“Believing himself to be ugly simply because his father told him so calling him frog eyes. Baldwin also thought his mother to be ugly due to the insults imposed upon her. On one specific occasion, Baldwin summoned his mother to the window after spotting a woman with thick lips and big eyes on the streets and proclaimed, Look there's someone who's uglier than you and me." Baldwin biographer
“My childhood was hell. I was beaten abused and bathed in ammonia as a child." Tyler Perry
“Beatings were administered with razor straps, belts, wire coat hangers, rulers, switches, and fists. Bloody noses were not uncommon, and more than once one of the boys was knocked senseless.” Michael Jackson.
There is no argument that Tyler Perry, Michael Jackson and the late great novelist/activist James Baldwin have been some of the most gifted human beings that God has lent us. The irony of theses luminaries is that their talent was forged by their painfully abusive childhoods. All three miraculously survived a childhood that would have made many of us suicidal, institutionalized or homicidal. Perhaps in their tortured childhood lies their genius. Is it possible that they could have evolved into the same artist’s without the pain and suffering that they all received from their fathers? Is the analogy of coal turning into diamonds after several thousand years of incredible pressure appropriate here? Could we have had the greatness of Tyler, Michael and Baldwin without the abuse which originated from their slave narrative of self hatred passed down from slave master to father? A rage that lays dormant in massive denial eventually resurfaces violently and when one inevitably succumbs to external pressures it is often fatal to those they love. African Americans males frustration from their inability to attack systemic racism and is redirected and spent onto attack of their own women and children as master would have it. Could we, as benefactors of theses great artist preferred that these great men had a “normal” happy childhood but remained anonymous to us and the world? Could we have been selfless enough to have traded their entertainment gifts for an innocent childhood thus purging their gifts and surrendering their immortal celebrity status to conventional anonymity?
Context is everything, no story can be told with full truth without proper context. African American men dropped upon alien shores, neutered, powerless and without benefit of law, rights or humanity have accumulated much rage. Unfortunately this rage and anger has often fallen on those who they loved the most, their own women and children. African American fathers, the root of their family, unable to plant anchor and hold steadfast are constantly at the mercy of economic, legislative and social tsunami’s. From slavery to separate but equal to welfare systems to the prison industrial systems, African Americans have never had one generation of calm waters to plant anchor. America suffers from institutional historical amnesia and ignores one striking historical fact; that African Americans have been slaves in America much longer than they have been free. The anger of men denied basic rights most often turns them into monsters to both their families and external communities. If that statement seems too strong, be clear. Michael, Tyler and Baldwin as young children saw Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde whenever they saw their fathers and 1/3 of all African American men will be held captive in the penal system.
Tyler, Jackson and Baldwin stories all parallel as all three were emotionally castrated and beaten mercilessly by their fathers without protection of their mothers. Each had to create other worlds were they could hide, die in and be born again. All were the victims of men who were supposed to love and protect them, their fathers. All had their own pathological choice of escape, Tyler’s rabbit hole led him to Madea, an alter-ego who dresses as a woman. Madea, his superego, who he acknowledges represents his Aunt, who once put a gun to his fathers head after his father had almost beaten him to death. This scene, a nightmare of his past resurfaces as a specter of his present in his movies and and in his plays. Madea, large and in charge, the matriarch, an African American woman not afraid of the police or jail, fearless and reckless, unafraid to tote gun, masculine, was profoundly who Tyler wanted his mother to be, who Tyler needed to be. Madea, the mother he wish he had to mute his fathers abuse, to kill his bogeyman, to scare away the monster in his closet. Madea, his angel, the father he never had, the father he wish he had, the reincarnation of his Aunt. Madea, an inseparable part of his psyche who will forever live in Perry and will continue to resurface in his movies and plays until he is healed which unfortunately like Baldwin and Jackson will most likely never occur.
Perry's mother, submissive, serviette and docile, like Michael and Baldwin’s mothers allowed the beatings and the verbal abuse, did not protect them and never took them away from these American made monsters. When the mother, the center of any child’s universe can’t or won’t protect her child, the child hates the mother subconsciously never acknowledging or aware of this hate on a conscious level. This hate is never acknowledged by the victim because what child could acknowledge hating their mother consciously and remain sane. But the hate does manifest itself in their daughters in the selection of males their daughters choose and in their sons in the females that their sons choose perpetuating a cycle of lord of the flies communities. In the absence of the father mothers become gods that are not benevolent.(Read my article on Fatherhood6570 and Hip Hop) This is why Mothers day in the African American community is so overly celebrated.
