Self-Hatred: Identifying and Managing It (Good Things)

Remember my Oscars video from last week on good character?... Didn't expect to have its relevance supercharged by "the incident.”? I had planned to focus on BRIGHTER ideas today, like this video of me contemplating, “what if Will Smith was Batman at the Oscars,” but I couldn’t shake what I saw in that moment - self-hatred.? It’s something that can plague anyone’s life in the most subtle ways until it builds up. I thought about it in my life, and found it too important for potential healing not to share with you today.??

Before I go on, here are 3 bright updates:

• I was honored to be a guest on Christine Dimmick’s Be the Change podcast.? Christine is a sustainability thought leader and has a beautiful heart.? In what I’m told is my best interview to date, we talked about Deepak Chopra, comics, and how my startup ReelwUrld and our first show Justice For Hire apply basic human values for social impact.
• Phil Hyssong, the accessibility expert who founded and sold America’s #1 CART captioning company, has become a ReelwUrld investor!? Check out his testimonial video and join him and us from wefunder.com/reelwurld.
• Last week I was Head Judge of the HISTORIC 1st World Series of Taiji Push Hands that united the Tai Chi and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu communities.? Congratulations to our first champion, Nick Aslup, who beat me 14 to 8 in an unlimited weight-class exhibition match (that 60 pounds he had on me was TOUGH and I’m still recovering).? It was a great exercise to lose with grace in front of my son, who has only seen me win.? Watch the event here.

Now, I’d like to share my efforts on making a path from self-hatred to love.? As a disclaimer, I am not a doctor.? I do have deep experience in pattern recognition and leveraging it for merit based results, and all I’m sharing on the topic of self-hatred comes from my observations of myself, others, and our society as a whole.? I’m always happy to have my perspective expanded, so if you have your own feelings, please share.

Firstly, I define self-hatred as a pressurized combination of feelings inside a person that stem from a knowing of what the “right thing” is for them and doing something else.? The knowing can be conscious or unconscious, and the pressure from not allowing oneself to express what is “right for you” builds over time.? That build up can come out in varying ways, from greed and gluttony to toxic positivity, from substance abuse to physical harming oneself or others and more.? Often, when we harm others, we are truly harming ourselves.

When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, he was slapping himself.

My heart sank when I saw the clip.? It was a huge step back for Black people worldwide and humanity as a whole.??

The first thing that came to mind was that I know Will knew better.? I had watched his speech at the BET Awards years ago when he shared a story from his journey to Africa while filming Ali. He mentioned how the local kids would call him a word that meant “do the impossible” and he gracefully extended that title to every Black person in the audience and in America.? The sentiment was that Black Americans are the dream that Black people worldwide aspire to.? Super unfortunately, I could not find that speech on YouTube, but I did find this one of him laying down rules of good conduct at the ‘05 BET Awards.?

Another disclaimer, while nearly half of my blood is of African descent, I consider myself spirit first, human second, and my mix of ethnicities third as a glue that helps me bring people from all walks of life together.? That said, I know how it feels to dislike natural parts of myself.

I remember not liking myself because I had darker skin as a kid.

I remember daydreaming about being more like Michael Jackson, with my skin getting lighter, but still having a black leather jacket and a motorcycle (because the Bad album and his awesome Speed Demon music video with the claymation bunny).

I remember being in a taxi one day in Brooklyn and looking at a new X-Men action figure I had just gotten (Archangel).? A man standing on a corner with friends, all Black, came up to the car and asked to see the action figure.? He was an X-fan, but I remember being scared because of his body language and the color of his skin.? He gave the figure back and walked away.? I immediately felt relieved and secretly embarrassed for those feelings, and I didn’t want to talk about them to my family in the car.

I know many of my non-Black friends have had similar anxieties with Black people.? They’ve told me both directly and indirectly.

I was raised in an incredibly loving environment from the key years when a child’s brain is developing from 0-7 years old around immense diversity.? The majority of my father’s side of the family are Black people, and I never thought of them negatively because of skin color.

So why did I feel scared of my own Blackness and that of non-family members?

I do recall a not-so-subtle narrative as a child.? As an 80’s baby, there was a “War on Drugs” campaign all over the news.? I remember how the conversations I overheard from my parents connected then President Ronald Reagan’s policies to challenges in Black communities, and I didn’t want to be a part of whatever the problematic feeling my young mind was absorbing.? I remember feeling how scary drugs were, even to the point of walking from our nice neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights toward Downtown Brooklyn to Cadman Plaza Park, where my parents would train Kung Fu and caution me to stay clear of broken crack pipes and syringes.? I would get a chill every time I’d see the broken glass and get an image of a Black person using it in my mind.

Of course, the majority of drug users in America are not Black, but I must consider how that made my young mind dislike my association to Blackness.

This was compounded by not seeing many faces like mine as heroes in the media at the time.? Fortunately, the world is rapidly shifting toward inclusion, as many of us know the power of seeing yourself as a hero.? [insert ReelwUrld plug here ____]

I did watch The Cosby Show as a kid, which, when separated from any recent sullying narratives, was a phenomenal program to articulate admirable family values for all humanity.? I also loved A Different World, In Living Color, and more.

But the whole world loves Black entertainment. That doesn’t mean they actually want to BE Black.

