; it is a varied and multidirectional experience. Coming first to mind, Caleb reflects on racialized experiences as a Black male child seeing situations in which Black people felt powerless at the hands of Whites.

Remembering back to times as a young child with his family, he felt the sense of harm that could be done because of the color of his skin. From another perspective, he saw potential harm coming from peers with the same skin color—remembering their critiques: you’re not Black enough, not masculine enough, not hip enough. He felt wedged into spaces far too narrow for him to feel whole. The following statement explains these feelings in detail: That sense of endangerment . . . and I think that endangerment means a number of different things. When you are younger you're just trying to grow up and survive. You want to be a Black male who can get along with a Black male. You don't want to become a part of the psycho Black men who are incarcerated. You don't want to become another statistic. You don't want to be shot in the head. You don't want to be on drugs. You want to come out of the community on top.

In that sense there was always this possibility of danger from being a Black male.

You were a threat. And if you were intelligent you were a threat. And if you were big you were a threat. And if you dated their daughters you were a threat. And if they didn't like you, you were a threat. And if you moved into their communities you were a threat. There's always a sense of you are a threat because you are a Black male.

Such feelings bring to light the intersection of identities that occurs on the basis of race and gender. As elaborated by Hunter and Davis (1992) as well as Franklin (1986,

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1987), movement between these identities result in conflicts not easily reconciled.

Resulting is the sense of incompetence and powerlessness Chestang (1972) posits when the Black male subject finds himself powerless to affect change and influence his environment. From his mother, he received messages about being a man, and these went on to form and shape internal understandings about himself. From his cultural surroundings, he received messages about this same manhood akin to the cultural introjects about which Vaughans (2016) theorized. As these two systems intermix, Caleb is left struggling to reconcile many disparate feeling states.

It should bracketed that Caleb and I have been colleagues working in the same professional community for the last ten years. He, like myself, is one of the few Black psychodynamically oriented clinicians in the St. Louis metropolitan area and someone known for a passionate style of working with people of color. It is because of this history that I found this interview to be so intriguing as well as disturbing. As the following categories of meaning will illustrate, Caleb’s belief in himself has wavered throughout his life and left him doubting his many abilities that seem abundantly visible. Prior to these interviews, this lack of confidence was not the way in which I ever experienced or expected to experience this amazing clinician. At times, it felt as though Caleb led me into an inner world, highlighting dark and disparaging parts of himself unfamiliar to others. As we intimately walked through this land of objects, the experience felt dark, bizarre, and somewhat familiar to me as a man who personally knew the challenges of intersecting identities. As a colleague and friend, the inclination was to nurture what felt like hurt and deprived split-off parts of this participant.

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Categories of meaning.

Five categories of meaning regarding messages of endangerment were evident from Caleb’s interviews, including (a) internal representations of masculinity and manhood; (b) messages of complex contradictions; (c) an ominous outside world; (d) the danger of my anger, and (e) the costs of the False Self.

Internal representations of masculinity and manhood.

Caleb related early in the first interview that examples of positive Black males were sparse in his life; in fact, they were limited to the man his mother dated and men at church. This scarcity of physical experiences; however, did not dissuade an imagination of men and masculinity. Through countless stories and narratives of her own childhood, he heard his mother create a gallery of male relationships that came to populate his internal world of male influences. Among the most often talked about figure was his maternal grandfather who died three years before his birth. Caleb grew to know intimately his life dating back the 1930s, and most important, the work ethic and determination that he possessed. Responding to my question about specific stories he was told, he explained, Well, okay, so the Franklin brothers, who my grandfather was Freddie Franklin, his brother Frank Franklin and his brother Frost Franklin. They were the three Franklin brothers. They had what they called the service cars. They had three of those long black service cars. And they had also owned a filling station. The Franklin brothers had these cars, and they would transport back and forth to the community. You went to what is now Martin Luther King (Boulevard) used to be called Easton. My

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grandparents, they had their own businesses and at some point in time they all operated their own service cars and they kept them very clean. So I learned about their business and where their filling station used to be, but that was where your father owned that . . . he had service cars. And you could see . . . my mother would tell me how the block would be lined with their cars when they were growing up because these were the typed of jobs that they had. I learned about how they cared for their families and how they sent my cousin, Douglas, who was Frank’s son, he was one of the first in the family to go to Saint Louis University.

Similar to that found by Stevenson, Cameron, and Herrero-Taylor (1998), Caleb heard racial socialization messages designed to promote a sense of familial and cultural pride, which left him internalizing the importance of hard work and entrepreneurship. Also introjected, however, were messages about his role as a Black man and the expectations to reach the success achieved by his ancestors. He explained about these internal filings, “So I didn't know him [grandfather] physically, I had these images of who he was and these images of what a man was supposed to be like.” Such expectations formed an internal commentating voice, an internal mother, that forever dictates Caleb’s thoughts about himself, especially his sense of masculinity.

Caleb was a young child of 5 years when his parents separated, and thus, he never got to know his father as personally as did his brother. He remembers his mother telling stories about his father’s successes before his mental break, such as being an Airman in the Air Force, that left Caleb to imagine a close relationship with this man. He held secret envy toward his brother for having had physical time with their father and felt emotionally challenged by these feelings for quite some time. Until high school;

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however, these stories could not distract from the reality of a mental illness that overtook his father’s life. After college, Caleb never saw his father again and fantasizes that he died as a result of his mental condition. It is a somber reality, as this man lacked the agency to affect change in his life and compete in the way Caleb learned was masculine.

His father, on many levels, served as the antithesis of manhood.

As Caleb grew into adolescence, he heard messages from the larger community about Black masculinity that often conflicted with the messages taught by his mother. He remembers learning from peers that Black boys had to perform masculinity in the way Leary (2000) describes. There were the cultural expectations of having to know how to fight, how to assert one’s self in times of conflict, and how to show interests in physical demonstrations of strength. Such prescriptions left Caleb feeling inept and constantly questioning his possession of manhood, and it is this internal representation of masculinity by which he most often judges and punishes himself. Lacking flexibility, these internal beliefs cause a narrowed view of the self that are limited to performances.

Masculinity, in this way, requires the constant projection of attitudes Caleb feels to be ego dystonic.

Messages of complex contradictions.

Reflecting on his sense of endangerment, Caleb remembers having multiple feelings regarding appropriate ways of understanding and being in the world. If around family, he could more than likely be himself, relaxing into his natural love for the arts and humanities. White peers or authority figures necessitated a formal presentation and one in which Caleb could use to demonstrate his intellect and swift ways of communicating that

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were mastered over time. Black male peers; however, were more difficult to navigate, as they struggled to understand or appreciate the other aspects of what came to be very natural parts of Caleb’s personality. He remembers being either too White acting, too effeminate, not tough enough, or too difficult to understand—in other words, not sufficient. Avoiding these dilemmas required a code switching that prioritized certain abilities.

Caleb learned early on from his mother that White people could not be trusted, but at the same time, their ways of relating had to be adopted to ensure his ability to exist in a world dominated by western values. There was a learned paranoia similar to that described by Grier and Cobbs (1968) that she encouraged. Speaking to this process, he associated to the following memory: Conversations that we would have often. And I used to think my mother was overprotective. I used to think my mother was, to be very honest with you, I used to think she was racist. I used to think . . . she would tell me about experiences that she had growing up. And so she had an understanding of the world that I did not. So, when my mother was explaining a lot of things to me . . . we would have conversations, oh mom, nobody's thinking about that, nobody's . . . I'm very naïve. I'm taking people at face value that this is what they think about people in general. And it wasn't until I started to have some situations where we would talk about it and I'm like, so this is what so and so said and a teacher had made a comment . . . And we would talk about it in ways. And she said, I'm going to tell you what . . . she said, you tell me what they said. I'm going to tell you what they meant.

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These discussions cultivated a sense of double consciousness that would forever guide Caleb’s way of seeing others. While it provided a way to assess and scan for threats, it worked to invalidate his more genuine feelings about others’ intentions. When he found himself naturally growing passionate toward someone, there emerged a background thought and warning of their hidden motives. Consequently, Caleb’s ability to trust his feelings in relation to others was compromised for the sake of safety. Inevitably, he was left questioning himself when strong feelings arose. He remembers this confusion well when reflecting on a high school experience in which a White female peer invited him to her home to study. Happy about the opportunity and excited to go until hearing his mother question him, “Does her father know you’re Black.” From that moment onwards, Caleb began thinking about his friendship to the young lady differently. Anxiety became a necessary and dominant emotion for navigating interracial relationships.

Caleb learned that his feelings were subordinate to the realities of the world, which required that he suspend organic emotions for the expectations of the future. Novick and Novick’s (2006) closed system of self-regulation best describes this process in which the individual attempts to maintain control of the unknown by unconsciously predicting and manipulating the future. To maintain a sense of safety against this terrifying future, this system “avoids reality and is characterized by sadomasochism, omnipotence, and stasis” (p. 7). Attempts at controlling by manipulation the outcome of experiences becomes the goal, and a form of a False Self develops.

Caleb heard his mother emphasize the need for his participation and learning from the White world as a sign of adaptability, survival, and success. Remembering one of their many conversations on the topic, he recalls her feelings about his schooling:

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The discussion that my mother had with me was that I could either go to a White high school and then a Black college or that I could go to a Black high school and then a White college. Because she wanted me to have an understanding of what it is to be around someone other than myself, predominantly a White culture. Because, before then I had not been. The schools I went to were pretty much 100% Black in terms of population. She wanted me to know what it was like to work with, live in a community that was not like myself, so that when I got out into the workforce I would know how to conduct myself.

Such messages shaped a unique relationship to western values that continue to play out in Caleb’s daily life, and his mastery of the English language is one such example.

Thinking back to his first years at the desegregation high school program, he remembers how important speaking was to him feeling accepted. Articulating himself was an implicit message to the world about his value illustrative of his hard and determined work. Also implied in these verbalizations was a lack of physical threat that buffered how people were affected by his physical appearance. Being physically large and dark skinned, Caleb felt the unconscious need to distinguish himself from the threat and badness associated to Blackness. Even today, David’s (1996) conceptualization of Fanon’s ideas about Blackness hold true in Caleb’s unconscious mind: “[B]lack is an animal, the [B]lack is full of rhythm but short on intelligence, the [B]lack is bad, the [B]lack is the devil, and the [B]lack is, of course, sexual” (p. 216).

Caleb rarely remembers his mother talking about how to relate to Black people, rather, it was more of an implicit understanding. He always felt different than his Black peers— he was not the thug or the athlete, or the cool guy who knew how to talk his way out of

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trouble. He constantly found himself wondering about these differences, “Was it his love for the arts, his way of talking, or was he too feminine.” Code switching began early as a way to manage these anxieties. He explains, I remember we were out one day, my mother, brother and myself, and I saw someone I knew and my behavior instantly changed. I mean, my walk, my gait, my talk shifted and my mother was like, “What just happened to you . . . who did you become,” and she just laughed.

Even with these changes to his behavior, Caleb felt that he could never be enough of what people needed him to be. It was a constant demand to be something that never felt quite authentic, as he relates here: “You always had to prove yourself . . . you always had to be able to fight . . . you always had to…but yet when you got into certain communities you always had to be able to speak well.” The Blackness his mother advocated rarely met the approval standards of his peers and it became a never ending battle to integrate these multiple identities.

At times, Caleb remembers his mother encouraging him to see beyond color and focus on the quality of someone’s character, often sending more of a confusing message about what to expect from others. As he understood it, she had many experiences after moving from a segregated community to a more racially mixed area that taught her to appreciate the many people from all backgrounds who sought to help her succeed. These messages came as Caleb became a young adult entering the workforce who was initially disappointed by multiple rounds of rejections. In this way, messages of endangerment became conditional and adaptive; they could be used to protect from the expected mistreatment of White people and they could be used to engender feelings of specialness,

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such as “because I am Black, people may more readily see and respond to my needs.”

Overall, these messages became tools of a closed system way of regulating anxiety and the intolerable nature of uncertainty.

The ominous outside world.

As noted many times above, Caleb got the message from his mother, and many others, that the outside world was a dangerous place that would require readiness and preparedness on multiple levels. These communications were both explicit and implicit, and made more salient by lived experiences that reinforced certain beliefs about others.

Reflecting on a moment from childhood, he associated to the following memory: I remember talking about going to certain communities growing up, if you travel to this area you had to watch because the police over here are subject to do this or do that. You knew what areas those were in St. Louis. I'll never forget I was a child and there was a corner store called David Lee Market on this corner of Euclid and Aubert.

It was family owned and I remember this market, the owner . . . I was going down to the store with my grandmother, and I remember the first time I ever felt like my grandmother couldn't protect me if something happened. I was walking down and this man was asking me a question, there was some fruit that they had on top of it. Maybe peaches or some kind of fruit and these were the ones they were kind of old and so they were at a discounted rate right at the register. I remember he asked me, there was one that had a hole in it, he said, did you put a hole in that peach. And I looked at him and said, no. And I remember the stand, the little stick that kind of separates the food,

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he picked up the stick and he held it over me like he was going to do something. In his mind he may have been playing with me, in my mind I had the fear that he might hit me. My grandmother didn't respond or didn't say anything. I just walked home with her, but I'll never forget feeling like this man could do something and there would be nobody there to protect me.

As noted in Chapter II, Sullivan (1953) saw the development of the personality as a reflection of interpersonal experiences, and what ultimately resides in a person’s mind is the result of these experiences. Caleb took in from this and similar experiences a question about his physical safety that would come to forever shape his experiences of himself and others. As Sullivan theorizes, the infant develops personifications of themselves and others that populate their inner worlds, thus leading to conflicting beliefs about the self.

Caleb sees himself as both powerful and powerless, explaining more fully a mood that oscillates between pride and incompetence. Chestang’s (1972) description of the impotency brought on by feelings of powerlessness to influence one’s environment fits here.

Caleb’s mother consistently shared her views on the society’s imminent danger for her son, and often treated with humor his lack of appreciation for her viewpoints. There were constant talks about safety—what to expect from certain people, how to respond in certain situations, how to interpret the actions and behaviors of others. While not always about race, the majority of these conversations pertained to him being a Black young man in White spaces. In many ways, as alluded to above, there were double messages. Caleb heard from his mother that he possessed an intrinsic, inherited power that enabled him to attain any goal he set to accomplish. On the other hand, however, he received the

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message that his journey would be one of difficulty and strain because of his race and gender. It was a doubled-edged sword that Caleb felt—he was both powerful and powerless.

Caleb remembers a number of lived experiences of mistreatment that were later reinforced by maternal messages of endangerment, causing an intensified experience of the moment. In many ways, these messages implicitly influenced his experience of these situations, often prescribing an emotion to feel in relation to the situation. Recalling moments in the desegregation high school program, Caleb remembers how his mother’s interpretation of certain events guided his understanding of microaggressions and systemic racism. His mother being a principal at the time, she offered a unique perspective that is captured here, I had a teacher who I did an assignment for and it was one of those political science classes, and I completed the assignment, turned it in, and she gave me an F because, I forget why she gave me the F. It was either because she felt that I didn't do the assignment in the way that she thought it was supposed to be and it was one thing.

And it was either pass or fail. So I came home and I gave my mother the information and she said, “You flunked because of what?” And she said, “Okay, bring me the assignment.” She read through the assignment. She read what the teacher said. She said, “Okay, I see what they're asking for.” And I'm very wordy as you can tell, longwinded. And I've always been. But we went through the assignment. I typed it up, and at the time I had a computer at home. Which was very rare for some families, not all of our families, but I had one. We had an Apple computer and I was able to type mine out, reduce the margins, turn the project in. And then I gave it back to her, and when I

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gave it back to her the first thing she said, “Oh, okay.” She said, “Okay you got an A.” And I came back and I told my mom, I said, “Mom she said I got an A.” She said, “Did she read it?” I said, “No I just handed it to her.” She said, “No, that's not good enough. Tell her you'll read it according to the assignment and give you the grade appropriate.”

And at that point in time I kind of felt intimidated because I was talking to an adult. But she said, “She will not be dismissive.” She said, “She didn't think that you would be able to come back and have your stuff printed out on the computer the way the same kids in the class would.” So, when I went back in and said, “My mother said, we will not receive an A. You will read the assignment according to what it is and you will grade it appropriately.” And the woman's face turned red. And I was . . . I'm like, my mom was so right. And these were the kind of discussions that when I came home not only did I get the grade but it had markings and questions on it. She said, “Never accept . . .” long story short was she gave me an understanding it was not to take things at face value when people say things, particularly when they are being dismissive of you. And how certain things happen. I quickly began to understand the world and the sense of the world a little bit differently. And at that time, and still to today, St. Louis is very segregated in a sense.

In his mother’s reactions, Caleb heard messages about the world and himself. He heard that he would be the subject of dismissal based on his race and gender, and that his responsibility was to challenge these beliefs by holding people accountable. Analogous to Dalal’s (2006) assertion that the mother will not only reflect back to the child a picture of his state of mind, but also her attitudes toward him, Caleb internalized an understanding

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of the world based on his mother’s experiences growing up in a segregated St. Louis.

Rather than be a prescription of particular feelings about race and gender, these messages provided a template through which he learned to think about and understand experiences that would later come. As will be shown below, many feelings about himself are inextricably tied to this sense of responsibility maternal messages engendered.

Speaking more directly to the evils of the world, Caleb reflected on the experience noted above with his grandmother at the corner store. This and other experiences influence a sense of fear that dominates his life, and he admits to feeling a need to feel safe. His job at the school district best evidences this need, as Caleb wrestles with the decision to leave his position in pursuit of better opportunities. However, he finds himself trapped into prevailing thoughts about the future—will he succeed, will others accept him, will he be happy? As Novick and Novick (2006) note, inevitable consequences of the closed system are a lack ingenuity, authenticity, and the promise of anything greater than what one already possesses. The goal, rather, is the control of what cannot be known. Resultantly, Caleb finds himself trapped into a safe, yet uninspiring and unstimulating reality.