In the absence of father (as over 70% of African American homes are) mother is loved, feared and hated. Indeed, there is massive denial in the African American community that fathers are needed, a necessary rationalization system to justify the fathers absence to justify the love they never received. It is impossible for Tyler to escape Madea because she represents the father he wanted to have, righteous, protective, paternal. It is impossible for Perry to envision a father in a man, Madea is the only father Perry can accept. Without Madea, Tyler Perry, who had attempted suicide twice would have eventually killed himself, Madea is his lifeline that protects the little boy in him that never evolved into a man. In a community where over 70% of African American males grow up without their father there are millions of Perry’s; unfortunately without Perry’s genius and talent, many of these males escape is the highly profitable prison industrial complex system where 1 of every 3 African American males will eventually reside.
Michael's story, same theme, different variation. A child prodigy, like Baldwin, his genius was recognized early. As told in one biography. "Joe Jackson used to lock Michael in a closet, my source says. "The abuse just goes on and on. Janet was also afraid of him. I once found her in the kitchen with a huge knife. She was going to use it on him." Michael’s escape from his father started on the stage and ended literally in Neverland, his fortress of fantasy, impenetrable to his greatest foe, Joe Jackson, his father. What Madea is to Perry, the stage and Neverland were to Jackson. It is no coincidence that both Michael and Perry have traded their African American masculinity for the costume of women as Michael always wanted to look like Diana Ross and Tyler his Aunt through Madea. But escape has it’s price. As Michael escaped from his father he simultaneously fled from himself, like Perry, both entered a world of schizophrenia rewarded by American capitalism via celebrity status.
Beaten, brutalized and called scarring names by his father, Michael, like any child abused still loved his father and was pathologically confused by his father who both sang praises about him and to others while beating and abusing him deepening Michael's psychosis. Michael’s pain led him to pathological denial of who he was. His physical transformation, stunningly frightening, was an attempt to hide from both his father and the paternalism of the ever present white caste system that both hates and desires African Americans skin color as this is their own form of institutional schizophrenia. Michael, rather than fight them, joined them, his drug of choice a burning desire to become apart of Americas number one aspirational brand, a white American. To transcend his black skin, to escape from Joe Jackson he had to escape from himself transforming from the beautiful little African American he was into an oversized elf with hair, cheekbones and a nose that was beyond cartoonish that transcended the norm of human physical anthropology.
Michael’s genius was so powerful that he filled a deep void in America that is buried in it's own self destruction, paranoia and emptiness. When he performed the audience looked up, arms up and open ready to embrace him as they wept, hysteric and fainting, desperate for a glimpse of him, a touch of him. As he descended onto the stage from on high, he was their Jesus, their saint, their salvation. In a land of pathological denial about the genocide of the domestic population, the American Indian, 400 years of slavery, the dropping of nuclear weapons on other human beings, Michael offered repentance for them through his music, through the unconditional love he offered. For if Michael could so forgive his father he could so forgive America, they believed. They, in their collective institutional guilt sought his forgiveness, his repentance in the only gods they truly recognize as the ones that walk the earth. African Americans on the other hand saw Michael simply as their little brother, their sons and their family, African Americans danced and sang and celebrated him not as a god but as Gods gift, no different that Marvin or Luther. One could argue that if sacrifice is the highest form of love, the love that Michael commanded from millions was at the expense of his sacrifice of self commanded by father Joe.
James Baldwin, easily one of America’s greatest novelist once stated “I never had a childhood” and “I never had a father.” Of course, like Michael and Tyler he had both but because of his physical and psychological abuse he suffered, he had neither. While Perry’s sexuality has quietly been questioned and Michaels sexuality appeared almost androgynous, Baldwin was openly gay, an incredible statement considering the times he lived in and the bold activist he was. As Perry’s retreat was Madea and Michael's was Neverland, Baldwin’s matrix was through his subconscious choice of gayness and his great intellectual gifts. Like Michael, he joined them believing that his great intellect would allow him into their world and would offer him asylum as a gay African American man in a strange land. He attempted membership through his gift of word and pen and if you have not read him would be the equivalent of not hearing Coltrane, watching Michael Jordan or seeing a sunset. With his overly generous use of commas, Baldwin captured in one sentence what most writers could not capture in an entire novel.
