My Good Trouble

“ Do not get lost in a sea of despair. ...Get in good trouble, necessary trouble.” ––Rep. John Lewis

Weeks before the pandemic hit, I had the opportunity to see Congressman John Lewis. I reminded him of the first time we met. Over twenty years ago, I was honored to give him a personal tour of my famed alma mater, Little Rock Central High School, the site of forced desegregation in 1957. I told him about my current work, and he was affirming. He made me feel as if I was right where I needed to be. Lewis’ affirmation has served as a compass for me this summer as I’ve attempted to chart out how my work fits into the current landscape. I have spent time reflecting, reading, and researching. I have been actively seeking out advice from friends and trusted mentors. A few weeks ago, a dear mentor of mine, Dr. William Carson reminded me of the Kerner Commission report.

The Kerner Commission report may not be on your summer reading list, but it should be. I first read the report as an undergrad. I’ve started to reread the document out of a curious necessity. Published in 1968 after a seven-month investigation into the “long, hot summer” of ‘67 – a summer when racial unrest rose to a fever pitch in Detroit and Newark – the report unabashedly declared that “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal.” It’s authors called for expanded aid to Black communities, detailing recommendations for national action across 35 pages of the 426-page document. But after enjoying a brief stint as a best-seller, the Kerner report was archived, buried under a lack of political will. As Ibram X. Kendi wrote in his recent eulogy for Lewis, “Sometimes the most brilliant speeches enter the world when many people are not ready to hear them.”

I have been thinking a lot lately about how we’ve been here before. Here, in a year like 1967 where everything seems to be boiling to a head. I’ve been thinking about artifacts like the Kerner report, about people that got it right when no one was listening, hopeful that the time is now ripe for history to be heard, for changes to be made. 

When I launched Henry Health in 2018, I often wondered if we too were ahead of our time, sharing a vision for change that many were not ready to hear. Namely, the hard truth that our mental healthcare system is not designed for everyone. Rather, it bends heavily toward white middle-class Americans, a bias that can have devastating effects on Black people and other minorities who seek help. At times, building the foundation for Henry Health required the emotionally arduous task of convincing others of my personal reality: That when therapists employ techniques that are not grounded in cultural humility, they run the risk of requiring BIPOC to validate their experiences, which often results in premature termination of therapy and at worst, can elicit a response comparable to post-traumatic stress. The irony was not lost on me–– the racial compassion I was vying for in mental healthcare was also necessary to garnering the support for Henry Health’s solution. Our solution? A scientific technique that improves cultural competency and responsiveness in therapists. It is a technique that has the power to reveal undiscovered depths of hope in a community that is suffering from increasingly higher levels of psychological stress. In late May, data from the Census Bureau showed 41% of  Black Americans screened positive for clinically significant signs of depressive disorders, representing a five percent spike in the aftermath of the public video of George Floyd’s death.  This number represents roughly 1.5 million people.

Like so many founders, I’ve struggled to protect the genesis of my vision while also opening it up to critique from interested investors, collaborators and mentors who could help me set down roots for the long haul. When I was told that my aim was too narrow, my team got to work and expanded our brand to families, not just Black men. We drew a roadmap to help our supporters imagine a day when the model we’d built for the Black community could be replicated to meet the mental healthcare needs of other minority groups. We set down an anchor and have never strayed too far away from our original mission. And then, the uprising of 2020’s long, hot summer offered an undeniable and sober affirmation that we were not ahead of our time, but right we needed to be. 

More than fifty years after the Kerner Commission report, the U.S. and world at large is still grappling with the same issues, made evident by this summer’s cries for Black lives to finally matter–– from D.C. to Baltimore to Los Angeles to Paris to Cape Town. My work at Henry Health is my protest. It is a protest against a system that has not properly honored culture. The “good trouble” I stirred up years ago when I pointed to the gaps in our mental healthcare system has positioned Henry Health to thoughtfully execute, now more than ever, on the ideas that generations before me shared. Like the work of Dr. Sherman James who scientifically outlined the correlations between racial inequity, stress and physical health, waiting his entire career to see his research put into practice by therapists like the ones at Henry Health. Just as people are trying to transform our judicial system and policing, we want to transform what mental health looks like for the most vulnerable populations.

I believe that hope of humankind today lies in the great undiscovered depths within, and that for the Black community and other minority groups, these undiscovered depths run deep. Excavating that hope, then, must be done with great care and humility, so as not to lose hope in the process of its unearthing.