The danger of my anger.

Reflecting on his responses to experiences of mistreatment, Caleb rarely remembers having discussions about his anger with others. It was always assumed that these situations evoked certain feelings, but the processing of such emotions never occurred.

Rather, he remembers his mother focusing on the handling of such moments. The situation described above about the high school teacher who initially refused to read his

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revised assignment, for example, involved an emphasis on the strategy needed to hold this woman accountable. Caleb walked away from moments such as these learning that his needed to demonstrate strength and determination as a man. His feelings of anger, disappointment, and fear went largely unnoticed. In some way, the gravity of these injustices outweighed the impact they caused, leaving Caleb to feel that emotions about these situations were not acceptable.

Thinking back to his experience with his grandmother and the man at the fruit stand detailed above, Caleb explained about the processing of his feelings, Nobody communicated that to me but I also remember thinking, had anybody else outside of . . . it was like White men were . . . they could say things to Black people that you couldn't respond to or always had to respond in a very intelligent way. You had to always respond and be very careful in your words, but you could stand your ground. But you had to be very careful of how you responded. Because the next situation could be where you were harmed in some way and that instilled in me two things. One was an internalized racism about myself as well as thoughts I had about others as well.

Seeing his grandmother’s reaction to the older man and the absence of any emotion, Caleb perceived from that experience a communication about his anger—it was potentially harmful, and thus, disallowed. In fact, his emotions had to be titrated and filtered into thoughtfully crafted communications disconnected from the natural emotions invoked. As he did during the interviews, Caleb can intellectualize the moment to moment details of that day, but the sensorial experience of anger and fear were registered and encoded unconsciously. Such splitting off of feelings resulted in a number of

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intrapsychic consequences, including the rerouting of anger toward the self and a denial of Caleb’s full humanity.

On an unconscious level, Caleb finds his anger too intolerable to experience and thus redirects it to the self. While he finds reprieve in activities such as the church that aid in his sublimation of these feelings, he actively launches attacks on himself. This occurs most often in his critique of his abilities and comparisons to others, which leads to a common depressed state of mind. Consider his admission of these feelings in the following statement about himself: I was always wanting to be the image or the epitome of what you heard men did or your uncles did or this person in the community did. You always had to be this kind of a person. And even when I look at some of the areas where I am not . . . even though I'm 51, I've not obtained the things that I should have. Some of that makes me question myself and sometimes I'm very hard on myself. I'm very realistic but I'm very hard on myself.

And certain times feeling like I don't have the option to do other things career wise.

I think I could've been many other things in terms of my career. So I challenge myself, why am I shooting lower than my capability. I fight with that internally and ask myself because some of the peers I went to high school with, some of the peers that I went to college with have now obtained certain things in their lives. And I'm like, what is it about me that I didn't get these things. Even my brother, marriage-wise, family-wise, things that have happened. I think those are some of the things that I look at myself and you talk about the things that we're taught, it's the question I have for myself. And what I was supposed to be as a man or particularly a Black man.

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A deeper analysis of Caleb’s state of mind reveals an alignment with Blatt’s (2004) definition of introjective depression as opposed to that of an anaclitic origin. The former speaks to the early introjects in a person’s life, or the superego, that come to dominate the personality. It results in issues of self-definition with an overemphasis on feelings of worthlessness, guilt, failure, blame, and criticalness. Anaclitic depression, on the other hand, speaks to an inherent sense of emptiness prevailing in the mind. From this perspective, messages of endangerment from mother as well as others have been installed in the ego, causing constant questioning about one’s ability. These maternal messages designed to impart love and create safety cultivate an ever present monitor in the mind that encourages superhuman capacities while dissuades natural emotional reactions.

Partiality, or unintegrated parts containing his most basic feeling states, result and seek expression.

The costs of the false self.

As noted throughout this case, Caleb’s receipt and processing of messages regarding his safety and endangerment created a falseness in the self in which his inner spontaneity was muted. Winnicott (1960b) saw that this False Self results from accommodating and responding to environmental demands, and while much of it is an essential part of life, too much of it results in a life lived for others. The True Self, on the other hand, is created when attachment is flexible enough to allow for the child’s individuality, uniqueness, and difference to be acknowledged. Maternal messages of endangerment; however, forgo this flexibility in lieu of a mother’s more pressing and perceived need for her child’s safety.

While the mother may provide the first voice for these messages, these communications

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are strengthened by others and the community at large. Thus, Caleb’s identity became shaped by this need to accommodate his environment’s need for his own security. If he is to feel acceptable, he needs to be strong, vigilant, and emotionless regardless of precipitating situations. It is here that the tension between his full humanity or the True Self and the False Self is most evident—there are few spaces for his subjectivity to exist when attempting to avoid and/or cope with endangerment.

Living life in the False Self mode, Caleb feels that acquisitions and achievements validate his sense of self and maintain his self-esteem. When unable to succeed in these ways, he feels inept and impotent. He speaks to these processes in the following statement about his early years in the workforce: So, when I look at the community that I very much can say, sometimes it's a safety net.

Because, I remember trying to go in corporate America within business and feeling stopped at every turn. I think I'm in the career I'm supposed to be . . . But I also remember the struggle of trying to make it in that community and feeling always blocked and not good enough. That damaged me . . . I don't want to say the word “damaged” but I said it, so, evidently, I mean it. That damaged me in a way that it always made me question who I was when I showed up at the table. As our elders used to say, when I show up do I have the goods. Because you had to have growing up . . . we were always told, you have to have the goods . . . To compete. You had to have the goods to be thoughtful, to be . . . just to be considered good enough. And it doesn't matter how good others say you are it's how good you believe you are internally.

Reflecting on his need to compete and win, Caleb reflected on his pervasive tendency to compare himself to others. Even among family and his mother, he feels that he does

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not measure up to the greatness they exude—his brother achieved family success with a wife and children; his mother was further along in her career when she was his current age; his college friends seem to be better positioned in their lives than he. These constant comparisons are consequences of the False Self that remind of his unsuccessful attempts at acceptance, which reinforce the need to be better. They involve a pervasive internal superego voice that actively berates his efforts. His admission of being “too hard” on himself reflects this emotional need to maintain success that feeds his sense of self.

Under the influence of such powerful superego forces, Caleb lives life as if it were a tournament to win and the ultimate prize is the approval of others. This process creates a unique and intimate relationship to anxiety, as his emotions are most often responses to fantasies about the future. Consequently, he expends great amounts of energy planning, predicting, and preparing for the future, which reinforces the belief of the closed system of regulation: you are in control. When control is compromised by life’s unknown situations and anxiety exceeds his ability to manage, depression and a sense of hopelessness results.

At times during the interview, I heard evidence of Caleb’s True Self emerge as he spoke about his upbringing and feelings of being sheltered. The way in which he expressed it felt as though he was breaking a moral code, prefacing the statement by saying, “I haven’t told you this before, but.” He went on to lament, Sometimes I'm angry because I was so sheltered . . . Because I didn't get necessarily kicked out of the nest . . . I kind of walked out when it was easy for me. And I could blame a number of different things for that. But there was always a sense of, this is always safe. And safe because the world could be an evil place. Safe because there

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was an ominous force. Whatever that force was. And it's still there in a sense because I think even in my own thinking I don't believe every situation is racial. I've learned more about culture and I've learned more about ethnicity outside of my own community because of the environment that I've been placed in.

As Winnicott (1960b) posited, the True Self cannot emerge if the child feels responsible for being attuned to his caretaker’s needs. Secretly; however, Caleb harbors feelings about the costs of this attunement. As he asserts above about the world being an evil place, messages of endangerment have become a prison limiting his ability to safely explore himself. Even with the intention of love from these messages, he harbors a resentment of feeling trapped.

Mother to Case #5: Teresa Pointing to a picture behind my head in her living room, Teresa Irving introduced me to her four sons. As she described each one to me, she emphasized that while they all had unique personalities and narratives all their own, they shared one central theme in common; in fact, this theme rang throughout her interviews in a way that anchored my understanding of her life as a woman and a mother: they were representations of the love she and her husband constructed. She explained that a home is where family begins and ends; it creates the necessary space—a somewhat psychological space—for families to bond and trust one another. Challenging my assumptions about race and gender, this milieu provided an interesting backdrop that shaped Teresa’s feelings about endangerment of any kind during any time in history.

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Teresa is 82 years old and still recalls the joy she felt when marrying and making the decision with her husband to start a family. Her journey until that point in life had been long and intertwined with hardship, a hardship requiring her to grow up fast. Reflecting on her earliest times, she explained being born in Omaha, Nebraska to a loving father and mother who passed in childbirth when she was just 5 years old. Her father was the world in her eyes—a strong and passionate man who worked tirelessly as a tailor. Doing well for many years as a small business owner, the Great Depression eventually crippled his business and he fell into a major depression. Teresa saw her life forever change in that moment.

There were a total of five children between Teresa’s mother and father, and her father had two older children from a previous marriage. Among her siblings, she was the second oldest next to her brother, David. There was also her younger sister, Frankie, and two brothers, David and Christopher. When their mother died delivering Christopher, her father struggled to manage their care. After her grandfather and uncle tried helping, Catholic social workers came to offer care for the baby and the other children. They were taken to the Colored Children’s Orphan Home in Leavenworth, Kansas and stayed for roughly two years. Reflecting back to this time, Teresa laments, I was very, very sad about losing my mother and being separated from my brothers and sisters. It was very bad to me and to my oldest brother, but we weren't together.

They had the boys and the girls separated.

Initially scared of this new environment and overwhelmed by the changes it brought, Teresa came to appreciate what the children’s home offered. It was staffed by some of the most loving women she would ever know who emphasized order and structure. Each day

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began with a morning routine in which the children cleaned and prepared for the day.

Teresa remembers being taught beautiful songs that were sung before daily mass and then at the end of the day before bed. The children were also taught life skills, such as cooking and sewing in addition to their general school studies.

It would be two years later when Teresa’s paternal aunts and uncles in St. Louis sent for her and her older brother; the three younger children moved back to Nebraska to live with her father. Life in St. Louis proved to be another challenge, as her aunt parented in ways devoid of the nurturing to which she had been accustomed. While she knew her relatives cared for them and provided a comfortable life, Teresa felt that they were mean.

Their rules felt never ending: “Oh, you can’t go over there, you can’t court her, you can’t do this, you can’t, you can’t you can’t . . . .” On the other hand; however, she had only known compliance and coming from the orphanage, she had learned to follow orders without question. All along, however, there remained a wish in Teresa’s mind to one day be free from this life from which she had little control.

School was an absolute joy for Teresa and a place that provided relief from the rigidity at home. She found her teachers to be loving and attentive to her needs. Attending all Black schools until college, those educators emphasized Black history and heritage. “It was called Negro History back then and it was incorporated into everything we learned,” she explained. Education started with an awareness of self and the teachers modeled this confidence in numerous ways. Explaining further, she commented.

Teaching was a noble profession back then, I mean when they went to work, they dressed up. You didn’t see women wearing pants or sneakers and men wore suits, and they smelled good. When you saw them, you wanted to be a teacher.

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Self-confidence was also explicitly reinforced in messages to students. She jokingly recalled her teachers’ behaviors and expectations: I used to tell my kids, I'd tell them, I said, “I had the best teachers you could ever have.” You had to do everything right. You even had to sit straight. When you got up to walk, you had to walk straight. You couldn't bend over like that to go up and down the steps. They were standing in the hallways monitoring you. You'd come walking down, and don't look down. Oh no. Don't walk looking down. Hold your head up, look up. You're great, look up. The things that they taught us was Negro history.

Teresa remembers many teachers in high school taking a personal interest in helping her. In fact, this type of support was not uncommon, as personal tutoring and individual assistance outside of class or on the weekends was often offered. She remembers a teacher that made her sit directly next to her in class to ensure that she understood the lesson. Another teacher during her senior year emphasized her ability to master whatever she sought to learn. “You are African-American so you are special, and because of that specialness, you have to work hard,” Teresa remembers hearing from these adults.

By the time of Teresa’s 18th birthday, she was ready for independence from family. At that time, she attended a church, Metropolitan, when she met the man who would eventually come to be her husband, Frank. He was all that she had ever imagined a future husband to be—a tall, college educated, gainfully employed man of God who seemed to have great aspirations for himself. He carried himself in such serious ways, demonstrating to the world that he was of substance. He and his college fraternity brothers would visit her church and sit together. It was a sight Teresa will forever remember that impressed her at the time: young Black men dressed in suits, showing

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attention to the minister and respect to others and themselves. Associating back to this time, she recalls the following memory: They would sit there and they listened to the minister and I would ask him [Frank], “Are you really listening to the minister?” And he said, “Of course.” He said, “We listen to the minister because we have to go to lectures, and our teachers say you listen to the minister then you'll know how to listen when you come to the lecture, and you'll know how to get the important points.” I noticed they'd all just sit there, they couldn't be listening to all that. I mean, the sermons were good, but for young Black men to be sitting listening the way they were.

After a brief courtship, Frank wanted to marry immediately. He had not had the twoparent home that he always desired and wanted to create it for himself. This meant that Teresa was to be a homemaker responsible for bearing children and keeping a happy and well-cared for home. She embraced these ideas because she, too, wanted a loving family and a home that felt loved. They began the journey and soon thereafter had their first child, Frank Jr. “When I found out I was having a son, I was delighted . . . that’s what I wanted,” she recalls. Frank was even more elated, trying to buy his first child everything under the sun. It was just four short years later when their next son was born, Vincent, and then came Umar, and lastly, Elgin.

When asked about worries for her children, Teresa recalls anxieties about the usual things concerning mothers but felt these to be less related to race and more about character. “I wanted my boys to be good people,” she explained. Emphasizing her earlier point about the necessities of childhood, Teresa asserted that children need a loving home of which to feel apart. As long as that was provided, she felt little need to worry about

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their safety outside of that home. Of course unforeseen things could happen to them, but she felt that because she and Frank invested in their lives that they would make the right decisions. Much of this investment involved a continuous education. Remembering these times, she reflected on a memorable book used with her children, I don't think I've got the whole set, but we bought the African American History, a whole volume. I don't know, I think one of my sons probably has it. But we bought that early and we'd sit down every evening after we bought it, because the people who sold it to us said, “Oh, we think this is important to your family and you should sit down every day and go over this.” We went over the books with them and talked to them. I said, “You see, during slavery we couldn't get an education for African Americans or for Negros to be educated and learn how to read and write.” I said, “But we don't have that anymore. You can. To let you know, some of the people that couldn't do it after slavery, they went back to school and they finished school. They could read and write. Some of them even finished college.” And they were in those books that we were telling them about.

Teresa and her husband stressed to their children their agency—their ability to affect change in their lives—over systems that seemed impossible to master. It was an internal locus of control that guided these teachings in both implicit and explicit ways. Overtly, the children saw their father work and earn a healthy living as an educator who eventually became a principal. Their mother awaited their arrival from school every weekday with a fresh cooked meal on the stove that felt designed just for them. Because their school environments lacked the passion she felt it needed, Teresa felt it important

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for her children to learn from their parents. Reflecting on the importance of modeling, she expressed the following: People feel like an education is something you go out and get, but education starts when the child comes and that child sees you sweeping a floor. That child sees you shoveling the snow. All of our kids saw their father and saw me doing work, and they wanted to do it. We never said, “No, you can't do that, you don't want to get your hands dirty.” No, we never said that.

Teresa remembers constantly reminding her boys of the inherent gifts with which they were blessed. As such, they were responsible for utilizing those talents for selfpreservation. Regardless of color or race, these gifts were inherent to all humankind.

Concerning their safety, she worried at times but knew they were being prepared for life’s expected lessons. “We knew that our children were loved and that we taught them right from wrong . . . so there was really no reason to worry about their safety,” she explained. Her main concern was unrelated to race, but their ability to take care of themselves. Life for Teresa was about the ability to believe in oneself and demonstrate such beliefs through hard work, determination, and love for family. These goals were not about being Black or White but rather about humanity. From this perspective, endangerment occurred in the absence of these lessons and beliefs in one’s abilities.

Reflecting on her children as young boys, Teresa remembers their house never being a quiet environment. Music played a huge role in all their lives, as both Frank Jr. and Vincent played the piano. Umar, the subject of this case, was much more physically active than his older brothers and this energy attracted a special bond with his father.

“They would wrestle and roughhouse all the time,” Teresa jokingly commented. Umar

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was also the child least likely to worry about perfection in his performance. When it came to school, for example, he gave the least amount of effort required of any of his brothers and most often commented about his mother’s worries being unnecessary. “Mom, you worry too much about school, it’s not that serious,” she remembers him exclaiming. By adolescence, he was girl crazy like many boys but always remained respectful and polite.

Teresa and Frank regularly heard from others about their son’s stellar behaviors.

As her children became young adults, life took a downward turn that forever devastated the Irving household. Midway through the first interview, Teresa’s affect changed as she explained about her second oldest son’s death at the tender age of 28. “He just got sick with something . . . some type of illness . . . nobody knew what it was at the time . . . Rock Hudson had it and all these other people,” she explained. The family would later learn that it was a virus quickly attacking Vincent’s immune system, and before anyone had time to prepare, he was gravely sick. While Umar and Elgin helped at times, it was Frank Jr that stepped forward to provide the essential care needed. In desperate efforts to save her son, Teresa vividly recalls her behavior, I kept doing things. The doctor says, “Mrs. Irving, you can't do anything. It's deadly.”

And I kept trying, trying, saying, “Well, what's he talking about? It's not deadly.” I mean, to the point God is . . . I'm very religious, not religious but I mean I believe in God and I believe that . . . but nothing helped. I think that helped us. The other thing that we found out, that I didn't really know, but I knew that it was going to have a real bad effect on our family.