Digression: That’s part of why K-Pop is popular.? Here’s a great video essay on why that genre is a safe foray into rehashed Black culture, in part powered by former US Black superstar music producers finding a second wind in a foreign country with some of the greatest discipline on the planet.? Don’t get me wrong, I love K-Pop. I simply know what I’m looking at (and I’m from NY, home of Hip Hop and comic books).

I never watched Will Smith’s Fresh Prince of Bel Air.? In fact, something always felt off about it to me with the character he portrayed.? I would feel physically uncomfortable watching his performance even for a few seconds.? Years later, I felt the same energy from Nick Cannon, Will’s acting protégée, even though Drumline is one of my all-time favorite films (phenomenal direction by Charles Stone III and a cast held together by Orlando Jones).

Asking myself “why” regarding the discomfort, I remembered when people used to compare me to Will’s character from the movie Hitch in film school.? Not the first time I was compared to one of his characters, and I used to love it because Will was a superstar and the comparison made me feel like one too.? Then, I remembered my thoughts during that time in college: Will’s character was non-threatening for white audiences.? More specifically, the Hitch character represented a pattern that we’ve seen many times in American culture, that Key & Peele jokingly addressed in their “Magical Negro” skit.? The attributes of this archetype include joyfully augmenting the white character’s story arc (even if it means self-degradation).? And I recall a quote a producer once said on a program about Will during that era, misquoted, “Will Smith is not Black, he’s a commodity.”? In all transparency, my state of development at that time interpreted that as a good thing for the wrong reasons.

Wrong reason = Self-Hatred.? The same reason I started feeling queasy about leaning into the Hitch character others had placed on me.?

What was I doing that made me feel like this?

I was hiding my true feelings under a smile.??

I was acting like everything was okay when it wasn’t.

Training myself like a workout routine to take negativity from others and respond in a way that doesn’t give clarity to either party.

Why?? Because I feel I need something from someone?? If I don’t act a certain way, I’ll be punished?

Was Will Smith doing the same thing in the role that made him a household name?

While these feelings can be framed as being part of the notorious “slave mentality” in the African-American narrative, or even expanded to disenfranchised “non-White/European” people across the globe impacted by Western Imperialism, it’s important to recognize they can be felt by people of all walks of life worldwide.? (And Kanye already told us that we’re all the New Slaves - great song).

And, in my experience, when I’ve treated myself like that long enough, the pressure builds until it’s too much to handle.??

It hurts me and those around me.?

Not to the point of someone getting Chris Rocked, though (please remember #janraps ??).

Will started confirming my observations years ago through his own short videos on YouTube, as he was enamored with the ability to quickly express himself to the world unfiltered.? Being closer to a “digital native” in age than Will, it was honestly cute to watch, and even though I didn’t watch often, I was happy for him overcoming previous behaviors that may have throttled his expression.

However, his Oscars moment is a reminder that moving through life hiding aspects of myself deep inside can see those same behaviors embedded in the ecosystem I build around me.

If I don’t question myself and my motives heavily, I risk attracting people and experiences that don’t reflect my true feelings.? And that is upsetting to me.

Therefore, my system of daily personal evaluation includes a self-hatred check in.? Here’s what I ask myself when I’m about to do ANYTHING:

• Do I feel any resistance?
• If so, where/what/whom in my environment is catalyzing that feeling in me?
• Do I or they/it need an adjustment before I proceed?
• If yes, is the adjustment really for the greater good, or am I feeling insecure and I’m stuck in my ego?
• If for the greater good, I take action to noticeably adjust my environment before proceeding.
• If insecurity and my ego are the issue, I give myself a tough love mental pep talk.
• I do my best to go through all of these steps in 7 breaths or less, as per Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai.?

I also do consistent work on reframing biases in my ecosystem, for my own growth, my family, my art and work.? That’s why I brought up the JFH action scene where I don’t fight on my aforementioned interview with Christine Dimmick.? It took me a long time to correct a bias that many action fans have that the venerable film critic Ric Meyers warns us about.? We don’t need to be the tough guy all the time.? When we change our perspective of how to solve a problem, like a fight scene, the action and outcome can change for the better.

At home, I’ve had to correct my blonde son several times, even a few weeks ago, about how he refers to darker skin tones and how he uses the words “dark” and “black.” The media he and his peers are exposed to still teaches them that black is bad and to fear the darkness.

I remind my son that darkness can be seen as the unknown, or infinite possibility, and when we connect to the quiet that is there, streaks of inspiration come.??

The cool stuff comes out of the darkness so we can play with it in the light.

It’s been the reminder of black as infinite that has allowed me to revere Black mothers as models of womanhood.? That’s not to take away womanhood from any other group.? Rather, it’s how I helped myself heal from that damaging narrative of the “War on Drugs” being associated with Black skin, and part of why I am eternally grateful for having produced empowering content for Emmy-winning stylist and community leader Hadiiya Barbel.

Self-hatred is by no means limited to one’s racial identification, and I only used Will & Chris’ cultural moment as a vehicle to present things I’ve never shared before.? I’ve had intense negative feelings toward myself across a spectrum of issues (check my verses on this song from my rap group), and there are many ways to deal with and heal deep rooted challenges.? May we all prevail.

I woke up this morning and saw this writing in my mind.? I had planned to spend the earlier part of the day differently, so if you made it this far, thank you for absorbing these words.? I hope there is some value in it for you.

And if you want to laugh again, watch Batman’s Oscar acceptance speech.

With Love,

Jan L.