Did you know that African Americans have a higher risk of sucide at a young age? The cause of this is holding negative emotions in and letting it out by self harm or suicide. For boys, there is a cultural norm that they were taught to believe in, like masculinity. For girls, it is an interpersonal stress from social media usage and cyberbullying. Creating solutions is not hard, it is more of a personal choice of staying committed to prevent the african american youth from commiting suicide.
Cyberbullying is one of the reasons why the suicide rates are high for young black females. Some examples are body shaming, jealousy of one’s attractiveness, and posting lies on another girl. Lindsey describes his hypothesis on why black girls are at a high rate of suicide. Lindsey says, “Social media, in particular, can be troubling for black girls, who are attempting suicide at an even more accelerated rate than black boys. “Research shows that girls exhibit more interpersonal stress from social media usage and cyberbullying,” Lindsey said, which correlates with heightened feelings of depression and hopelessness in girls in recent years.” This quote states how black girls are already going through depression and other people are making it worse by cyberbullying. Some might share more of how depressed they are online instead of expressing it in person. Suicide can not only affect the girl physically, but mentally affect others who are close to her.
Bullying can be another cause of suicide from black females. The reason behind bullying can be a variety of reasons. For instance, the bully is being bullied by a family member and the bully takes it out on a nice person, jealousy of another person’s personality, or the bully feels looks unattractive and bullies the attractive one. Celeste gives a brief statement on a 10 year old girl who took her own life because of a bully. Celeste states, “Ashawnty Davis, the 10-year-old Black girl from Aurora, Colorado who ended her short life this past November. After a video of Ashawnty fighting with another girl, whom Ashawnty’s parents identified as her bully, was posted online, Ashawnty hanged herself–unable to handle the exposure. She died in a hospital after two weeks on life support.” This quote is important because this girl died at the age of 10 because of someone who was jealous. Now, the bully goes through life everyday knowing that girl hung herself because of me. Ashawnty had not lived long enough to know how much her close friends and family would feel or how her pain could be nurtured. She had no idea how to embrace the feeling of love from others besides her parents.
I noticed one of the patterns of suicide, when I talked about bullying and cyber bullying with females. The victims are being bullied because of something the bully does not have, such as looks and personalities. The bully also assumes the person is having a good life, then the bully takes action by name calling, fighting, post a bunch of lies on social media, even spread rumors. There is one thing the oppressor never gives a thought about, which is maybe that person is going through some tough times. Most bullies are either selfish or like to torment their victims for fun. I believe there is no activity on treating others with respect in the school systems. If schools take more action on a bully report, I feel like the sucide rates for black girls would decrease. Like when a student reports them being bullied, the counselor should automatically call the bully to the office and figure out ways to solve the problem. Another way of solving the problem would be to gather the entire school for an assembly and make them understand even though we are different people, we still go through shit we do not want to deal with. Although bullying can still happen outside of school, there are other ways of preventing bullying. Like for the victim, always have that mindset, “they hate me because they ain’t me”. Remember, if the tormentor hits you, you have every right to hit back. At the end, the victim will always win because they do not hurt others just to make themselves feel good.
Young black boys have a different cause of commiting suicide. As a young black men, some of you were taught to have toxic masculinity, such as suppressing your emotions, scowling a lot, and being aloof. The influence of masculine men for black boys has impacted black parents to teach their sons to be tough. Houston A Baker from the book, “we real cool black men and masculinity by bell hooks” gives a brief story of what his father did to him when he was 11. Baker says, “For some reason I am prompted to move with the pure spirit of being. I begin dancing around the furnace with light abandon. My voice slides up the scale to a high falsetto. I am possessed by some primitive god of fire; I feel joyful and secure. I am supremely happy, high voiced, fluid. Then I am suddenly flattened against a limestone wall, bolts of lightning and bright stars flashing in my head. I have been hard and viciously slapped in the mouth as a thunderous voice shouts…“Stop acting like a sissy.” ”. The evidence shows that Baker was slapped in the mouth because of singing and dancing. His father thought singing and dancing was a part of being feminine and slapped his son for that reason. Baker probably liked singing and dancing because it was fun but his father robbed him out his fun because he was “teaching” his son to not show what he saw as effeminate.
Suppressing emotions can be one of the primary motives of young black men commiting suicide. It is important for the black parents to teach their son, it is ok to express your emotions, you do not have to feel weak about something you are born with. If black parents continue to delay this lesson towards their son, the outcome could be severe to the parents mentally. Lindsey gives us some pointers on why most black teens are commiting suicide. Lindsey says, “”Black youth tend to express their depression symptoms through physical complaints, through interpersonal challenges, often coming across as irritability or anger,” Lindsey said. Williams said she witnessed her own son exhibit some of these behaviors, like not eating, not sleeping and being irritable. But at the time, she just thought of it as typical teenage behavior.” This paragraph is describing the patterns in attempted suicide for black teens. Kathy Williams had anamed Torian Graves who commited suicide at the age 15 and had no idea why. She did notice some odd behavior with her son but she figured it was nothing until the day Torian killed himself with his step fathers gun. This could give black parents some guidance on what to notice about your son if he is acting differently from how he used to act.
For young black men, toxic masculinity is one cause of suicide. One of the categories that are common for toxic masculinity is suppressing emotions. It is not healthy to keep emotions to yourself if they are begging for help. It can lead to bad things that can affect you physically and mentally. Suppressed feelings is like filling up a balloon with water, if you keep filling it or throw it at a wall, it will pop. In this case, when the suppressed feelings pop, there will be a bad outcome out of it, like self harm or suicidal thoughts. Black parents can prevent toxic masculinity on their sons by giving them daily lectures about feelings live with you, do not be afraid to show them. There is nothing wrong with showing your feelings to the world. It shows that you care and you are human and not a cultural norm.
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