On a sad Tuesday morning in Frank Jr’s old room, he died in Teresa’s arms. It would be much later that the family would learn that AIDS took Vincent’s life.

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Of all the nurturing and love Teresa felt she provided to her family her biggest regret was not getting support to help understand Vincent’s life. Frank had been resistant to accepting his son’s sexuality. Not long after Vincent’s death, his older brother, Frank Jr, came out as gay. Teresa still remembers her husband complaining that not only did he have one son that was “that way” but two. Following the funeral, she tried seeking out support groups and while Frank attended a few, she was the person regularly attending.

She also sought out other families who had experiences with gay children. Looking back on the situation, Teresa feels that when families experience hardships, they should seek out professional supports.

Teresa went on with life after that day but with a renewed understanding of growth and learning. “Learning should never stop . . . I think we’re always learning,’ she explained. Having already earned a degree in music education, she became even more involved in church and oversaw many initiatives. It was a life she came to cherish until Frank began getting sick and eventually died of pneumonia.

As a great grandmother, Teresa feels blessed with the life she lives. Still close to her children, she is proud of the family that she and Frank raised. She taught them what she feels most of today’s generation is missing: a sense of value and self-worth. Even reflecting back to her family’s meager means growing up, the lessons they provided afforded priceless knowledge. People prioritized family and sacrificed to buy or build homes that kept children feeling safe. Taking time with children, showing them how to cook, planting vegetables in the garden together, eating dinner together—these priorities, according to Teresa, built an internal sense of security that buffered external threats.

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Saddened by today’s reality, she feels that Black people lack this belief in their abilities to affect change. She explains further, If something pops up that you don't understand, you don't disregard it, you go and you try to find out as much as you can about it. You go to the library, you can go online or whatever, and you can research it and you can find answers that will help you with whatever you're doing. I don't know. I would like to see our young people grow, but you can't change people.

Without a hunger for more and a desire for change, Teresa believes endangerment will forever be an imminent threat for some people.

Case #5: Umar At the time of the first interview, Umar described sitting comfortably in his home office in Houston, Texas. We had initially met some 10 years ago at an all-Black high school where we both worked. Now, he is pursuing several of the many entrepreneurial ventures currently floating across his mind, including the continued pastoring of a small church, developing an e-magazine, posting several YouTube videos, and opening a nonprofit organization focused on empowerment of Black youth. A man of 56 years of age, Umar has always had this type of energy, spirit and aspiration—it keeps him busy and stimulated and could be perceived as anxiety to those unfamiliar with him. There is a playfulness to his personality that permits a youthfulness that many men lack. His Christian upbringing is glaringly apparent in his behavior, but there often emerges a sneaky, devilish little boy who likes to jokingly incite disruption and mischief.

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Umar has always been an enjoyable man to know. Generous and thoughtful with his time and attention, he is always willing to help others. This bright but humble demeanor seems to reveal a history of secured attachments and maternal care that Winnicott (1960) would describe as good enough. During the interview, analogously, Umar felt like the rosy cheeked baby who was fed, nurtured, played with, reassured, responded to, and tolerated. There were also times when his most pronounced vicissitudes became revealed, such as his need for power and agency. As we talked and explored his thoughts, I was well acquainted with this baby, and from his life experiences, I learned of his earliest maternal environment that frames his life.

Significant childhood experiences.

When asked about his childhood, Umar described it bluntly without hesitation as “a wonderful experience.” One has to imagine the context of this early life: two loving parents, a father who worked hard and provided for his family, a mother who stayed at home and made sure that everyone was taken care of, and a home that always felt warm and plentiful. Even growing up as a sickly child, Umar felt well loved. Born premature, he started life with an aggressive form of congenital asthma. Struggling to breath became a common experience for him during his earliest years, and times in which he thinks his mother worried the most. “She was always there taking care of me, though . . . making me all types of concoctions, rushing me back and forth to the emergency room,” he related. Umar remembers being scared by these attacks, but because of a natural funloving and energetic temperament, he managed to enjoy those early childhood years.

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Umar grew up close to his mother, leaving him to feel that they shared a unique bond.

He remembers times in which they traveled to her hometown, Parsons, Kansas, and the sense of peace he felt there. “I never wanted to leave . . . it just felt so welcoming,” he recalls. In addition to reinforcing messages of cultural pride, Umar remembers his mother repeatedly telling him that love can come from anybody regardless of race or ethnicity.

Umar remembers his mother championing individuality and autonomy. “She always encouraged us to be our own person and find things that we enjoyed,” he recalls. Being the supporter of education that she was, Umar and his brothers were constantly taken to the library. During his adolescence, he fell in love with a book by Richard Wright, Black Boy, that chronicles the author’s life experiences as a young Black boy growing up during Jim Crow laws. Umar remembers this book adding structure and organization to the way he began understanding himself.

As the second youngest of four boys, Umar had a distinct personality. His eldest brother, Frank Jr, was the sibling to whom he felt the closest. Then, there was Vincent and his much younger brother by 10 years, Elgin. Umar remembers having a somewhat closer relationship to his parents than his brothers; this was especially true of his father.

After school, for example, he and his dad would wrestle from the front of the house to the back. A man of great class and poise, Umar’s father taught him through actions more than explicit messages. A rock solid work ethic combined with a gentle respect for others describes best his personality. He was a teacher by trade and eventually worked as one of the first Black male principals in the St. Louis Public School system. Umar remembers his father’s work being a daunting task that typically drained him by the end of the workday. “After we ate dinner, he would collapse in his chair,” he shared.

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Umar’s parents equally preached the importance of religion, and church played an enormous role in their lives. The family belonged to a mixed-race Lutheran congregation where they participated in various ministries. “My mom was always involved in music and loved to sing . . . she sang operatic songs . . . and she was over the children’s choir,” he explained. Beyond Sunday worship services, Saturday mornings belonged to church activities. Umar recalls these times being the norm of growing up and quite enjoyable.

Music was much more than singing in Umar’s family; every Friday night there were piano lessons at Mr. Odel’s home for him and his two older brothers. Even today, his brothers earn their livings as musicians. Umar was the least interested in furthering this craft, and into adolescence dropped the practice. Around that time, he became more interested in sports and girls and developed a rather close relationship to his maternal uncle, David. Outside love for his father, Umar remembers this to be the closest male relationship of his childhood. David was quite the character and lived a life that any young man would have admired in those days.

David was a man of distinction in Umar’s eyes and somewhat of a local celebrity to others. Never married and without children, he was a man constantly on the move who often rubbed elbows with famous entertainers. Musical and entertainment icons Lou Rawls, Ike Turner, and Freda Payne were just a few of the many people Umar met through his uncle. To many, David appeared to be an entrepreneur with several businesses under his belt, such as a car lot and a night club. However, on the streets of St. Louis, he was a hustler and pimp, managing several escort services throughout the city. Speaking with amazement about their relationship, Umar explained,

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Some of these were White women . . . I mean, he had this German woman over here and then had an apartment with an Italian woman over on the other side of town. He had fur coats…and he was the first Black man to own a Rolls Royce in our town . . . the whole nine.

Truly unforgettable was the time Umar remembers David allowing him to drive one of the auctioned cars he purchased from Chicago back to St. Louis. It was a beautiful brownish colored Cadillac de Ville sedan, leather and wood grained interior that left Umar reflecting, “Man, I felt like a legend.”

David and Umar’s relationship deepened as time passed and it was David who encouraged him to study accounting. Umar spent time understanding his uncle’s car dealership and night clubs and eventually helped him keep financial books and records.

David was also involved in the Nation of Islam and connected to several key figures in this organization. Umar remembers moments when he was personally introduced to Minister Lewis Farrakhan while accompanying David on certain business trips. Umar would eventually marry the daughter of a local leader of the religious order and became a central asset to the organization’s accounting system. It was a somber day when his uncle passed some 22 years ago.

Thinking over this relationship, Umar now sees that David allowed him to understand life, manhood, and being Black from different vantage points than his parents. David revealed a realness about the world that resonated with Umar; his stories of Blackness and experiences seemed to give meaning to Umar’s life. Umar’s father spoke little about the realities of being a Black man and more often demonstrated a calmness in response to life events that modeled control. David, on the other hand, was loud about his thoughts on

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“Black hope” and resistances to the race inspired events of the 1960s, acting in ways that exuded power, boldness, and confidence. Umar still remembers the heated arguments his mother and uncle had over topics of race, and while she loved her brother dearly, she worked to limit his influence over Umar’s impressionable mind at the time. “Yes, so there were times when he wanted me to stay with him during the summer and all that, and I was trying to get my parents to let me stay with him over the summer but they never did let me, they didn't let it go that far,” he explained.

Family was by far the most important facet of what Umar’s parents taught their children, and in fact, his parents played an active role in taking care of extended family members. It was a common occurrence for the entire family to spend the afternoon at his paternal aunt’s home after church. Dinner, long conversations, and Umar playing with cousins, his mother helping his aunt cook—these moments messaged to Umar the values that families should hold. Remembering a time in school in which he never learned Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech, he humorously recalls the following event: So I went to a couple great schools that was right off Kingshighway and Cobreary, so our teachers instilled in us Black culture . . . in one of my grades I think, it was fifth grade, we had to memorize the I Have a Dream speech . . . and then you had to get up in front of the class and do it. And I was trying to be slick and not learn it, and so I got up there and when it got back to my dad that I didn't know it (laughing). I learned it. I actually ended up reciting it at my aunt's house. We would go to my aunt’s house, my dad's sister's house, every Sunday after church and I literally ended up doing it at their house every Sunday after church for a while.

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By the time Umar reached young adulthood, he had been quite successful. It was 1988 and he was graduating with a degree in accounting from Fontbonne College, a wellrespected Catholic college in the heart of city. At the age of 25, he began noticing his oldest brother’s health decline. It was a virus that few understood or knew how to treat.

His mother, panicked and fraught with fear, had tried everything to help her brother.

When the family learned that Vincent was dying of AIDS, it was too late; the virus had taken over his frail skeleton body. Recalling these last moments, Umar shared, But I remember that night when he passed and I heard my mom, I never heard my mom cry like that before. Have you seen the movie Shaka Zulu? Okay, well in Shaka Zulu, when Shaka passes, the ladies, you hear the ladies crying and it's that sound, that's sound like how my mom's sound when my brother passed and that, that's wow, that was just something else, that was something else.

The death shook the family, leaving his remaining two brothers estranged and barely connected and his parents depleted. It was a test that forever changed the family they once knew.

Around that time, Umar had been seeing a young lady with whom he eventually bore two daughters, married, and divorced after five years. It was not until 1998 while ministering at a local church that he would meet his current wife with whom he resides in a quiet city in Texas. His life would take a turn for the worst in 2014 during an evening out with his wife. Walking to a Frankie Beverly and Maze concert in downtown St. Louis, Umar suffered a heart attack and coded nearly three times. Had it not been for two fellow concert goers who happened to be Registered Nurses performing CPR on him, he

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would have died. It took nearly four years to fully recover, at which point Umar lost his father to pneumonia.

“I feel like I’m just now becoming myself again after all that,” Umar explained. Life has settled and now he is working to rebuild the dynamic, entrepreneurial life he once lived. He is presently writing a book, developing an e-magazine, pastoring a church, and preparing to publicly speak about his experiences to motivate young people. Of his surviving brothers, he is the closest to their mother and the one most likely to initiate and spearhead family gatherings. He calls his mother once a week, like clockwork, on Mondays to check-in. When in town, he is sure to gather as many relatives as possible to recreate that old time feeling and tradition of family togetherness.

Black male endangerment.

Thinking about times in which he felt endangered, Umar’s experiences appear limited to specific encounters. For example, he remembered a time during his childhood when his mother sent him and his oldest brother to the store to run an errand. It was a rainy afternoon because he remembers wearing his yellow raincoat. All of a sudden, he saw a White man charging toward him and grabbing his arm. As he and his brother yelled “stranger danger, stranger danger,” the man pushed him into an auto repair shop where another White man angrily stood. “Is this the kid that stole your toolbox,” the first man asked the other. “Yes, he replied.” Umar was then taken to a room in the shop where he recalls a sea of White male police officers standing around. “I was terrified . . . I thought I was going to jail that day.” All alone with the men because his brother ran home to tell their mother, Umar sat there in sheer panic. It was nearly an hour before his mother

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arrived and cleared up everything because she knew a Black sergeant on the police force.

“My dad went back to the shop the next day and the owner agreed to buy me a new raincoat,” he explained.

A more recent experience occurred that reminded Umar of the threat to being a Black man. He and his wife were enjoying an evening event, the Up Burrito, when two White couples sat beside them. He went on to share about the incident, So one of the men, it was a young man, stood up and instead of facing them [the other White couples], he started facing me. So I'm like okay, what is going on? Now that I can see what’s he doing, I'm like okay, maybe he's waiting on somebody. I'm going through all these different scenarios in my head. Trying to figure out what this dude is doing, and I look at him and he's just staring at me and I look over to the people on my left and they're just talking to each other, not really paying attention to him and he's just, he's just standing with his arms folded looking at me. So, I'm looking at . . . there's some people to the right of me, they weren't right next to us, they were a little ways down, and so he's kind of looking too, at them and I just kind of, I waved and said hello, and he's saying nothing. I mean and then I had said something to the lady, I guess it's his wife that was seated to the left of me. I just started, I said, “hey, this is a beautiful day, it's a little bit hotter but hey, let’s rejoice and be glad in it,” kind of loudly for her to hear it, and then she kind of nodded her head, but the guy was still standing there.

And then I looked at him and he did eventually look down at his wife and then he took his pose again, he had on some tan khaki pants and a Black shirt, and I'm like okay, I'm not mad but I don’t want any trouble. I'm like okay, but I was telling my

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wife I know one thing, I ain't going to sit around and do nothing…but it was good.

The good thing was that he wasn't in my space, but he was right at the line, you know what I'm saying?

As these two encounters suggest, Umar’s experiences of race based endangerment are more episodic than global. Nevertheless, he feels endangered because of his skin color and the potential of threat that exists. Recent emboldened attacks from White nationalist groups, for example, maintain a level of heightened awareness. His anxiety, akin to what Grier and Cobbs (1968) term adaptive cultural paranoia, keeps him aware and constantly scanning his environment for these threats.

Categories of meaning.

Three categories of meaning were evident from Umar’s interviews, including a (a) warm maternal environment (b) the world as generally safe; and (c) endangerment as cultural and psychic identifications.

A warm maternal environment.

Winnicott (1956) believed that a mother inevitably fails in her adaptation to the infant’s instinctual needs namely because these needs are id demands—she can never be good enough, all knowing enough, fast enough, omnipotent enough to satisfy these demands. Her second attempt; however, involves catering to the ego needs until the infant can introject her as an ego-supportive mother and maintain such an introjection in spite of failures of ego supports in the actual environment. This second attempt is referred

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to a therapy the mother employs that creates a maternal environment indulging of the baby’s natural greediness. Winnicott (1956) explains, If a mother does this therapy as a reaction formation arising out of her own complexes, then what she does is called spoiling. In so far as she is able to do it because she sees the necessity for the child’s claims to be met, and for the child’s compulsive greediness to be indulged, then it is therapy that is usually successful. Not only the mother, but father, and indeed the family, may be involved (p. 128).

As I interviewed Umar’s mother in the living room where he had been raised, it became apparent by the décor that love and attention had been a part of their family. On one wall, he and his brothers’ pictures hung honoring their various stages of life. I saw evidence of music interwoven in the family by the well-worn piano against a bay window. Under the coffee table was a photo album stuffed with family portraits and old programs and announcements. It was evidence of a warm maternal environment created for Umar and his brothers.

Throughout the interviews, Umar referenced the loving way in which his mother cared for his most immediate needs. In fact, from as early as he could remember, she was responsive and attuned. Whenever his asthma flared and he struggled to breath, for instance, she was there offering solutions. “Drink this tea with honey, or try sitting up this way,” he recalls her expressing. During times of distress, Umar knew that his mother would be available and never had to worry about doing without. This maternal environment prioritized his needs and survived his narcissistic attacks and greediness while remaining committed. Introjected, this loving support fed an ego that would grow to become resilient and offer him a sense of internalized peace and safety.

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While Umar’s father worked much of the time, he was a solid fixture that faithfully provided support, love, guidance, and attention. Umar describes him dragging home from the office to wrestle with his son and participate in their daily routine of eating family dinner. Recalling these moments, Umar shared, And so, what I remember so when he came home, we always ate dinner together. We always, always, everybody ate dinner together, which was a beautiful thing and don't take that for granted, doing that, and then dad telling the stories of what was happening, stories that may have happened at school or at a PTA meeting, that kind of thing, all those things, they're part of my saving as well when it comes to dealing with things and seeing things, and how to process things and what's the best solution to do things and that kind of thing, so but soon after dinner, my dad's in the chair knocked out.

Umar internalized from his father a direct message about manhood: as a man, it is your responsibility to provide a sense of peace, safety, and comfort for your family. His father modeled a value of internal strength steeped in faith that implicitly messaged to his sons that goodness comes to those who follow the golden rule.

Dissimilar to both Mr. and Mrs. Irving, Umar’s Uncle David offered a supportive and caring environment but of a somewhat different nature. Part and parcel to Umar’s adolescence, his uncle provided a lens through which Umar could see life as a Black man in a sociopolitical time giving meaning to race. Black pride, Black power, and Black beauty—these ideas gave Umar a sense of connection to an entire group of people that validated his identity. Returning to the work of Dalal (2006), this connection is an essential part of the psyche, and in many ways, the individual is constituted by the many

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groups making up a society. In this way, David represented for Umar a larger understanding of Black masculinity tied to the civil rights movement and the enticing materialism, expressive aggression and flash to which young men aspire. Umar saw power in his uncle’s life, and to the extent to which his parents allowed, he lived out that power with David. It was a relationship that was nurturing to the hungry needs of an adolescent boy, and as such, an essential part of the maternal environment.