Baldwin tried to reclaim his humanity stolen from him from his father through intellectual ascension. In his case membership had no privilege's. Baldwin’s pathology was (as is the modern educated middle class African American) was that he could recapture his humanity through the certification of white approval; of his intellect, linguistical ability and his pen. The indoctrination of African Americans through education has always given African Americans the illusion that through educational pedigrees, W2’s, or bespoke residences that they would receive acceptance by whites. Where Baldwin tried to escape his pain through intellect, Michael did so through skin lightening, as Perry morphed into female costume all furthering the damage of what Emeritus Earl El-Amin WEAA Public Radio Talk Show host and activist calls destroying our “genetic memory.” Baldwin's expatriate status to France with his white male lover was a final attempt for inner peace and tranquility once stating that to be Black and conscious in America forces one to walk a tightrope of sanity vs. insanity.
All three struggle and struggled with their sexuality which is often an inevitable consequence of abused males. All, victims of a massive fatherhood deficit, painfully tried to fill the hungry void left by their fathers through the physical veneered love of other men or abandoning their own masculinity. Tyler, like Luther, not out but struggling, Michael, oscillating between boys and women and Baldwin openly accepting white male lovers. For Baldwin, who fought for Black rights with the fierceness of Malcolm X to take a white male lover is the equivalent of Nat Turner taking a white wife, yet he surrendered as many African American do who climb the ladder. Michael the innocent, surrounded himself with boys, like the catholic Priest who meant no harm, in denying themselves one forbidden pleasure surrendered to another. Perry, raised in the church, tortured by his Christian upbringing tries to have women but needs a male lover to quench the thirst created by his father. The tragic price of Black genius in these cases rooted in abuse initiated by institutional racism and carried on by their fathers is unfortunately standard operational procedure in the African American community. The epidemic levels of fatherlessness and fathers who abuse their children has created a manifest destiny of pathology in high school drop outs, HIV, incarceration, drug infested neighborhoods, homicide, teenage pregnancy, gangs and abortion as a way of birth control making the womb of an African American women the most dangerous place for an African American child to reside.
If the prerequisite of producing a Michael Jackson, Tyler Perry or James Baldwin was based on their torturous childhood, I would have preferred that they never reached their greatness, I would have preferred for them an ordinary life of mediocrity, anonymity and banality. I would prefer that we had never heard of them and that they never reached the heights that they did. As much as I have been awed by their gifts and talents, as much as I have imitated Michael’s dancing, laughed at Perry's comedic genius and wept after reading Baldwin I would have surrendered these stirring emotions they have stirred in me for them to have a childhood of peace, serenity and joy. But is our need for entertainment so narcissistic and self-serving, so great that we would rather watch Michael spin in circles three times in a snap rather than allow him a healthy father and a childhood absence of abuse? Is the void in us so hollow today that we would demand Tyler's Perry being bathed in ammonia by his own grandmother so that we years later would laugh at his an Madea alter-ego? Was the existential and transformative experience of reading Baldwin and having him fight for our humanity worth the brutality he lived through under his monstrous father? Was their genius possible without the torture and abuse?
As fathers, we are the root of community and we must first create homes that make our women feel safe, valued and respected. By nurturing our women first we produce healthy children before conception. Our women and how we treat them is the singular way for us to recover dignity, respect and community. The healthiest children come from homes where the mother and father have the highest level of self esteem, communication, shared values and displayed affection. These traits cannot be taught by programs, private industry or government, indeed the majority of African American children are already state property as a result of absentee fathers. Lunch programs, food stamps, government housing, medicare and beyond prove that the love of the father has been substituted by the paternalism of the state. Children do not do what we say but do imitate what they see. We must let our children see templates of healthy marriages as blueprints of excellence. When the mother and the father give our children a minimum of 18 years or 6,570 days of the highest level of homeostasis the children flourish and are capable of genius on many levels. By establishing the highest level of homeostasis between the mother and father will we by default produce children that can achieve the genius of Michael Jackson, Tyler Perry and James Baldwin without the holocaust of their childhoods. Fatherhood at minimum is an 18 year 6,570 day commitment and when over 80% of all African American children live 6,570 days without their father African American children suffer the greatest deficit America has, an unquenchable love deficit.
This is an excerpt from Mr. Davis's forthcoming book, "The Maintenance of Denial"
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