{"id":23359,"date":"2023-02-24T09:31:10","date_gmt":"2023-02-24T14:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=23359"},"modified":"2024-07-29T13:50:03","modified_gmt":"2024-07-29T17:50:03","slug":"i-feel-you-man-offers-honest-discussion-of-mental-health-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/i-feel-you-man-offers-honest-discussion-of-mental-health-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I Feel You, Man\u2019 offers frank discussion of mental health challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"

Furman celebrates Black History Month<\/a><\/strong>
\nRead more stories >><\/a><\/em><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI am a Black man but more than an athlete.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am articulate, but I am not whitewashed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am Black, but I am not a gangster.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a Black student, but I am not a diversity statistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a human, but I am not a token.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statements on the screen had been written by the four panelists sitting on the stage \u2013 young Black men, three current Furman students and one recent graduate. The words resonated with many in the audience in the Trone Student Center\u2019s Burgiss Theater for the CLP event, \u201cI Feel You, Man: Black Men and Mental Health,\u201d part of the university\u2019s schedule of Black History Month events<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The event was presented by the Furman chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity and the Furman University Counseling Center<\/a>. Jalen Livingston \u201925 led the discussion with Charles Miles II \u201923, Dae\u2019one Wilkins \u201922, Kyler Bailey \u201926 and Mekhi Harrell \u201925 after some opening remarks by Terance Dawkins, counselor and case manager at the counseling center.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many of you actually know these gentlemen?\u201d Dawkins asked the audience. \u201cKnow their life history, know what they\u2019ve been through, know all their experiences? Tonight, this program is supposed to help you understand them not just based on what you see but based on the experiences they\u2019ve had here at Furman University.\u201d<\/p>\n

The panelists openly and candidly answered Livingston\u2019s questions about their challenges, like the one Miles faced as an incoming student wearing his Furman gear around his predominantly white hometown community in Fort Mill, South Carolina.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first question I always got was not \u2018What are you planning on majoring in?\u2019 or \u2018Why did you choose Furman?\u2019\u201d Miles remembered. \u201cIt was, \u2018What sport do you play? What position do you play?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Similar questions used to upset Bailey, who agreed with Miles that it was important to unpack those assumptions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI finally learned to just educate them,\u201d Bailey said, \u201cso that the next time they see a tall, Black male in school attire they don\u2019t automatically assume, \u2018Oh, he\u2019s an athlete; he\u2019s only here because he\u2019s good physically, not academically.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Other questions drew out the panelists\u2019 thoughts on being the only person of color in a classroom, the need for a safe space where they can be \u201cpowerful yet vulnerable,\u201d and struggles with social identity and fitting in on campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cLessons from the past directly impact how we are in the present,\u201d Dawkins told the audience after the panelists shared their experiences. Although everybody experiences them in their own way, he said, messages like \u201cMen don\u2019t cry,\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t be a girl\u201d and \u201cShut up before I give you something to cry about\u201d are passed down from generation to generation.<\/p>\n

Men often hear the word \u201cemotional\u201d as a derogative description of women, noted Franklin Ellis, associate dean and director of Furman\u2019s Center for Inclusive Communities<\/a>, who joined the discussion from the audience. \u201cWhat we\u2019re really talking about is emoting<\/em>,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is the ability to show the emotion that you were feeling and talk about it and be comfortable with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That ability is socialized more in people assigned female at birth, Ellis said, citing psychological studies of how adults interact in different ways with babies they perceive to be of different genders.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re taught not to understand a lot of that,\u201d he said. \u201cSo there\u2019s a lot of toxic masculinity that goes into play there. From birth, we\u2019re shown how not to emote, how not to read emotion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of the intergenerational trauma has to do with how Black bodies are perceived in our culture, said Ellis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are expected to be superhuman while treated as subhuman,\u201d he said. \u201cI have to try twice as hard to get half as far. So pain is something I can endure, but we sell it as resilience. And it damages us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discussion made Jayden Jones \u201924 consider \u201cthe intersectionality of every person.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are so many things, but we are also not<\/em> so many things,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re all Black men sitting up there, but they\u2019re different Black men. Everybody has experienced different things, and that\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The CLP event during Black History Month was meant to spread awareness of the unique social, emotional and generational experiences of Black men at Furman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":23360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,70,30],"tags":[2079],"class_list":["post-23359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-center-for-interpersonal-connection","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion","category-top-stories","tag-black-history-month-2023"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33437,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23359\/revisions\/33437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}