Because Umar’s parents worked to provide a racially integrated experience for him and his brothers, a part of him came to trust that the community was a loving and dependable environment. Church was a second home for Umar where he saw White and Black people together commune and support him. This level of acceptance messaged a sense of value and importance having little to do with race. Rather, it was a message rooted in the principles of Jesus Christ and that he, like all God’s children, possessed an intrinsic worth and value. In many ways, church bridged relationships to extended family members, as it created reasons to visit and commune. Following Sunday service, the family would visit Umar’s aunts for dinner and conversation. It became a place of support and nurturance upon which he could always depend.

The world as safe.

As alluded to above, Umar took in the message that the world was a safe environment that could contain elements of danger, but that his internal strength and character were essential for safety. This sense of safety started with the integrated community to which he was constantly exposed. Remembering trips taken with his mother early in life, he relates about these experiences in the following exchange,

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Interviewer: Yeah, what would you say your mother communicated to you about manhood?

Umar: Yeah, I would, that's a good question now, I would say definitely respectful of toward other people, definitely being mindful that in that it's a diverse we live in that of love and respect can come from anyone, any color ethnicity, all that she often tells a story with her and her upbringing, because part of her journey was that they had to live in an orphanage for a while and they had nuns that required them to get up early in the morning for prayers and they would spend a lot of time, in prayer and in service, and mass and that type of thing growing up and so she felt that without that foundation, no telling what may have happened in regard to that . . . And those are White folk that was responsible for that part of her life and then in Parsons, Kansas, it was not, it was a mix, it's a very small town in Kansas, so you've got Black and White folk kind of mixed together, and which that I definitely learned when, because I went with her on about two or three trips to Parsons as a, starting as a teenager and I fell in love with it.

I just said Oh my God this is, I didn't want to go back home, I mean I wanted to stay, I had a great time . . . I wanted to stay there forever.

Interviewer: What was so nice about it?

Umar: It was a small town, I met a lot of young people my age, Black and White folks chilling, hanging out playing, it was the summertime, you leave the doors open at night I mean you could literally walk the town in probably about 30 minutes. So there was a sense of freedom, and to me, and not that segregated mindset of where we were living, which I didn't really, I wouldn't have phrased it at that age of that's what it was, but looking back, it's right at the top of what it was, to really see that kind of

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difference in a neighborhood, that atmosphere, so that's what that was.

By way of these trips, Umar internalized from his mother an understanding about himself belonging to certain social groups. In these instances, these groups were comprised of loving and compassionate people who were Americans, St. Louisans, Christians, southerners, and the like. Because of these experiences, there was no need to question his belonging or attempt to belong; rather, he inherited membership into these groups. Similar to Browning’s (2016) conceptualization of how maternal communications are translated, Umar received messages about his worth that were aligned with the maternal care he received earlier in life. In other words, he implicitly heard communications about his value that mirrored the protective and attentive care received earlier in life. As Freud (1894) noted, when compatible messages are presented to the ego, they are metabolized and digested without difficulty. When the ego is forced to consider an idea outside the earliest experiences of the human subject, such as “you will be mistreated for no fault of your own,” trauma can result requiring repression.

While Umar, like all the male subjects of this study, experienced times in which he felt threatened based on race and gender, these times rarely led to a doubting of his worth because his ego had been sufficiently promoted earlier in life.

In this way, Umar’s experiences of his mother deviate from the dialectically based parenting many attribute to mothers of Black sons (Steinberg, Lamborn, Dornbusch, & Darling, 1992). His mother exposed him at early ages to settings and experiences in which he felt loved by many and constantly reinforced his inherent right to this love.

There was no effort made to harden his persona or equip him for battle; in fact, there was no perception of battle. He was presented with the idea of life being a space that would

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offer both love and pain, but for those who practiced self-respect, the world would be far more loving.

The appeal of Blackness: endangerment as cultural and psychic identifications.

Umar remembers adolescence being a time of exploring his cultural identity to make sense of a host of conflicted feelings. This conflict emerged as a result of the changing times of the 1960s and the differences he saw within himself and others, particularly White people. While his parents had always championed cultural pride, Umar felt at times that more was needed to help delineate his feelings of otherness. Finding Richard Wright’s 1945 memoir, Black Boy, in the library seemed to begin this journey. It was a book about determination amid a backdrop of struggle and adversity. Wright’s characterizations resonated with many of Umar’s thoughts about the segregated area of St. Louis in which he lived. “I was tired of being separated from others where we lived . . . you could tell it just wasn’t the same in other parts of St. Louis,” he reflected. Wright gave him a language to understand these feelings in a way his parents had not.

Religion played a role in furthering Umar’s understanding of his cultural uniqueness.

Reflecting on the first time he attended a Black church, Umar explained feeling overwhelmed by the energy of the moment: “Man, the music, the preaching, and action— it was all so different than what I was used to.” He was invited by a friend and had never before felt that type of passion in a worship service. “There's something, it’s something about them, of the Black church that's affirming in my opinion to growing up Black, I don't know if it's tied to our African heritage, which I think there's got to be some connection to that,” he related.

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Moments of this sort led Umar to secretly question why his parents omitted these experiences from his life. Hearing the struggle in his voice, it was difficult for him to speak critically about their parenting decisions, but midway through the first interview he began reflecting on the emotional conflict felt about these times, explaining, So I often wonder, what made them go to the all-White church, well, predominantly White church, White denomination, versus, you know going to a Black church and would that have made a difference in our upbringing? I mean me and my brother's upbringing, and I tend to believe that it would have, I really do believe that it would have.

Seeming to repair the damage of this statement, he explained knowing that his mother had had many loving experiences with White people in her life and that she wanted her children to share in this equality of love. As noted above, it was something that she cherished about her family—that she and her husband could show their children diversity in experiences. Umar; however, discretely longed for something more and found many opportunities to explore it whenever his parents were not watching.

In many ways, Umar’s exploration of these feelings were pursuits of a more authentic, truer self that did not preclude his loving feelings for White people, but rather expanded a range of emotions more accurately reflecting his desires. This dual appreciation for majority and minority cultures speaks to Franklin’s (1986, 1987) thoughts about Black men’s inevitable need to negotiate spaces of racism and patriotism. Speaking to his high school years, Umar reflected back on the many nights he accompanied his friends to the unsavory strip clubs in East St. Louis. “We weren’t even old enough to get in, but they

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usually let us in and we had a ball,” he jokingly recalled. As far as he knew, he parents never imagined him ever frequenting such establishments.

As detailed above, Umar’s uncle was a huge influence during this time and provided model of Black manhood to which he could aspire and fantasize about becoming. Umar’s father also provided a masculine archetype but of a different sort, somewhat limited in appealing to Umar’s full range of emotions. In fact, the differences between the two father figures reflected his multitude of conflicting emotions. While his father was quiet, his uncle was loud and boisterous; his father reserved, his uncle celebrated by community members. Uncle David gave Umar permission to feel an excitement discouraged by the calm relationship enjoyed with his parents. “He was pro Black in the pro Black kind of way that he was . . . always talking about the White women that he had, you know . . . so it was interesting,” he explained.

Umar found in Wright’s autobiography, the Black church’s doctrine, and his uncle’s life a way to feel connected to an identity—an identity of Blackness that required the context of endangerment. This identity gave voice and language to emotions not permitted by the calm and loving nature of his parents; it gave value to deeper, more aggressive feelings. Similar to the way Umar and his father wrestled from the front to the back of the house during his childhood, Umar needed an element of roughness that promoted a sense of agency. It is this roughness that I referenced above—the devilish, sneaky boy that emanates from within the well-mannered man. Grier and Cobbs (1968) speak to this in their description of the bad nigger, as illustrated here, Today Black boys are admonished not to be “bad niggers.” No description need to be offered; every Black child knows what is meant. They are angry and hostile. They

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strike fear into everyone with their uncompromising rejection or restraint or inhibition.

They may seem at one moment meek and compromised—and in the next a terrifying killer. Because of his experience in this country, every Black man harbors a potential bad nigger inside him. He must ignore this inner man. The bad nigger is bad because he has been required to renounce his manhood to save his life. The more one approaches the American ideal of respectability, the more this hostility must be repressed. The bad nigger is a defiant nigger, a reminder of what manhood could be (pp. 65-66).

These emotions erupting into consciousness mobilize an action that is still present in Umar’s life today. His entrepreneurial spirit and roles of pastor, non-profit director, and e-magazine editor seem to mirror his thoughts about driving the Cadillac sedan back from Chicago with his uncle, “Man, I felt like a legend.”

Umar’s experiences point to other functions of endangerment aligned more with group connections and psychic identifications. He unconsciously sought to belong to a group not well represented by his family—a group of Black Americans who were determined, outwardly powerful, sophisticated, adored and admired, electric, emboldened, and fearless. It was a connection to a cultural heritage rich in resilience and struggle that implicated a sense of endangerment. As Foulkes (1948, 1964) and Dalal (2006) assert about radical group analytic theory, not belonging is not an option for the human subject, and belonging is a fundamental need to maintain psychological survival. Even more important, this pro Blackness preserves a tie to his beloved uncle, paying homage to David’s life and other important internal figures.

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The notion of Black male endangerment functions like Leary’s (2000) conceptualization of Blackness; it is dynamic, both static and fluid, present and past, factual and imaginative, noun and verb. It represents the Black subject’s perception of danger while simultaneously being used to achieve essential psychological group connections. It allows access to split-off emotional states as well as preserving memories of important others.

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Chapter V

Discussion Introduction The writing of this chapter occurred during one of the deadliest protests in modern history. Sparked by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, over two thousand cities around the world and counting are speaking out against police brutality targeting Black men. This current situation brings to light the precarious nature of the current study’s problem statement—Black men around the globe pervasively feel endangered and those who love them fear for their lives.

Whether jogging in a neighborhood like Ahmed Aubrey or birdwatching in Central Park like Christian Cooper, Black men are factually at greater risks of being harmed. These recent events illuminate the weaponization of Black race and gender.

I conducted a qualitative research design using a psychoanalytic case study method to answer the following research question: how do Black men experience the impact of maternal messages of endangerment? Thus, the purpose of this study was to understand and describe maternal messages of endangerment for a small sample of five Black men raised in U.S. urban centers. I was especially interested in understanding the unconscious transmission of attitudes specific to race and gender from mothers to sons in these

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settings. I sought to understand how this attitude informs the Black son’s understanding of and beliefs about himself.

The previous chapter presented the cases of the five men along with contextual life narratives of their mothers, including current perspectives on Black male endangerment, significant childhood experiences, and interpretive categories of meaning emerging from their interviews. This chapter presents cross-case findings examining different themes emerging from the data. Many of the theoretical perspectives noted in the literature review were found throughout the case material and offered enormous insight into my understanding of the data. Other theories not previously considered, however, dominated the discussion at times and became clear indicators of ways to understand endangerment.

These conceptualizations, along with social science literature, offered me a way to customize interpretations.

In attempts to answer the research question above, this chapter’s structure and organization begins with a summary of each of the five cases followed by pictorial diagrams of master themes, cross case syntheses, and within case meaning categories.

Three overarching categorical master themes emerged from the cross-case analysis producing five cross-case meaning categories. The first and most dominant domain was maternal messages of endangerment operating as a defense against the intolerable uncertainty of racism. From the interviews, this theme was manifested in maternal messages loaded with complex contradictions that required the men to maintain a sense of paranoia designed to manage such contradictions. Secondarily, maternal messages of endangerment created and maintained connections between sons and their mother’s internal object worlds. These psychic identifications became objects of manhood for the

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men in the absence of physical male role models; they also allowed for split-off, disavowed parts of the mind to be shared from mother to son. Lastly, messages of endangerment created spaces of intimacy that allowed for the recreation of a closeness that once existed between mother and son. The chapter ends with implications for clinical practice, theory, social/policy, and research.

Summary of Cases Case #1: Ed. As one of the younger participants of the study, Ed is a 24-year-old unemployed man residing with his mother, Opal, in a Southwestern City. He was raised without much input from his father and remembers his mother being protective and encouraging him to be guarded with others. From her perspective, endangerment is an inevitable fate for the Black man requiring an ever-present need to scan and assess one’s environment. While Ed trusts his mother’s interpretation of his endangerment, he feels rather estranged and deprived of individuality. The requisite safety precautions aligned with an endangered world foreshadow his emotional needs from being seen and prioritized. A resulting false self leaves him feeling immensely depressed and depleted.

Case #2: Connor.

The youngest of the participants, Connor is a 21-year-old young man completing his degree at a Midwestern university. He has always felt close to his mother, Marva, who cultivated an emotionally dependent, and somewhat enmeshed relationship with her son

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from as early as they both can remember. As Connor became a young adult, Marva predicted harm for him and consequently provided expressions of love to arm him for these anticipated attacks. He internalized this affection and experienced endangerment as both a necessary part of life and a way of receiving love from his mother. Endangerment became both an external reality and an unconscious belief that facilitated anxiety and moments of bonding reminiscent of the past. When not feeling endangered or overlooking potential threats, he feels disloyal to important self-identifying values.

Case #3: Que. Que is a 34-year-old clinical social worker living with his wife and two children in St. Louis. Growing up in a large and loving extended family led by his mother, Patricia, he remembers most maternal messages of endangerment coming after he had experienced some form of mistreatment at the hands of White people. He heard from her that mistreatment would undoubtedly occur at the hands of White people but that his protection could be found in how he handled himself. The most essential preparation was his intrinsic value and belief in his abilities. Despite the fact that there would be dangers over which he had little to no control, he could use the devices of education, family, and hard work as guard himself.

Case #4: Caleb.

At 51 years of age, Caleb is a clinical social worker supervising school therapists in a large school district in St. Louis. Married without children, he feels that endangerment is an ever-present reality for the Black male subject. He recalls his mother, Helen,

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emphasizing the invisible dangers before him, including the implicit meanings of White people that he needed to learn how to interpret. Caleb internalized masculinity and ideas of manhood from people in his mother’s psychic past, leading him to aspire to be as great as he imagined them to be. This goal led to a sense of endangerment not specific to race that left him feeling inadequate. The consequent false self lacks a sense of vibrancy, denying him authenticity. For Caleb, maternal messages of endangerment form a state of mind that prevents his sense of realness.

Case #5: Umar.

The oldest participant, and negative case of the findings, Umar is a 56-year-old man living in a small Southwestern city with his wife. Father of two adult children, he performs many roles that highlight his entrepreneurial spirit. Raised during a segregated era in St. Louis, Umar remembers his mother, Teresa, emphasizing his equality and the love that could come from anyone irrespective of their race. Endangerment, in her eyes, occurred when people lacked solid values of respect and love for one another. While much of this sentiment was internalized, Umar was drawn to societal messages of endangerment as ways to experience psychic connections. Black history, the Black church, and a loving bond between him and his uncle were seminal events occurring within the perceived context of endangerment that allowed him to feel a sense of identity and expression of many conflicting emotional states.

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Table 5.1: Categories of Meaning

Subject

Age Mother

Ed

24

Connor

Que

21

34

Opal

Marva

Patricia

Categories of Meaning 

Messages of contradictions



Survivalist paranoia



A narcissistic defense



Irrationality



Maternally induced anxiety



The prioritization of maternal worry



Systematic teaching of cautiousness and safety



Maternal anxiety experienced as acts of love



Maternally created safe spaces



Internalized maternal voice



Survivalist paranoia



Maternally induced anxiety



Manhood influenced by the family legacy



The simultaneous need for and fear of the White world



The dynamic and evolving nature of endangerment

Caleb

51

Helen



The bonding nature of safety conversations



Specialness



Internal representations of masculinity and

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manhood

Umar

56

Teresa



Messages of complex contradictions



An ominous outside world



The danger of my anger



The costs of the false self



A warm maternal environment



The world as generally safe



Endangerment as cultural and psychic identifications

Table 5.2a: Master Theme 1

Master Theme #1 Maternal Messages of Endangerment as a Defense Cross-Case Synthesis

Cross-Case Synthesis

Complex Contradictions: Safety of Emotions

Survivalist Paranoia

Messages about White people Contradictions about one’s agency Within-Case Meaning Categories

Within-Case Meaning Categories

Messages of contradictions

Systematic teaching of cautiousness

The simultaneous need for and fear of the White world

An ominous outside world

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The dynamic and evolving nature of endangerment Messages of complex contradictions The danger of my anger The costs of the false self

Table 5.2b: Master Theme 2

Master Theme #2 Maternal Messages of Endangerment as Psychic Identifications Cross-Case Synthesis Messages Embedded with Mother’s Internal World Within-Case Meaning Categories Manhood influenced by the family legacy Internal representations of masculinity and manhood Maternal messages to connect to the past and manage loss

Table 5.2c: Master Theme 3

Master Theme #3 Maternal Messages of Endangerment as Internalized Maternal Voices and Presence Cross-Case Synthesis

Cross-Case Synthesis

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Internalized Maternal Voice

Maternal Anxiety as Acts of Love

Within-Case Meaning Categories

Within-Case Meaning Categories

Irrationality

Maternal anxiety experienced as acts of love

Maternal induced anxiety Internalized maternal voice

The bonding nature of safety conversations

The context of racism.

