By TrishB Award-winning journalist
For generations, black families have been a bedrock of strength, survival and heritage in the face of unimaginable adversity. Through slavery, separation, massive incarceration and economic exclusion, black families have found ways to preserve their faith, identity, and hope with one another. But today we are witnessing a slow release. Not because of one external force, but because the convergence of the systematic, social, emotional and mental quiet murderers quietly suffocates life from our home.
We have generational pain in our DNA. From slavery and PTSD given to Jim Crow, to daily micro-attacks and racial battles, black men and women face to survive. But we rarely name it. We rarely deal with it. Because somewhere along the line, we were taught that treatment is weak, vulnerability is not safe, and that we should fix it all with prayer alone.
According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, only one in three Black Americans who need mental health care actually receive it. Stigma runs deep. When we break, we say, “I’m fine.” We tell the boys not to cry and expect the woman to carry it all. That silence breeds depression, resilience, emotional abuse and generational dysfunction.
When you live on a salary, it is difficult to pour your salary into your family. It’s hard to build a legacy when you’re just trying to survive. Decades of redline, wage gaps and lack of access to the capital mean that black families hold only one-half of the wealth of white families, according to the Brookings facility. The relationship of financial stress. It breeds debate, quiet suffering, and ultimately distance, especially in a house where love is expected to survive with hope alone.
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We praise Grind, but many of us are crushing it into graves. There is no life insurance. There is no savings. There are no real estate plans. We leave our kids to start from scratch. And in many households, women are forced into both provider and caregiver roles, and responsiveness is also built in silently.
This is not about responsibility. This is about the truth. 72% of black children are born in single-parent families. This is a statistics that is often weaponized against us, but rarely explored with compassion and depth. It’s not just absenteeism. It’s about broken relationships, cycles of mistrust, and failure to support communities that once filled gaps.
Too many men showed no way to guide or love, and too many women were taught that independence is safer than vulnerability. So we are protected. It was cut off. I’m scared to need each other. Partnerships once survived on the other side of the battlefield.
Instagram teaches us more about relationships than elders. Filters give false fantasies of wealth, love and success. And our people are silently suffering behind the screen. Marriage ends because it “unseen” like a couple’s goal. Friendship is cut beyond influence. And family time is lost to scroll, compare, pretend.
We have more connections with strangers than our siblings. They are invested in followers rather than family. And so does our home when the internet is quiet.
Our ancestors prayed through whipping, war, and water hoses. But today, faith has become convenient. We are a church, but we are not committed. We know the Bible, but it’s not forgiveness. We worship in public, but we fight in private. And for many families, God is no longer the center. He is an urgent contact.
Without spiritual discipline, the house becomes a war zone. There is no standard, peace, or compass. When you delete the source, the structure begins to fall apart.
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We don’t talk enough about how jee divides their families. A way for the ego to silence reconciliation. How women walk apart from each other in pain, men compete more than they are connected. Black Unity is threatened by self-sabotage, not just by the system.
We have forgotten how to cover each other. How to not only call each other, but also call each other. And once the community dies, the family soon follows.
The truth is needed. Healing is necessary. You need yes and therapy. We need our fathers to go home – not just physically, but emotionally. Your mother must be allowed to rest. We need to resume love as discipline, not as feelings. It is necessary to remember that the elders marched, did not fight quickly, but we can be perfect.
Our family is not disposable. Our kids are not experiments. Our marriage is not the performance part. It’s not just what’s done to us that is killing black families today. That’s what we allow to continue.
But it doesn’t need to define us that is killing us. It can heal. Can be rebuilt. I remember. Because the same blood that built the kingdom from nothing is still running through us. And our family deserves to live not only in history books, but in strength, joy and truth.