To begin this interpretive process, again, I feel it noteworthy to reflect on the social and political times in which this study occurred. During the months of May and June 2020, the national news media illuminated video recordings of Black men being mistreatment, physically assaulted, and killed by police officers. White Americans were challenged by minority groups to see and feel racism’s disgust admixed with terror, which brings to life the fears of the mothers interviewed in this study. Reflecting on my own experiences of race and gender, I associate to racism acting as a ghost that is inextricably tied to the Black subject’s conscious and unconscious mind. While some may discount and question its evidence, the subject sees it in plain view. It is the slight look of the cashier as one walks into a convenient store. It is the hesitation one hears in a supervisor’s voice. Like all forms of trauma, it merges past, present, and future, evoking feelings loaded with implicit messages about one’s character and worth. Its invisible nature tricks and confuses, causing the subject to employ guardedness as a necessary precaution. The moment the subject relaxes, enjoying the sanctity of the moment, the

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ghost emerges from behind, flying down to attack as if to say, “I got you—you let your guard down.” Even for the Black subject numb to the effects of racism, the abrupt public deaths of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks jolts them back into the reality of thinking, “It could happen to me.” In many ways, the erection and maintenance of endangerment is an unconscious solution to keep the subject prepared for the next attack. As Theodore Reik (1948) theorizes about trauma, it is this shock, and not fear, that the human subject seeks to avoid.

In a 1975 speech delivered to students at Portland State University, Toni Morrison spoke about racism in the similar manner. Captured here is the reference to the future to which the Black human subject is forever tied, making mindfulness and relaxation near impossible endeavors. She explains, The very serious function of racism . . . is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary.

It is within this context of racism that the actions and decisions of mothers to Black sons must be understood. She is trapped and faced with an enormous dilemma in that she must nurture her child while preparing him for an unsafe world—there are no other choices. Describing normal development, Winnicott (1956) explains that the healthy maternal task starts in the womb and involves the provision of an environment that will buy the infant time needed to mature before he will ultimately have to face the inevitable

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job of physical separation at birth. During the first few months of life, in this scenario, the mother loses herself in the baby creating a merger-like state Winnicott termed the primary maternal preoccupation. This milieu allows the infant to gradually separate in safe and small doses. As the infant matures and grows into childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, the good enough mother weans him of her physical presence and he internalizes her psychological presence. This maternal environment, as Winnicott called it, is the requisite space in which all human subjects develop. As time passes, the mother or caretaker along with others who provide mothering functions, hold him in such a way as to make this transition to dependence possible. Holding encompasses the mother providing dosed degrees of psychological nutrients, such as frustration, tolerable anxiety, desire, and conflict.

During adolescence, the mother of the Black son can no longer hold in the nurturing way described above. Her knowledge and experience of the social environment (as well as her internal object world) forces a necessary shift, and an emotional withdrawal from the child’s maturational needs. She must prepare him for an impending battle, and the good enough holding environment steeped in the mother’s patience becomes a luxury too costly to afford. In preparing her son, she must betray her maternal instinct, and instead, prioritize his expedited understanding of the world. It is within this matrix that maternal messages of endangerment become essential—they are not choices, but rather solutions to a problem that cannot be ignored. This absence of choice for the mother of the Black son is the essence, the sine qua non, of oppression.

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Maternal messages of endangerment as defensive operations: complex contradictions.

In addition to maternal messages of endangerment being direct, manifest responses to explicit forms of danger to Black men, the data revealed latent meanings of a defensive nature. This meaning is best understood from the perspective of the closed system of regulation advanced by Novick and Novick (2006) whereby the need for safety necessitates the psychic management of intolerable pain. Such an operation involves a turning away from reality, and instead, relying on a magical, omnipotent way of experiencing the world. The perception of being endangered, and planning one’s life accordingly, allows the subject to forever be prepared for the possibility of pain. The rigidity of contradicting maternal messages to which all of the sons alluded illuminated aspects of this closed system of regulation. As delineated below, these conflicting messages from mothers involved communications about (a) the son’s physical wellbeing, (b) safety of emotions, (c) the simultaneous danger of and admiration for White people, and (d) one’s agency in the face of racism.

Safety of emotions.

Nearly all the subjects heard from his mother contradicting messages about his emotions, and particularly, the expression of anger. Four of the five sons interviewed remembered being taught deliberate messages about the need to restrain his anger in most contexts. It was not that the mothers failed to appreciate the anger but feared the consequences it could bring for their children. Ed, for example, remembered Opal intently validating his anger toward his father’s absence in his life. “I know baby, but

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don’t be like him,” she would express. Later in life, these messages became more critical, “Don’t become hateful . . . don’t be so angry.” Que had similar experiences with his mother when annoyed by being stopped by the police. She asserted that his anger was valid but not helpful.

Hearing the implicit message that his anger was ineffectual, most sons also heard an underlying communication about the value of their emotions. Connor reflected on this theme in underscoring the visceral nature of his angry feelings toward a police officer apprehending him but the simultaneous guilt for feeling this way. Even more significant, his mother predicted a level of harm that would come to him from the hands of White authority figures; and he knew it was a reality that would eventually come, requiring his readiness. When this moment happened and he failed to respond in the way rehearsed, he felt enormous guilt.

Caleb heard messages about the world around him that led to a pervasive questioning of his emotions. Attending to his feelings of love and attraction to certain White people, he remembered his mother’s admonitions to distrust their motives. “Mama’s being irrational,” he would think to himself. However, when he did have conflicts based on race, his mother’s voice rang in his head: “You see, son, I told you not to trust them.” His feelings became questionable and extreme sources of stress and anxiety.

That four of the five sons interviewed experienced some form of conflict regarding the expression of feelings, especially that of anger, illustrates two key conflicts occurring from maternal messages of endangerment. Firstly, the sons felt inextricably tied to their feelings but unable, without guilt, to freely experience them—this resulted in a split-off part of the self. For Ed and Caleb, this split seemed to lead to a depression emblematic of

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an unconscious loss of a part of the self. It is also likely that they experienced a kind of depressive anxiety over the imagined harm caused to their mothers by considering their own feelings.

Connor and Que, on the other hand, presented an anxiety that required the physical comfort of the maternal environment. As deduced here, the mother of the Black son unconsciously acts to alter the unknown world that her son will likely face. Providing her best efforts to save his life, she attempts to manipulate this world by equipping him with beliefs about himself. In these ways, maternal messages of endangerment provide her with a sense of relief but do so at the expense of her son’s sense of fullness. He has to continuously monitor and police his emotions. These actions are part and parcel to the closed system of regulation.

Secondarily, and worst yet, endangerment messages compromise essential elements of the holding environment, which leaves injured the son’s developing ego. By his mother’s efforts to prepare him, he is propelled into a world he cannot yet metabolize or digest, forcing him to face crippling realities that overwhelm his capacity to fully understand.

Caleb struggled to understand how his White classmate who he considered to be a friend was also a danger. Connor heard that the most palpable of his emotions were to be suppressed in favor of the authority figure’s comfort. These messages involve the enigmatic communications described by Browning (2016) that cannot be metabolized, but instead repressed. They censor key parts of the son’s organic emotional experience, thereby equating partiality with safety. Refrained from feeling in totality, emotions of anxiety and depression result.

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Messages about White people.

The majority of sons in this study reflected on receiving contradicting maternal messages about White people during their youth that only later in adult life seemed to make much sense. Among these contradictions, White people were depicted as (a) the perpetrators of violence and harm, (b) gatekeepers to success, and (c) idealized Americans to be emulated. Nearly all the sons with the exception of Umar heard this first message. Ed, for example, heard messages about fearing all people, but specifically White law enforcement officers who held the authority to control him in some way. He heard from his mother that these individuals would interpret him as a threat because of his skin color, size, and gender, and that he had to find ways to survive these potential attacks. Connor, similarly, heard that mistreatment could come from anyone of any race.

As he entered high school; however, the messages about White people increased and became subtler. He recalled her admonition, “Remember these people are your friend and everything, but they don’t understand your struggle and don’t know what exactly you’ve been through and what you’re going to go through.” Connor was left feeling uneasy about trusting the very friends he came to love, which underscores his struggle metabolizing a message misaligned with his experiences.

Many of the maternal messages about White people were subtle, couched in implications. Que, for instance, heard and saw from his mother both direct and indirect messages about White people. He heard directly that because he would be the subject of threat and mistreatment at the hands of White police officers, he needed to be prepared and ready for these attacks. Conversely, he saw through her behavior a preference for physical settings dominated by White people, like schools, parts of town, and

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communities in which to live. Messages such as “Don’t embarrass me in front of these White people,” communicated a message about the supremacy and power of this group of people, and also the inferiority of parts of himself. Goodness came when one could be closer to White people. This juxtaposition led Que to both admire and fear non-Black communities.

Caleb, too, heard direct and indirect messages that led to his confusion and fragility of self-worth. His mother, Helen, was pointed in her warnings about White people in his life, and he interpreted her advice to mean that they could not be trusted but were needed to navigate life. To engage in these situations, Caleb was taught like Ed to monitor the motives, actions, and reactions of his White counterparts. “The danger is coming—your job is to be ready,” he seemed to hear her say.

Apparent in these maternal messages about White people are not only the contradictions, but the cautions to restrict feelings in favor of assessing for safety. Nearly all the sons heard their mothers prescribe experiences that required them to suspend emotions and predict an outcome. In this way, cognitive processing became tied to the future, disallowing a connection to the present. Such prescriptions also messaged communications about the value of feelings. The men interviewed, particularly Ed, Connor, Caleb, and at times, Que, split off these emotions to only later struggle to feel seen and valued. Their sense of humanity was foreclosed by these experiences, as only certain feelings were allowed. Most important, desire was discouraged and wishes drowned out by the need to stay prepared. Ed and Caleb now question their emotions of desire, thinking of them as unwarranted and leading to feelings of guilt. Connor also

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knows intimately this guilt and reprimands himself whenever his anger over mistreatment arises.

When human emotions such as desire are discouraged and denied, there develops a depression that Freud (1917) linked to loss. Messages of endangerment to the Black son create a loss of the mother’s care, the maternal environment, in favor of safety. His psychic energy stays connected to this loss, while he forever tries to fill the void it causes.

As Eng and Han (2000) wrote about mimicry, efforts of assimilation by the minority group inevitably result in this type of loss. Assimilation, from this perspective, will always be an incomplete attempt at gaining something that will never fully occur, leaving the subject to long for its possession and ultimately grieve its absence.

Denied desires and authenticity result in what Winnicott (1960) termed the False Self.

This state of mind is rooted in betrayal—the betrayal of one’s most organic feelings in favor of securing the love of the other. By prescribing an experience of harm, maternal messages of endangerment cultivate this sense of False Self as a form of protection. It wages psychological war on the human tendency to connect, and instead, erects a defense of anxiety to distance the subject from potential harm. All the male subjects in this study attested to some level of disconnection from intimate and close encounters with others.

As Tolleson recently noted, he is faced with “a conflict born of object seeking in a sea of unsafety.” (J. Tolleson, personal communication, July 11, 2020)

Contradictions about one’s agency.

According to many (Sander, 2002; Palombo, 2017), agency is defined as the ability to affect change in one’s self and environment; Stern (1985) defined it as being the locus of

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activity. Exploring the origin of the concept, Sander (2002) saw agency deriving from the moment at which the infant becomes consciously aware that its cry can evoke a response from another. He noted, “In the human, the experience of a sense of validity of one’s selfas-agent in one’s own self-regulation and self-organization is an essential feature of mental health” (p. 7). However, when this ability is compromised or lost, the individual struggles to adapt to the environment. As noted throughout Chapter IV, maternal messages of endangerment, by design, communicate limitations in one’s control over their environment.

The male subjects interviewed heard a variety of messages about their ability to affect change in their lives. Early in life, prior to adolescence, each man acknowledged hearing his mother comment on his inherent power. Connor shared stories of hearing his mother tell him that he could accomplish anything he set his mind to, and her physical support of his hobbies reinforced this message. Que, Caleb, and Umar heard similar messages even amid the mistreatment they were told they could expect to experience. They each remember their mothers express the importance of being better, stronger, more prepared than their White counterparts. Ed, on the other hand, received fewer of these positive affirming agentic communications, and more messages of his need for agency. “If they’re teasing you about the way you look, start taking better care of yourself,” she expressed.

Ed seemed to feel that this sense of agency was overestimated, failing to account for his deprived self-esteem.

As adolescence approached and the young men began to mature, they each spoke about hearing a shift in maternal messages regarding their lack of power in the face of racism. Racism at the hands of White police officers was characterized as a force over

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which one had little, if any, control. Agency during these times was captured in the youth’s ability to manage their emotions, and by all costs, avoid acting them out. When Ed started driving, for instance, he remembers Opal’s anxiety accelerating to the point that she would constantly preach messages of awareness. “Watch how everybody moves,” she demanded from him. Connor, too, heard from Marva the need to plan for threats. Agency from this perspective was about his ability to recall and follow with precision his mother’s instructions. “If you get pulled over by the police, call me and your dad and put us on speaker phone,” she insisted.

Que and Caleb’s mothers treated agency somewhat differently. Instead of the reactionary messages taught by Opal and Marva, Patricia, Helen, and Teresa focused more on teaching their sons a sense of intrinsic competence that would shape behavior in the face of threat. “You’re going to be stopped by the police just because of who you are,” Que remembers his mother explaining. His job was to be ready—to know his worth, his rights, his power in the dynamic—so that things would not escalate. Helen also worked to help Caleb understand the intentions of White people so as to lessen the fear and shock associated with mistreatment. As long as he remembered the power inherent in his ability to rationally think about choices in those moments, he was safe. Umar explained Teresa teaching less direct messages about his power, and instead, focusing on his worth as a human being loved by God. This love could overcome any barrier.

Messages about agency became problematic in a number of ways and presented the sons with an internal dilemma: it required a psychic strength that had not yet developed.

The power these mothers attempted to instill, with the exception of Teresa, necessitated an empowered sense of self that the sons did not feel. When Helen demanded that Caleb

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confront the teacher about his poorly graded assignment, for instance, he was thrusted into a role with an adult that for him was not yet comfortable and caused great anxiety.

Connor experienced this same level of emotional terror when stopped by the police returning home from college. Overcome with emotion, he struggled to communicate to the police officer what he had be taught to say. Que’s anxiety was channeled into a defense of intellectualization, as he remembers using his knowledge of race theory to manage the emotions evoked during his apprehension by the police.

Maternal messages of endangerment demand a level of psychological maturity that the developing adolescent ego does not yet possess. Akin to the Golf et al’s (2014) findings, it forces the mother to see her son beyond his age, again denying the maternal holding environment necessary for her children to mature. Also denied is the necessary psychological space in which children learn to play. As Winnicott (1953) offered about this time, play is the adaptive consequence of acting from the center, the authentic and true self, and fearlessly being imaginative and innovative. It is dependent upon suspending concern about reality versus unreality; and rather allowing the mind to accept the paradox that some activities are neither real or unreal. Endangerment messages disallow this process, forcing the child to accept a reality about the world that demands fear.

Both Ed and Caleb communicated a limited ability to imagine themselves being successful. Ed remembers feeling that his mother overestimated his agency without considering him as a person, as she spoke critically about his need to improve things about his life to avoid bullying. By telling him to “Put some lotion on, stop eating so much, comb your hair,” Ed heard that he needed to fix his problems and that he had the

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power to do so. Absent from the message was a regard for how the bullying impacted him. As noted in Chapter IV, maternal messages of endangerment prioritize safety, leaving out other maturational needs. For the mother with limited time and energy, endangerment messages may exhaust their emotional resources for their son’s other needs.

In a similar way, many of Caleb’s struggles with fitting in were never discussed with his mother. He recalled on one occasion a time in which she noticed him acting differently in the presence of a young Black male peer. “Your chest swole up and your voiced deepened,” he remembered her jokingly noting. What was not discussed with her; however, was the pervasive distress he felt over not feeling accepted by young Black men and the intent way in which he questioned his masculinity throughout childhood. Again, maternal messages of endangerment prioritized his safety in lieu of other developmental needs. They prescribe an experience or future experience that inevitably forecloses subjectivity.

Because it preoccupies the mother’s focus, endangerment leaves the Black male child, without assistance, to make sense of his life and his mother’s worry about his life.

Illustrative here is that while endangerment begins with a mother’s concern over her child’s well-being, it eventually becomes the object of the mother’s needs to which her son seeks to accommodate. “Mama is busy being worried, and because this worry is important to her, I need to respect it” he seems to say.

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Maternal messages of endangerment as defensive operations: survivalist paranoia.

The majority of sons in this study internalized beliefs about their endangerment and unconsciously developed ways to manage such threats. Grier and Cobbs (1968) spoke to the defensive action of an adaptive and healthy cultural paranoia when the Black human subject interprets a threat to his well-being. The act of paranoia defends against the powerlessness engendered from racism, creating both a sense of safety and agency.

The narrative data suggest other explanations for the defense of paranoia, however, involving the maternal environment. As noted above, adolescence brought to many of the men experiences that caused their mothers to worry. Starting to drive and explore the city alone became a frightening thought. In response, mothers acted out worry by initiating safety talks designed to keep their sons safe. These talks brought many of the contradictions noted above, such as the danger of one’s anger, and inevitably sacrificing the maternal environment they had grown to know and trust. Paranoia, in this way, speaks to the son’s concern about being held by his milieu.

Ed’s school experiences demonstrate this process. While he saw and heard his mother preach the necessity of scanning his surroundings for danger, he unconsciously kept distance between himself and his family. Speaking to his depression in high school and college, he explained, “My family, they loved me, but they didn’t understand.”

Contradicting messages of endangerment disrupted the security of Ed’s internal sense of family, leaving him empty, alone, and cautious of others.

Data from some of the male participants demonstrates a dual function of paranoia. As noted in Chapter IV, Connor heard in the safety talks with his mother that he would one

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day endure pain without the comfort and protection of her presence. Beyond the worry of attack from prejudiced others, he fears a psychic life without his mother, and the thought of this absence creates feelings of endangerment. Thus, paranoia acts to guard against both physical and internal, intrapsychic forms of danger. Que, in less profound ways, felt a similar threat of life without the physical protection of his mother. However, he developed resilient self-objects using race theory and connections to important others (Dr. Campbell) that counter defended and helped to manage the anxiety of this separation. His intellectualization facilitated an understanding of how racism functioned and ways to emotionally distance himself from the powerlessness engendered by it.

Akin to Ed’s experience, Caleb remembers a host of life situations impacting the maternal environment upon which he once depended. The separation of his parents and his father’s subsequent mental breakdown played an enormous role in creating an impoverished sense of emotional safety. Coupled with the explicit experiences of mistreatment at school, these encounters formed a necessary unconscious way to protect the self from harm. It seems reasonable to assume that these early impingements led to an injured self-esteem that lacked the confidence needed to successfully engage with others.

A False Self developed around meeting the needs of others to win back the original love.

In so doing; however, his True Self was not only muted, but disorganized. Caleb’s struggle to manage his desires for others demonstrates how the False Self is a mechanism of the closed system of regulation. Endangerment, from this perspective, is one of the many omnipotent beliefs employed in a world of psychic constructions.

From the surface, it appears that Umar’s experiences deviate from the present analysis about the defensive nature of endangerment. After all, his mother, Teresa, preached that

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love could come from anyone, regardless of race. However, without the maternal prediction that life would bring harm, Umar clung to the perception of endangerment to meet other needs. Cherishing Richard Wright’s novel and spending time with his uncle led Umar to see a benefit in identifying with Blackness, which is rooted in the assumption of endangerment. His narrative data show that in the absence of a maternal figure communicating endangering messages, the Black child either finds or creates it.

Endangerment, in many ways, recreates the earliest maternal environment by privileging the child’s most basic needs, especially those overlooked by the caretaker. Akin to the tokenism Thompson (1995) described about a patient who preferred being the only Black woman at her job, this need for attention feeds a narcissistic gratification. Umar’s need for energy, excitement, and conflict were met by endangerment messages that he found in his environment. In this context, feelings of endangerment are both a response to a threatening environment and a demand from that same environment. As opposed to being the object of harm, such demands allow him to be a subject.

Maternal messages of endangerment as psychic identifications.

Nearly all the male subjects alluded to learning about their mother’s relationships to past important figures and heard stories throughout childhood that brought to life these significant people. On a manifest level, the men came to know intimately parts of their mother’s past lives. Deeper, on a more unconscious level, conversely, they came to internalize parts of these internal objects. Internalization includes not only knowledge of the past figure, but the associated emotions and fantasies around their lives. Through these internal objects, unresolved and unacceptable mental representations are shared

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from mother to son to meet the psychic goal of expression. Illustrated in Chapter II, Fromm (2004) explains that “children absorb their elders’ traumatized parts and then bear the burden of completing the task that their forebears were unable to resolve” (p. 284).

Interestingly, several of the mothers interviewed shared with their sons fantasized memories of significant male figures. In the absence of physically present men in their communities, these women unconsciously dug into their psychic pasts, finding the finest examples of males in their minds to offer to their sons. Que, for example, heard often of his grandfather’s greatness while growing up, noting his many talents of being a provider, an entrepreneur, and prioritizing family. Reflecting on how valuable family is to him now, Que demonstrates the inextricable tie between his sense of self-worth and these aspects of internalized manhood. Caleb, similarly, received maternal messages about men and masculinity that sought to undo the intensity of his father’s mental illness. As noted in Chapter IV, he spoke directly about mental images of his grandfather based on the stories shared by his mother. This dynamic shows how the mother of the Black son makes up for the deficits in her environment by traveling into the unconscious past to provide a paternal object. This dynamic illustrates a different kind of maternal environment created for the Black child than that espoused by Winnicott; rather, this environment is actively equipped with paternal models of strength, agency, and compassion.

Ed and his mother’s narrative data show a somewhat different use of psychic identifications. On one hand, she communicated the need for him to be different than the men in her life, including her brother and father. Ed remembers vividly accounts in which his mother communicated memories of her brother’s poor choices to dissuade him from

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making similar mistakes. His decision to pursue college, for instance, was influenced by his desire to fulfill his mother’s wishes of not being like these men. On a more unconscious level, on the other hand, Opal used her son to reconnect to her brother in fantasy. Ed’s feelings of being the “precious gold” son reflects the role assigned to him to be an idealized version of his uncle.

Even more compelling about Ed’s deceased uncle, this psychic loss allowed for a constant but unconscious communication to occur between Ed and his mother. As Fromm (2006) noted about the intrapsychic dynamics of trauma, the memory of his uncle allowed them to return to an earlier moment of a shared state of mind. In many ways, Ed seems to harbor the pain felt by his mother over this loss. Her relationship to other men, especially Ed’s father, also communicated a level of psychic pain that she felt. “Don’t be like him, be better than him,” was a message Ed remembers hearing that implied an experience of hurt. Endangerment messages of this sort function as codes communicating unconscious pain. It induced in Ed a sadness that, in some way, belonged to his mother’s past that forever connects them. In this way, his depression honors his mother.

Umar’s relationship to his uncle shares this same quality, and Teresa’s allowance of David in her son’s life speaks to this transmission of particular psychic states. As siblings, David and Teresa knew one another in ways unlike any other person in both their lives. Together as children, they lived the terror of being displaced when their mother died and the abuse at the hands of their paternal aunts and uncles. He knew of her most hurt and injured parts, which appeared to become split-off self-object representations concealed by religion. David represented the truest aspects of her life and affective states.

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David’s adult life could not have been any more different than the upstanding and structured life Teresa and her husband created for Umar. Yet, she allowed David to bond with her son. This bonding created an unconscious communication of Teresa’s care and concern for her brother that Umar digested. Teresa’s internal representation of David also exemplified realities of the world that Teresa knew but struggled to communicate to her children—the ugly, dirty, painful reality of her inner world that needed to be projected onto David to be tolerated. Similar to Grier and Cobbs’ (1968) depiction of the “bad nigger,” David embodied much of Teresa’s pain about the world. He allowed expression of these feelings as well as a transmission of knowledge to Umar. Umar’s love for David, in turn, communicated an acceptance and love for those split-off parts of his mother.

Through his uncle, he also loved his mother.

Umar played an active role in this dynamic in that through David, he was able to interact with pieces of his mother. David was a gift from Teresa to Umar in the same way that Scotty was a gift from Opal to Ed. The resurrection of these lost objects allowed the sons to know intimately parts of their mother’s psychic lives that no other person could have told. It also allowed the sons to care for split-off parts of their mothers, as Ed worked to accommodate his mother’s wish for him to be the idealized version of Scotty.

Caleb worked to fulfill his mother’s memories of her father’s lost legacy. Que worked to protect his mother as his grandfather once did. Connor complied with his mother’s safety rules to quell her anxiety. Such elements illustrate how maternal messages of endangerment in many ways communicate to sons their mother’s psychic needs that, in turn, foster caretaking relationships. Even today, each son spoke about ways that he actively looked after his mother.

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The narrative data above illustrate the active and dynamic nature of psychic identifications through maternal messages of endangerment, including how they allow mothers to (a) share parts of their past lives with their sons, (b) share split-off parts of themselves with their sons, (c) forge symbolic and unspeakable connections between themselves and their sons, and lastly, (d) create spaces in which the sons can care for their mother’s psychic needs. In the same way that Winnicott postulated there being no infant without its mother, the participants in this study show that no mother can manage her psychic needs without her child’s assistance.

Maternal messages of endangerment as connections: internalized maternal voices and presence.

It has been discussed above that beginning in the womb, children internalize their mother’s intrapsychic worlds, forever becoming linked in unconscious ways. This merged state of union is carried into adult life, offering the human subject an internalized sense of security. Mahler (1965, 1968) termed this process object constancy whereby the infant, by about 24 months of age, develops an internal representation of the mother’s love that soothes and comforts in times of distress. The developing child, thus, becomes less dependent on the mother’s physical presence because of this lasting intrapsychic connection. This connection was heard in the narrative data of all five male participants.

Bringing to life this idea, the recent video recording of George Floyd’s last words offers a unique and vivid portrayal of how interwoven the mother’s presence is to the intrapsychic life of her son. In the final 8 minutes and 46 seconds of his life, as he slowly died of

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suffocation from the weight of Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee on his neck, he utters the following last words: It's my face man I didn't do nothing serious man please please please I can't breathe please man please somebody please man I can't breathe I can't breathe please man can't breathe, my face just get up I can't breathe please I can't breathe shit I will I can't move Mama Mama I can't

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my knee my nuts I'm through I'm through I'm claustrophobic my stomach hurt my neck hurts everything hurts some water or something please please I can't breathe officer don't kill me they gon' kill me man come on man I cannot breathe I cannot breathe they gon' kill me they gon' kill me I can't breathe I can't breathe please sir please

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please please I can't breathe.

While much of Floyd’s agony comes from the obvious pain of the assault, he is also heard pleading for the emotional comfort of his mother who died some two years ago.

This level of communication existed on another realm of consciousness; an intrapsychic state shared between the two. As he moves in and out of this state of mind, calling attention to his pain and facing the realization that he will die, he demonstrates Sullivan’s (1953) thought about the interpersonal field to which the human subject is forever tied.

Floyd regresses back to infancy in this moment—the infant who comes to depend on omnipotence of the primary maternal preoccupation that predicts and provides for his needs. He cannot see himself outside this preoccupation, as they are again merged in his greatest distress. Floyd’s final words illuminate this study’s findings that mothers and their children are forever tied in unconscious ways.

The narrative data suggest this same type of intrapsychic bonding between the sons and mothers interviewed, and each son alluded to possessing an internalized maternal voice to which he has always responded in some form or fashion. It must be restated that this idea of internal object representation of the mother is a process that is filtered through the infant’s mind, his fantasies, and intrapsychic needs. Klein (1952) elucidates this point, noting that object relations encompass pieces of past figures grounded in the infant’s perception of the internal and external world. She writes, Altogether, in the young infant's mind every external experience is interwoven with his phantasies and on the other hand every phantasy contains elements of actual experience, and it is only by analysing the transference situation to its depth that we

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are able to discover the past both in its realistic and phantastic aspects (p. 436).

While Ed felt loved and nurtured by his mother, for instance, he also internalized aspects of a constant maternal critique that shaped his thoughts about himself. The impatience he felt from Opal has become an impatience within himself, as he asserted, “I always thought something was wrong with me.” In other ways, conversely, he internalized the specialness his mother expressed about him. Ed’s current situation of vacillating between depressed feelings and aspirations mirrors these divergent maternal voices that are a part of his internal dialogue.

Internalizations of maternal comfort.

Several of the men suggested that their mothers were internalized in a way that comforted the terrifying anticipations of racism. In this way, maternal messages of endangerment acted as assurances of protection from their mothers. Caleb, for example, remembers his mother’s predictions that White people would be intimidated by his knowledge, and consequently, would work against him. Connor, similarly, heard from Marva that while his White peers would befriend him, they would never truly understand his experience as a man of color. Such maternal warnings prepared these men for what was imagined, and more importantly, protected them from what Reik (1948) theorized as the paralyzing shock of trauma. This comforting act of preparation also serves a larger role in the closed system of regulation in that it offers the young men the illusion of control over their environment. Again, the mother of the Black son seeks to compensate for the limitations of her son’s environment.

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As noted above, Patricia’s approach to preparing Que for endangerment was less prescriptive and more educational than some of the other mothers, especially Marva and Opal. She taught him that when danger arose, control could be gained by practicing certain behaviors. When he failed at these tasks, the focus became learning from his mistakes and planning for the next situation. In addition to being comforted by his mother’s patient and problem-solving approach, Que internalized the content of her maternal messages. Using knowledge as his mother taught him, he found comfort in race theory that helped to distance him from intolerable emotions during overwhelming situations. Moreover, this knowledge fostered a sense of agency that became an essential ingredient to the self-object constellation populating his internal world.

Umar internalized something similar from his mother, Teresa. As detailed in Chapter IV, she quietly facilitated a relationship between her brother and son that allowed him to access different parts of herself as well as the world around him. He saw through this relationship that the world could offer things outside the loving manner in which he was raised. There was a flexibility and freedom to this maternal message that Umar internalized and used to embrace the many parts of himself. It allowed him to see diversity and protected him from seeing himself as anything or anybody less important than his White counterparts.

Contradictory maternal identifications.

In many ways, maternal messages of endangerment illuminated a host of contradictory maternal identifications that the sons had to manage and accommodate. Ed’s narrative data suggest that he experienced his mother as nurturer and protector as well as

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overwhelmed critic. Consider the struggle over his emotions for example. During times of distress in which he felt validated for feeling angry, he wrestled with the expression of emotion, recalling maternal warnings about the danger of his feelings. “Watch your anger, it’s not worth it,” his protective object mother seems to say. Ed also knows the overwhelmed mother who was so consumed by his needs for safety that she became deaf to less imminent needs. Illustrative here is that because a mother’s energy and resources are finite, maternal messages of endangerment result in some form of sacrifice.

Connor alluded to several internal mothers with whom he loved and felt compelled to obey. Most dominant was the warm and caring mother who predicted his needs. As the environment changed with his age; however, he experienced her differently—this difference was most notable during his adolescence when he started high school. Connor felt the loving attuned mother become irrational at times, profusely demanding that he acknowledge the dangers in his environment. This latter figure communicated a need for care, which explains his worries about her state of mind and commitment to her emotional well-being.

Caleb introjected many different internal object mothers to which he felt loyal. His mother, Helen, was internalized as safe, secure and reliable. The provision of his most basic needs as well as emotional comfort created the secure attachment Bowlby (1988) describes as essential for the healthy child. However, there were aspects of his mother that caused great anxiety. Caleb possesses a mental picture of her as instigator, causing controversy and doubt that undoubtedly leads to conflict. This internal mother distrusts happiness and believes that it will eventually lead to disappointment. Caleb’s data show both a love for his secure mother and a resentment toward this later maternal figure. His

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insecure feelings about himself seem to inhabit space between these two conflicting internal objects.

From the surface, it appears that Umar internalized one prevailing experience of his mother—that of nurturer and caretaker. His data suggest otherwise; however, as outlined in the above discussion of the interactive relationship between him and his mother’s internal world. Umar experienced his mother’s counter-identification to Blackness as ego dystonic; it became indigestible in the face of what he experienced from his community and the attention for which he longed. He laments about his experiences of race growing up, I liked going to the Parsons with mom, it was so different than St. Louis. We could tell that in St. Louis, things weren’t right. Black people had to live on this side and Whites on the other side. I didn’t want to live like that, you know?

Thus, there developed an internalized mother who is avoidant to the realities of the time—someone disconnected, which explains Umar’s attraction to his uncle. There was a perception of his mother as someone in denial, which fueled his anger about what was lost in cultural identity. His thoughts about the Black church and what he felt was missed from not having been involved in a community of Black people speak to this frustration.

The recreation of intimate spaces reminiscent of childhood.

A majority of the male participants talked about maternal messages of endangerment creating loving and intimate spaces with their mothers. In addition to functioning as a defense or a way of maintaining psychic identifications, it facilitated the recreation of a peculiar part of the mother-Black son past. Three of the sons spoke directly about this

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recreation, Connor and Que, while others experienced a subtler bonding experience.

Connor expressed that he found his mother’s maternal messages, even those feeling maniacal at times, as acts of her love for him. Moreover, sitting down with her to discuss his endangerment reminded him of the special bond they shared during his childhood.

From this perspective, Connor found an accommodating way to accept his mother’s anxiety by experiencing it as something loving and affectionate. This process speaks to the defensive act of splitting the mother into good and bad objects. As Klein (1952) alluded to some seventy years ago, “The infant’s relative security is based on turning the good object into an ideal one as a protection against the dangerous and persecuting object” (p. 49). My earlier observation noted in Chapter IV of not feeling truly connected to Connor reflects his tendency to deal with only the good, disavowing all other aspects of reality—a part-object dynamic.

Que talked at length about maternal messages of endangerment compensating for his mother’s lack of emotional expression. Outside of safety conversations, she rarely verbalized affectionate feelings and was much more likely to act out her love through giving. Sitting down and talking, with sole attention placed on his needs and experiences, created moments from the past. They were also moments in which he felt treated as an adult and could share intimate parts of himself with his mother. Both Connor and Que’s experiences highlight the interpersonal field about which Sullivan (1953) speaks. It also captures well the mother’s creative efforts to maintain a supportive and age-appropriate maternal environment that both protects and nurtures her developing child. The mother of the Black son constructs sophisticated ways to prioritize safety while integrating

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affection. In this way, maternal messages of endangerment become an essential vehicle in the development of the Black male subject’s personality.

Ed spoke directly about the differences between the fun-loving childhood his mother fostered and the sense of endangerment she encouraged during his adolescence, bringing to light memories of the affectionate past. These moments were, at times, recreated in the empathetic tone used during certain conversations. Reflecting on times in which she forbade his anger, he remembered her not only validating his emotions, but soothing him with reminders of her belief in his abilities. “Don’t be like him, we don’t need him,” he remembers her asserting in response to his father’s absence. With endangerment messages, Opal used this same comforting tone to dissuade Ed’s reactions. These moments became recreations of the past that allowed for the restoration of childhood in young adulthood. As Connor explained, “I really needed [another safety talk] as a refresher.”

The creation and recreation of mother’s psychic life.

Maternal messages of endangerment become a vehicle for the mother’s psychic past to be played out with her son. Unconsciously casting her son into a role that reignites the past, or fantasies and wishes about the past, the mother preserves her most significant feelings. Fromm (2006) notes that these enactments are unspeakable and exists without symbols, language, or consciousness. Nearly all the mother and son participants experienced this recreation on some level, but it was Marva-Connor, Opal-Ed, and Patricia-Que who spoke most directly to this dynamic.

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Marva stated during her interview that her father spent quality time with her despite not living in the same home. She remembers serious conversations in which he shared stories and values that went on to shape her understanding of herself. Connor now feels the seriousness of these past conversations in safety talks with his mother. In some way, he has become the young Marva hungry for her father’s affection. Connor unconsciously understands his mother’s psychic need for this reconnection to the past and accommodates it to ensure getting the most satisfied and fulfilled mother available to him.

Patricia talked about a similar history and the terrible loss of her father at the tender age of 13. With Que’s assistance, she created in fantasy the relationship she desired and possibly would have had if her father would have survived. Her patience, empathy, and compassion shown to Que was her recollection of her father. Teaching Que about how to manage situations was a reflection of her father’s teaching her how to maintain his business to avoid the White man. Interestingly, Que uses race theory as an intellectualization defense to manage his emotions today. Maintaining this psychic tie for Patricia keeps her forever connected to her father, and this connection forever shapes Que’s standard of manhood for himself.

Opal created with Ed the bond she wished she had with her brother, Scotty. This was no ordinary bond; however, but rather the fantasy of what she imagined his life to me— an idealized version of him. It also incorporated all the men who had disappointed her.

As Ed noted, he was treated like precious gold, reflecting pieces of Opal’s internal world built on counter-identifications of men she experienced. Ed sought to accommodate his

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mother’s unconscious needs while sacrificing his own. An empty hole devoid of life resulted for him.

Helen, lastly, created an unbreakable bond between her most cherished internal object male figures using her sons. Through explicit and implicit ways, Caleb came to know how much his mother was loved by these people. Moreover, Helen created in the present with her son fantasies about the past. Analogous to Freud’s (1914) repetition compulsion in which there is “the desire to return to an earlier state of things” (p. 150), she became the father to Caleb that she desired as a child. This parent was predictive in every imaginable way, protecting her from unforeseen dangers at the hands of others. Her comment to Caleb, “You tell me what they said and I’ll tell you what they meant,” reinforced a message she wished she had been taught early in life. Maternal messages of endangerment became for her a way to rewrite her past using Caleb’s life. Similar to Ed’s experience, this agenda foreclosed his sense of authenticity, relegating him to prioritize her needs. Such a False Self is left to wonder and search for truth.

Summation.

In summary, the current study sought to understand the lived experiences of a small sample of Black men impacted by maternal messages of endangerment living in U.S. urban areas. To answer this question, the current climate of racism and the individual lives of mothers were explored. The findings reveal that the mother of a Black son parents within a culture of harm, entrapping her in a world of paradoxes. As a result, she becomes a juggler—she must love her son yet prepare him for harm, nurture yet expedite his maturity, expose him to differences yet teach him to be paranoid of others. It is for

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these reasons that the maternal environment for the Black son differs vastly from that provided by other mothers. In contrast to the patient environment other mothers may create, it is an active process designed to compensate for the deficiencies of her community.

To offer the nutrients for her son’s survival in the absence of physically present men, she summons psychic figures from her psychic past to feed her child’s imago needs.

Faced with terrifying societal realities, her demands on her son become multidirectional, causing a sense of contradiction. In one direction, she expedites his maturation to prepare him for the attacks that may come during his early adolescence. In the other direction, she nurtures him and emphasizes his specialness. She needs him to know that he is different regardless of how people will treat him.

The son, too, plays an active role in his mother’s unconscious life, as her internal object world is shared through maternal messages of endangerment. He comes to know her intimately through psychic identifications from the past and develops an astute attunement to her most primitive needs. He cares for her, assuming responsibility for her happiness, while denying many of his own needs for stability. His mother is forever tied to his understanding of himself, as he comes to unconsciously interact and respond to her internal object world. This psychic milieu becomes an essential space by which the sonmother pair communicate needs too intolerable to speak. It also provides the son internalized maternal comforts available for his use during distress, creating less dependence on the physical presence of his mother.

The data suggest that maternal messages of endangerment function to recreate affectionate moments from the son’s childhood in a way that empathetically prioritizes

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his safety while comforting him. In the face of a hurried maturation, he longs to return to the warm and cozy comforts of the early maternal environment, and he works diligently to ensure his mother’s continued provision of such care. His False Self takes on this responsibility of ensuring access to these loving parts of his mother, making huge sacrifices to his sense of self. In an internal world dominated by the closed system of regulation, beliefs about endangerment provide the Black son a way to understand himself. It creates rules to follow that lessen the formidable dangers of the shock of the unknown.

The psychic lives of mothers in this study were shown to be played out with their sons in maternal messages of endangerment. As Dalal (2006) wrote, the attitudes of the caregiver are severely constrained by the discourses that have formed the caregiver’s self” (p. 146). Her deepest unconscious desires and wishes in tandem with actual experiences of the world create a vision of parenting that meets the goals of both her child and her internal world. While Fraiberg Adelson, & Shapiro (1975) posit that the traumatized mother is haunted by her inner world, the data here suggest that the mother of the Black son is actively assisted by her inner world in creating the safest possible life for her child.

Because maternal messages of endangerment are dynamic and serve many functions, they impact the Black son’s experience in a multitude of ways. They provide a template through which he comes to understand his role in a world that is dangerous, affording him an illusion of control over uncertainty. Reflecting his mother’s dilemma of protecting and nurturing her child, he is often confused by these messages, which disturbs his previous understanding of himself as being accepted and lovable. An adaptive paranoid

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defense is summoned to manage this new reality. Meanwhile, the son begins to feel how important his safety is to his mother, and he thus prioritizes her worry to maintain her love. In this way, messages of endangerment become a milieu in which love between mother and son is shared. His mother’s psychic life is interwoven into messages about his safety, and he is casted into roles that meet her earliest and most primitive needs.

Maternal messages of endangerment serve both mother and son.

Implications and recommendations.

As noted above, the current study occurred during the height of police brutality targeting Black men being filmed and broadcasted in U.S. cities, spawned some of the biggest, global and most prolific protest demonstrations in modern day history. The most salient question posed by protestors: Do Black lives matter as much as those of other colors? During 2019, for example, conservative estimates suggest more than 25 unarmed Black men were killed by police (Stellino, 2020). Amid these disturbing times, this study helps to frame the discussion of Black men’s experiences of race and gender, as maternal messages of endangerment have a four-prong function, serving as (1) natural human responses to harm, (2) psychological defenses against the unknown, (3) psychic identifications between son and mother’s internal object worlds, and (4) a key part of personality development for the Black human subject.

More specifically, the findings of this study have far reaching implications for clinical work with the Black male patient, psychodynamic theory, societal interventions, and future research efforts around Black lives. It should be duly noted; however, that such implications and recommendations are based on the majority of cases analyzed and are,

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by no means, attempts to generalize the findings. Rather, this information is meant to serve as a guide to understanding the unique, diverse, and subjective needs of Black men.

Clinical implications.

Many have asserted the intrapsychic challenges facing the Black human subject in psychotherapy (Vaughans, 2016; Thomson, 1987; Leary, 1997b; Gump, 2010), and data from this study support these suppositions. Beyond these factors; however, I remind the reader of the theoretical assumptions anchoring this study; namely that (1) the human subject is a participant in his social and cultural environment and is constantly being shaped and influenced by relations with others; (2) societal and institutional systems have historically violated the rights of the Black human subject, resulting in generations of social, interpersonal, and psychic harm; and lastly, (3) maternal messages must be understood from the dynamic social, historical, political, and cultural times in which the mother lives. Contrary to classical thoughts about the human psyche, these factors are embedded in and intertwined with one’s subjectivity.

Addressing the clinical implications to the data noted above, I turn to the dynamic nature of any mind, but especially that of the Black patient, to convey the need to understand his individual and subjective needs. Any other approach not focused here, including those aimed at the provision of skills and interventions at the expense of an exploration of the subject’s interpersonal and intrapsychic life, is limited. As the data illustrated the complex relationship between the subject’s mind, object relations, and relationship to others, interventions must be equally complex and layered to adequately address therapeutic needs.

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Each male participant expressed that his experience of being Black in the U.S. required some degree of conscious anxiety to manage. This finding is consistent with major authorities on the topic (Grier & Cobb, 1968; Chestang, 1972; Fanon, 1967; Hunter & Davis, 1992; Franklin, 1986, 1987; Du Bois, 1968; Davids, 1986). Whether it was the slight panic of Que seeing a police officer in his rear view mirror, Caleb getting a lower than expected grade on his exam, or Umar’s notice of the subtle stare of suspicion from the clerk in a department store, the notion that the experience could be related to one’s gender and race can easily overwhelm the mind. With the added experience of maternal messages of endangerment from one’s earliest and most significant relationships, the Black man develops a way of existing in the world that emphasizes his immediate safety.

What is to be avoided at all costs is the universal fear and shock germane to physical harm, rejection, abandonment, and object loss.

Because the Black male patient is as diverse as any human subject presenting for treatment, clinicians entrusted with his care must first be curious about his earliest childhood experiences and the historical experiences of his closest caregivers. As Fromm (2006) indicated, the therapist must know about the historical events in his patient’s familial past to understand what situations may be reenactments of the unspoken past.

Vaughans (2016) advises the clinician to “listen for phantom voices from different generations in the patient under treatment (p. 284). Specific mechanisms employed to defend against the terror of uncertainty, additionally, is essential data. Using an approach designed for exploration, the therapist must be continuously curious about the Black man’s explicit and implicit actions.

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Detected from the data and noted by Grier and Cobbs (1968), this male subject develops an adaptive cultural paranoia designed to protect, and this must not be confused with the positive symptoms of a psychotic disorder. Rather, the clinician must explore reasons around the patient’s challenge in trusting reality, including real threats occurring in his community. Important to remember, also, many perceptions of danger may be linked to intrapsychic experiences with others, such as Ed’s internalization of Opal’s internal object world. Approaches aimed at challenging and reversing these thoughts may leave the patient feeling invalidated and disorganized. More helpful to the patient is a focus on bringing to awareness his alignment to thoughts connected to experiences with others and ways to integrate these thoughts into his conscious mind.

To the novice clinician, the Black male patient may seem to contradict himself. He may harbor feelings of hatred toward White people, and at the same time, long for acceptance from this same group. Fanon (1967) points to the historical elements of slavery that demonstrate how Black slaves felt safest when exhibiting deference to their owners, and over many generations introjected the supremacy and idealization of the White race. On some level, as Fanon further posits, the Black patient harbors unconscious wishes to be White; and as Eng and Han (2000) underscore, assimilation is not possible otherwise and inevitably leads to loss. Such contradictions point to the many parts of the patient’s personality operating in a system that has had to reconcile overwhelming internal and external realities. Therefore, the clinician must be steadfast in helping him understand these many aspects of himself while managing the associated feelings of guilt and shame. This patient must come to see himself as complex and dynamic—and relational approaches advocating the idea of self-states may be particularly helpful.

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As the data illustrate, Black male patients may be particularly prone to developing a False Self aimed at accommodating the needs of the primary caretaker at the expense of his own sense of individuality. The True Self, as Winnicott (1963) saw it, requires a primitive level of trust that for this patient has often been comprised. Because his mother has felt compelled to expedite his maturation, he has more than likely missed out on the comforts of childhood and early adolescence. His environment, as Goff et al. (2014) detail, also perceives him as older and less innocent. The Black male patient, consequently, may possess an inner child ready to play, and the sensitive clinician must provide this space without the smallest modicum of judgement.

Play is at the heart of exploration and requires a trust in one’s environment in which the patient can permit himself to let go and be. Bollas (1992) described it in the following way, In play the subject releases the idiom of himself to the field of objects, where he is then transformed by the structure of that experience, and will bear the history of that encounter in the unconscious. To be a character is to enjoy the risk of being processed by the object—indeed, to seek objects, in part, in order to be metamorphosed, as one ‘goes through’ change by going through the processional moment provided by any object’s integrity (p. 59).

The clinician is challenged with fostering this sort of interpersonal space for the patient, but to do so in a piecemeal fashion that validates his resistance. Within this space, the therapist becomes the reliable object that must survive the patient’s array of emotional states without enacting their own feelings. Winnicott (1949) notes that the

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patient kills off the therapist, and in the therapist’s survival, the patient allows himself to love.

For those clinicians trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy, caution must be taken when exploring the patient’s sense of family and feelings of loyalty toward that family.

As the data illustrated, care for one’s family has ties to the Black male subject’s most basic understanding of himself and his ties to the internal object world of his caregivers.

In many ways, thus, his self-esteem may be steeped in the provision of this care to his family. Also demonstrated from the data are the unique and psychically merged bonds existing between many Black sons and their mothers. Classical approaches emphasizing individuality over family loyalty and dependence problematizes a cultural element to which many Black Americans feel connected. As noted in Alan Roland’s (2003) personal reflective work with patients from around the world, “Euro-Americans do not respond well to persons being very dependent on them, and do not experience it as enhancing their esteem as Asians would” (p. 294).

Because the maternal environment recreated by mothers of Black sons is active, the clinician may have to, at times, mirror this energy. Remembering Ed, Connor, and Que’s narratives, maternal messages of endangerment symbolized acts of love, and thus, emphasized care in doing over feeling. Classical approaches of long pauses and silence could inadvertently cause anxiety and the feeling of maternal neglect. The clinician’s explorations of what the patient needs at different times privileges his subjectivity, and as has been shown throughout this study, this subjectivity has often been sacrificed for the sake of his safety. Fluid approaches attuned to the many parts of the patient’s self helps to foster a sense of safety and create the necessary holding environment for more

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exploratory, insight-oriented work. This approach might also involve supportive interventions during particularly anxious moments, such as grounding and relaxation exercises designed to provide immediate relief during overwhelming times.

It is likely that the Black male presenting for psychotherapy has unconsciously splitoff his anger because of messages about its danger. It may be completely repressed, projected onto others, or turned inwardly and symbolized in what Grier and Cobbs (1968) describe as the “bad nigger.” Regardless of its form, this split results in anger being experienced as ego-dystonic, causing feelings of extreme guilt and anxiety. Such feelings play out in the transference and enactments, making this patient vulnerable to premature terminations. The informed clinician is best suited to follow Winnicott’s (1949) advice: to survive without acting out. This survival may include expanding the frame to include more flexibility around missed sessions and contact between sessions. Winnicott notes about the therapist in this position symbolizing the mother, The analyst must be prepared to bear strain without expecting the patient to know anything about what he is doing, perhaps over a long period of time. To do this he must be easily aware of his own fear and hate. He is in the position of the mother of an infant un-born or newly born. Eventually, he ought to be able to tell his patient what he has been through on the patient’s behalf, but an analysis may never get as far as this. There may be too little good experience in the patient’s past to work on (p. 353).

To adequately accomplish these tasks, the therapist must be well insulated against the attacks of the patient’s mind. Such insulation requires a tripartite system of consultation, training, and practice to establish and maintain boundaries, access personal spaces for support and expression, and engage with a professional community to help foster

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continual growth and understanding. Because of the patient’s split-off anger projected onto the therapist, one’s own therapy becomes essential to manage counter-transferential reactions. Winnicott (1949) writes about this matter, “However much [the psychoanalyst] loves his patients he cannot avoid hating them, and hearing them, and the better he knows this the less will hate and fear be the motive determining what he does to his patients.” (p.

69)

Theoretical implications.

Among the most salient of conceptual implications derived from the data involves the issue of development. Throughout the within-case and across case syntheses, it became clear that within a culture of endangerment with historical roots tied to harm based on one’s race and gender, the maternal environment follows a different trajectory than that for those not facing such conditions. As such, the mother of the Black son is not the good enough mother described by Winnicott who patiently prepares her son for separation.

Rather, she has a much different task in that she has to accelerate his development to prepare him for a cruel and embattled society. This mother not only protects her child, but she supplements the environment to which he is dependent, adding pieces from both her internal object world and present world. She parents by continuously raising his awareness to potential dangers existing on societal, institutional, and communal levels while teaching him to suppress emotions that could lead to danger. Denying her maternal instinct, she turns away from the desire to coddle her son to save his life. Implied here is the notion of endangerment being a necessary and inevitable component of the Black male’s personality development.

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To understand the Black male subject’s development, and its deviation from that described in theory, one must understand the unique and dutiful maternal environment provided him. Unlike the good enough mother’s focus on her child’s changing developmental needs, the mother of the Black son has the additional concern of the environment’s changing demands on her child. Thus, anxiety for the Black male subject becomes a built-in response, an unconscious reflex, to the maternal messages of endangerment he has received on some level throughout his life. The False Self evident in all the male participants is, to some degree, integral to his experience. He must accommodate his mother’s needs to see him as endangered, and consequently, to keep him safe. This process inevitably results in a sacrifice of the self that breeds sadness, a sense of emptiness, and loss. Each male subject will develop a different way to defend against this reality.

Given the history of trauma and endangerment impacting the Black American community, it is surprising that more has not been done to understand the developmental sequelae germane to Black children. This is especially true of the psychoanalytic community that touts its expertise in understanding, processing, and making meaning of human suffering. Why is there not more written and published (as well as taught in institutions and presented at conferences) about interpersonal approaches that integrate the influences of society on the Black human subject’s psyche? With nearly century long access and exposure to theorists like Fanon, Sullivan, Dalal, and Chestang, why has the analytic community remained mute on topics of this sort, especially during socially relevant times like the present? Answers to these questions and many more illustrate the

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overwhelming need for curiosity about the Black male subject from a theoretical perspective.

Social and policy implications.

While an overwhelming finding of this study demonstrates the multifaceted function of endangerment and its maternal use in the development of Black men, I return to a central point of this study highlighted in Chapter I: Black men are factually endangered in U.S. society evidenced by the increased risks of physical harm, arrest and imprisonment, financial exploitation, and death based on gender and race. As such, policy must always begin with efforts to even this imbalance. With increased resources and decreased harm, maternal messages of endangerment to Black men are less needed.

Because the data suggest that endangerment plays a defensive role, it becomes a psychological aid to mothers managing anxiety about the unknown. As such, the Black man is taught to fear, on both conscious and unconscious levels, parts of himself, segments of society and institutions. It was also found that mothers work to compensate for the deficits in their communities by creating safe and inspiring psychological environments for their sons. Important to note, these gaps were not mere perceptions from mothers, but visible absences of positive male role models. With these findings in mind, there is a need for greater community participation in restoring models of manhood. The 2016 Obama Administration’s initiative, My Brother’s Keeper, serves as a wonderful example of this type of effort. Using his influence, the former President facilitated collaborations between non-profit organizations and for-profit businesses to offer employment opportunities to low skilled Black and Latino men. State and local

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chapters of this program targeting communities of color would help to make up for such deficits.

As of the writing of this chapter in July 2020, the state of police reform is currently in progress as Black Lives Matter activists urge for a defunding of police departments.

However, as the data of this study suggest about Black men, perception becomes reality that inspires action. Psychologists Pettigrew and Tropp (2006) found that inter-group contact significantly lowers prejudicial attitudes and beliefs among people of different backgrounds. Therefore, programs aimed at challenging these perceptions through relationship building efforts offer young men a different experience that goes on to influence thinking.

Research implications.

The findings of the current study suggest numerous areas for future research. To begin, the small sample size of five mother-Black son dyads limits its generalizability and steps to increase this pool may lead to results of a more far reaching understanding of maternal messages of endangerment. The study’s scope excluded analysis of the mother’s data, her information provided a contextual milieu or backdrop to better understanding the son’s life. Efforts to explore her inner psychological world and maternal experiences would enhance the data, adding precision to the understanding of the primary maternal environment for the Black male child.

These limitations leave a host of unanswered questions about the Black man’s lived experiences of having been influenced by maternal messages of endangerment. From the perspective of development, endangerment appears to be a necessary part of the Black

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male child’s maturation and emotional survival in this society. However, some maternal messages left some men feeling agentic, while other forms induced feelings of entrapment. Discovering the nuances around these two types of feelings is worthy of further exploration and research.

Another question left remaining from the data involves the degree to which Black men feel endangered, as the data suggest a spectrum of this feeling. It seems fair to assume that the feeling of endangerment is less static, and more responsive to internal and external stimuli at any given time. More research, however, is needed to examine this dynamic and to explore the multiple forms of endangerment for the Black male subject.

In summary, it seems critical for future researchers to think about this topic from more than the typical stance of victimhood. As the data has shown, maternal messages of endangerment serve many functions and communicate much about the mother-Black son bond. The fields of clinical social work and other social science disciplines are encouraged to see the Black male subject as dynamic and instrumental in the coconstruction of his life experiences. Together, he and his mother work to create a world for him that is safe, and more research is needed to understand the unintended consequences of this creation.

Personal implications.

As noted in Chapter I, understanding my life was the driving force behind this research endeavor. At the core of this project about maternal messages of endangerment, specifically, I wanted to understand the influence of mothers on their son’s understanding of themselves. I had in mind my own life and the amazing woman who raised me.

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Gleaning over the data collected in the past 6 months, I am walking away from this project feeling better about myself. I feel validated after hearing the narratives of five amazing men. I belong to a group of affected others who struggle and wrestle with the unknown. The recent upsurge of violence toward Black men pierces a wound in me like it does in other Black men. We all hurt in our own idiosyncratic ways. Compassion, grace, and understanding are forever needed from our observing egos. From this project, I know that I am not alone. In this togetherness, the suffering is made a little easier.

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Appendix A Recruitment Flyer

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Understanding Maternal Communications of Endangerment for Black Men My name is Huey Hawkins, LCSW and I am a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute for Clinical Social Work in Chicago. I am working on a dissertation as part of the requirements to earn my degree.

The dissertation is titled: “Maternal Messages of Endangerment for Black Men: A Psychoanalytic Case Study.”

Interested participants: Please call, text, or email me to schedule an initial phone call to be screened. Referrals for psychological and support services can also be provided for participants.      

10 participants who meet the criteria below are needed to participate: Adults over age 21; Identify as a black/African-American man raised by his mother; Is willing and able to meet for 2-3, 2 hour interviews; Is comfortable being audio taped; Is willing to ask his mother to be interviewed; and.

Is psychologically minded, reflective and comfortable discussing personal experiences related to race.

There are no costs to participating besides time and travel!

All information will remain confidential and identities disguised!

Contact me today: (314) 882-6840 hhawkins@icsw.edu Huey Hawkins, Jr., LCSW Phone: 314-882-6840 Fax: 314-427-2303 E-mail: hhawkins@icsw.edu

Huey Hawkins, Jr., LCSW Phone: 314-882-6840 Fax: 314-427-2303 E-mail: hhawkins@icsw.edu

Huey Hawkins, Jr., LCSW Phone: 314-882-6840 Fax: 314-427-2303 E-mail: hhawkins@icsw.edu

Huey Hawkins, Jr., LCSW Phone: 314-882-6840 Fax: 314-427-2303 E-mail: hhawkins@icsw.edu

Huey Hawkins, Jr., LCSW Phone: 314-882-6840 Fax: 314-427-2303 E-mail: hhawkins@icsw.edu

Huey Hawkins, Jr., LCSW Phone: 314-882-6840 Fax: 314-427-2303 E-mail: hhawkins@icsw.edu

Huey Hawkins, Jr., LCSW Phone: 314-882-6840 Fax: 314-427-2303 E-mail: hhawkins@icsw.edu

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Appendix B Telephone Pre-Screening Interview and Script

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Telephone Pre-Screening Interview Script and Questions After a prospective participant makes contact with me expressing interest in participating, I will call them to conduct a brief telephone pre-screening interview. The purpose of this interview is to ensure that potential participants meet study and eligibility guidelines and criteria. The script below is the verbatim language that will be used on this call: “Hello, my name is Huey Hawkins, and I am a doctoral student at the Institute for Clinical Social Work in Chicago. I am working on the final part of the degree, the dissertation research project. My research will explore maternal message of endangerment for Black men. Overall, I am interested in how these messages influence his life. So, the research would involve talking to you and your mother.

Based on what you have heard so far, does this study sound like something you would be interested in?

[If answered no] I understand and appreciate your time. Thank you and goodbye.

[If answered yes] Great and thank you!

Before we move forward, there are a few things I need to confirm about your eligibility for this study. This information is just for me and your answers will not be shared with anyone else. Also, some of these questions may be sensitive in nature, so please forgive me in advance if it feels that way.

1. Are you an adult over the age of 21?

2. Do you identify as Black or African-American?

3. Are you willing to ask your mother to participate in the study?

4. Do you agree to be interviewed multiple times and audio-taped each time?

This study would include two to three two-hour interviews with each person, so I can get a thorough understanding of their experiences. The things I will be asking mothers about are (1) her son’s life from childhood to the present; (2) how it was raising him— personal experiences; and (3) things going on in the community that may have affected him.

For Black men, I will be asking about (1) his experiences of being raised by his mother; (2) his feelings of being endangered in his community; (3) his experiences as a Black man interacting with others in the community, such as law enforcement officer and

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authority figures; and (4) messages he remembers receiving from his mother about his safety and/or well-being as a Black man.

Based on what you have heard so far, is there anything about this study you feel would make you uncomfortable, emotionally vulnerable, or traumatized?

Do you feel you would be able to reflect on your experiences as a Black man/mother to a Black male?

Great, you seem to meet the criteria for participation. The next step is to schedule a meeting to review the informed consent process in detail and begin the interviews.”

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Appendix C Script for Informed Consent

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Script for Informed Consent

When the prospective participant arrives to the first interview meeting, the informed consent process will begin. This process will entail (1) an explanation of the study’s purpose, (2) reasons for and scholarly benefits of the study, (3) expectations of participants, (4) the data collection methodology process, (5) possible risks and benefits of participation, and (6) privacy and confidentiality procedures. Participants will be made clear that they will not receive financial compensation for participating, will have no costs except for travel, their information will be held strictly confidential and that they have the right to terminate the consent and stop the process at any time. The script below will be read aloud to the participant, and they will be asked to state their understanding of the consent. If they communicate an appropriate and clear understanding, and agree, they will sign the Informed Consent form to participate in the research.

“The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of Black men living in U.S. urban centers. Specifically, it will explore maternal messages of endangerment for these men. I aim to understand how maternal messages shape Black men’s lives. I am personally interested and motivated to study this topic because of my own experiences as a Black man raised by his mother. Despite the overwhelming injustices and disparities Black men experience in this country, few researchers have studied the experience of Black men being endangered. Much less research has addressed how maternal meanings impact this experience. This research could help mental health professionals understand and possibly better treat Black men and their families. This research may also add theory to the literature on Black male endangerment.

You will be asked to participate in 2-3, 90-120 minute interviews. I can meet you at my office at 7110 Oakland Avenue in Richmond Heights, MO or I can travel to a location more convenient for you, as long as it is quiet and private. If this is not feasible, interviews by Skype will be permitted. There are no financial benefits to this study.

Possible risks for participation in this study are not known at this time, but may include the inconvenience related to either travel, time spent on the interviews and/or having negative emotional reactions to the interviews themselves or learning of a family member’s response to interview questions. In the event that you experience negative responses to the interviews, appropriate referrals will be provided along with a debriefing that you and I will have. Furthermore, if you experience any such negative responses you do not have to continue in the study. You have the right to stop the

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interviews and withdraw your participation at any time. Outside of travel expenses, there are no known costs to participating.

All information shared will remain confidential. No identifying information will be included in the research and all data from the interviews will be kept in a locked filing cabinet at my office in Richmond Heights. The only people who have access to the raw data are myself, my committee members, and my senior analyst research consultant. The information that is shared, once complete, will be disguised to protect your confidentiality. Audio recordings and all documents related to the study will be password protected. After the mandatory 5-year post graduation period has been met, I will personally destroy the records by shredding all paper data and deleting all electronic data.”

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Appendix D Informed Consent

313 Leave box empty - For office use only

Institute for Clinical Social Work Research Information and Consent for Participation in Social Behavioral Research Unconscious Maternal Communications of Endangerment for Black Men: A Psychoanalytic Case Study I, , acting for myself agree to take part in the research entitled Unconscious Maternal Messages of Endangerment: A Psychoanalytic Case Study.

This work will be carried out by Huey Hawkins, LCSW under the supervision of Jennifer Tolleson, Ph.D. This work is sponsored by and conducted under the auspices of the Institute for Clinical Social Work; At Ro bert Morr is Cent er, 401 South State Street; Suite 822, Chicago, IL 60605; (312) 935-4232.

Purpose The purpose of this psychoanalytic case study is to understand and describe maternal messages of endangerment for Black men, and to describe how these messages influence the lives of a small sample of Black men raised in U.S. urban centers. The results of the study will be used to expand clinical social work theory and practice relating to the understanding of Black men and the maternally influenced experience of Black male endangerment. This dissertation document will be available online once completed and a journal article and/or book may be developed.

Procedures used in the study and duration Participants will be asked to participate in face-to-face in-depth interviews that are both semi-structured (i.e., open-ended questions leading to discussions) and flexible and intensive. Two to three interviews lasting no longer than two hours per interview are required. Each interview will be audio recorded and transcribed, and all audiotapes/recordings will be destroyed after transcription. Data from these interviews will be secured via password protected files and stored in locked file cabinets.

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Benefits While there are no tangible or financial benefits for participating in this study, participants may benefit in other ways. Such benefits include participants gaining the ability to share their stories regarding the topic of Black male endangerment. These experiences will likely expand clinical social work theory and practice interventions for those clinicians working with Black men and their families. As with many qualitative studies, there may also be unanticipated benefits to participants discussing their personal experiences of Black male endangerment, such as enhanced insights, self-awareness and self-realizations.

Costs The cost for participation is 4-6 hours of time for interviews and expenses for traveling to interview locations (i.e., gas and parking costs if meeting at an agreed upon location).

Possible Risks and/or Side Effects While all research involves some level of potential harm, the risks of this study involves the possibility of psychological discomfort or negative emotional responses when discussing and reflecting on your experiences or learning of the responses of your family member. This can include feeling vulnerable, exposed, angry, or anxious during interviews or later feeling hurt by the responses of your family member. I, as the researcher, will make every effort to create an interview setting that makes you feel safe and comfortable. Should these feelings arise; however, you, at any time, have the following rights: 

You have the right to refuse to answer any question asked of you for any reason;



You have the right to withdraw from the research project at any time;

Your safety and comfort is important! If you experience any of the feelings above or other feelings of discomfort during the interview process or thereafter, please let me know. I am happy to refer participants to professional colleagues who can help.

Privacy and Confidentiality Your privacy and confidentiality is a top priority of this study and your identifying information will be protected. All identifying information (i.e., names) will be disguised, as each participant will provide (or be assigned) an alias that will be used in any written publication. Each interview will be audiotaped and transcribed, and files from this process will be shared only with the dissertation committee members. All files will be password protected and kept on password protected computers. Any physical files will be maintained in a lock cabinet that only I, as the researcher, can access. Five years after graduating, I will destroy by shredding and deleting all paper and electronic records.

Selected sections of your data, without identifying information, will be shared with my

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dissertation committee members and senior analyst research consultant at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute.

Subject Assurances By signing this consent form, I agree to take part in this study. I have not given up any of my rights (my child’s rights) or released this institution from responsibility for carelessness.

I may cancel my consent and refuse to continue in this study (or take my child out of this study) at any time without penalty or loss of benefits. My relationship with the staff of the ICSW will not be affected in any way, now or in the future, if I refuse to take part, or if I begin the study and then withdraw.

If I have any questions about the research methods, I can contact Huey Hawkins, Jr. at (314) 882-6840, hhawkins@icsw.edu or Jennifer Tolleson, Ph.D. at (312) 935-4232, jtolleson@icsw.edu.

If I have any questions about my rights – or my child’s rights – as a research subject, I may contact Dr. John Ridings, Chair of Institutional Review Board; ICSW; At Ro bert Morr is Cent er, 401 South State Street; Suite 822, Chicago, IL 60605; irbchair@icsw.edu.

Signatures [All consent forms must be signed and dated. They must be explained to the participants and witnessed by the person who is explaining the procedure.]

I have read this consent form and I agree to take part in this study as it is explained in this consent form.

Signature of Participant

Date

I certify that I have explained the research to (Name of subject) and believe that they understand and that they have agreed to participate freely. I agree to answer any additional questions when they arise during the research or afterward.

Signature of Researcher Revised 14 Oct, 2015

Date

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Appendix E Interview Questions Guide

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FORM A DISSERTATION INTERVIEW GUIDE SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

(Mothers) 1.

Can you help me wonder about your thoughts about this topic, Black male endangerment?

2.

What comes to mind when you think about your life as your son’s mother.

3.

Help me understand your thoughts about danger and your son’s life.

(Sons) 1. What was it like as a Black boy or young man being raised by your mother in this community, then and now?

2. Thinking about the direct and indirect messages received from your mother about being a Black boy in your community, what did these mean to you? How did they affect you?

3. How would you describe your mother’s worry for you as a Black boy growing up in this community?

4. Has your mother ever had “the talk” (a conversation about how being a Black man can or will impact your life) with you, and if so, can you explain how it went?

5. How did “the talk” affect your thoughts about yourself and others? What do you remember feeling at the time?

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6. How do you think your mother’s feelings about you being a Black man influence her parenting?

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Appendix F Mental Health and Emotional Support Resources

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Mental Health and Emotional Support Resources AGAPE CHRISTIAN COUNSELING SERVICE www.agapeccs.com 314-994-9344 Provides affordable, professional Christian counseling and mental health services for the St. Louis metro area and its surrounding counties. Locations in Olivette, South County, Florissant, and Lake St. Louis.

BEHAVIORAL HEALTH RESPONSE (BHR) www.bhrstl.org 24 hour Crisis Lines 314-469-6644 or 800-811-4760 Missouri Crisis Hotlines BHR provides the ACI crisis hotline and mobile outreach services.

LIFEQUEST CHRISTIAN COUNSELING 203 Dunn Rd., Florissant 63031 www.lqccs.org 314-830-9970 Not-for-profit professional counseling agency staffed by licensed pastoral counselors and professional counselors, using scriptural and psychological approaches. Major insurance plans accepted, sliding scale fee schedule available.

NATIONAL HOPELINE NETWORK www.hopeline.com Hotline: 800-SUICIDE Offers hope and advice to those in deep emotional pain considering suicide.

PLACES FOR PEOPLE 4130 Lindell Blvd. 63108 www.placesforpeople.org 314-535-5600 Crisis Line 1-800-811-4760 Provides care and cost-effective services to people with mental health disorders, including assistance with medication and substance use. Outpatient services for substance use disorder or mental health disorder, which includes psychiatry and/or therapy; and Case management services for substance use disorder and/or mental health disorders. The individual treatment plan may include psychiatry, therapy, and care coordination. Housing services are no longer available.

PLACES FOR PEOPLE WELCOME CENTER Welcome Center walk-in hours are available Monday through Friday, 8:30-11 a.m. and 1-3 p.m. Appointments may be scheduled by calling 314-615-9105, Ext. 348.

PROVIDENT COUNSELING www.providentstl.org/ 314-533-8200 for appointments Provident provides counseling services at five locations throughout greater St. Louis area including Fairview Heights, Illinois. Works with ex-offenders.

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SCHIELE CLINIC St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute 8820 Ladue Rd., 3rd Floor 63124 314-361-7075 Ext. 444 For services in Spanish: 314-361-7075 ext. 616 www.stlpi.org A community resource for high quality, in-depth psychotherapy. In-depth assessment and treatment methods and resources for families and individuals offered on a sliding-fee scale.

SOUTH CITY COUNSELING 2715 Cherokee 63118 www.southcitycounselingstl.com 314-495-0585 Mental health and rehabilitative counseling, various modalities. Insurance and sliding scale.

THE TREVOR PROJECT www.thetrevorproject.org Trevor Lifeline at 866-488-7386 National organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) young people ages 13-24. Chat and text options available.

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