Black barbers have become mental health advocates for African American men

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/23/us/black-barbers-mental-health-wellness-trnd/index.html

by Tomte • 5 years ago

232 191 5 years ago

edition.cnn.com

da39a3ee• 5 years ago

I know it's well-intentioned, and I know American society has very real structural race problems which shouldn't be ignored or denied, but articles like this really risk being patronizing, and worse, implying that most or all black childhoods are as flawed as the one described.

3maj2• 5 years ago

Welcome to the American Media Establishment. It's better to just read FT and SCMP while only skimming the NYT/Fox/etc.

pjc50• 5 years ago

Why the South China Morning Post?

umvi2• 5 years ago

Reminds me of the Pixar movie "Soul" (which is very good)

bitwize• 5 years ago

The barbershop scenes from Soul were one of the things that made me think they were trying to make an authentic, specifically black movie that nevertheless had universal resonance (and they succeeded).

kmill• 5 years ago

This reminds me how a chauffeur working for Pixar picked up on what they were up to early in production: https://www.npr.org/2021/03/27/981553332/not-my-job-we-quiz-...

packetslave• 5 years ago

There's an outstanding featurette on Disney+ about "Soul" (part of the "Inside Pixar" series, I think) where Kemp Powers, the co-director and screenwriter talks specifically about adding the barbershop scene(s) because it's such an important part of the African-American culture.

jimkleiber4• 5 years ago

Yes, Lorenzo! I remember talking to my friend Lorenzo back in 2013-14 when he was just starting this. So proud to finally see someone I know as the top story on HN :-)

Abishek_Muthian• 5 years ago

There's a scene[1] in the Pixar movie 'Soul' where the main character(a black man) goes for a haircut to a black barbershop and has a deep philosophical discussion. Director Kemp Powers says 'There's really no more authentic black space in the community than a barber shop'[2] for the reason to have that scene.

Your friend and his team has put that space to a great use; Congratulations.

[1] https://youtu.be/MPXjSCHsfxY?t=21

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0GLyDJveVs

bsedlm• 5 years ago

They might not be therapists, but they are filling a similar role as therapy.

Sometimes people just need to vent towards an 'objective' (external) listener who will provide feedback of some sort.

kamfc• 5 years ago

Counselors are more like it. Or a stranger at the bar you can vent to. Therapists do more from my personal experience.

randomopining6• 5 years ago

Why do people need to meld their ego with some nebulous "classification"? Like yo I'm black. Yo I'm white. Yo I'm asian.

In reality, all humans are a continuous spectrum based off of groups of people that evolved in certain conditions over thousands of years.

What does a "white" person from Ireland have in common with a "white" person from the Caucuses?

What does a "black" person from Sierra Leone have in common with a "black" person from the deserts in the northeast of Africa?

Why does the media make us segregate ego formation based off of these shallow descriptors? Black white etc.

ajsnigrutin• 5 years ago

Why does the media make us segregate ego formation based off of these shallow descriptors? Black white etc.

Because it mases us fight eachother, and not the ones that we should be fighting.

booleandilemma• 5 years ago

Divide and conquer.

abc_lisper• 5 years ago

It is like the ship of Theseus. Aggregates exist because that's how we abstract, even though calling it identity would be wrong. I don't know what a good solution is.

refenestrator• 5 years ago

Ideally we could unmoor it from the arbitrary 100 year old census categories. Yeah, you have to draw arbitrary lines somewhere but our current set is really dumb.

chickenpotpie3• 5 years ago

“ What does a "black" person from Sierra Leone have in common with a "black" person from the deserts in the northeast of Africa?”

They face the same discrimination in America and in that they find companionship

scarmig3• 5 years ago

Contemporary African immigrants significantly outperform those descended from slaves. Moreover, they have higher educational attainment, household incomes, and professional success than American white populations. Nigerian immigrants even outperform Chinese and Indian immigrants.

mikeyouse• 5 years ago

And in the case of barbers - they have the same type of hair.. Why is this confusing for HNers?

randomopining6• 5 years ago

So a person from Sierra Leone who's never stepped foot in the United States would thus never have experienced this "discrimination" and thus are not part of the "black" group?

Your argument makes no sense.

umvi2• 5 years ago

They face the same discrimination in America and in that they find companionship

Do they, though? I think African Americans and African immigrants face very different problems in America. My next door neighbors on one side are from Ghana, my next door neighbors on the other side are African Americans. They have very different issues that they deal with and their lifestyles couldn't be more different.

My Ghana neighbors:

- Struggle with things like renewing work visas, applying for citizenship, immigration-related issues

- Buy/cook all their food from raw ingredients from African grocery stores

- 2 parent household

- Pay their own rent

My African American neighbors:

- struggle with substance abuse, truancy, obesity, unemployment

- Eat McDonalds/junk food/drink astronomical quantities of soda pop daily

- Single parent household

- Rely on the state for rent (HOC)

These are not isolated incidents - out of my neighborhood block here in Montgomery County, MD, there are multiple points of data that point to this segregation of lifestyles between African and African American. I see the police all the time at my African American neighbors' house (at least 3-4 times per year), whether it be because one of the teens was caught shoplifting, or they were making tons of noise in the middle of the night, or because of a domestic confrontation turning violent, etc. I've never seen the police once at my Ghana neighbors' house.

neither_color• 5 years ago

That would be verifiable by looking at the economic and educational outcomes of African and Caribbean immigrants in comparison to ADOS. If discrimination is all there is to it then their outcomes should be the same. Spoiler alert: It's not the same.

https://www.ft.com/content/ca39b445-442a-4845-a07c-0f5dae5f3...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...

Ghanian and Nigerian Americans make above the median white household income. Barbadian, Trinidadian, Jamaican, and Haitian Americans all make above the median African American household income. Mexican Americans score below African Americans, but above Puerto Ricans. Dominicans are dead last. Would you conclude, based on the data, that Hispanics face WORSE discrimination than blacks, even when they're born citizens like Puerto Ricans? Could this be a reason that the left is bleeding hispanic voters, when they're constantly being fed a racial narrative that's incongruent with their day-to-day experience and needs? When a Mexican American who may have a black boss hears on TV that blacks have it worse than anybody else do you think they might start losing a bit of trust in the experts?

Sadly necessary disclaimer: I'm not black or white I'm just calling it as I see it.

antihero• 5 years ago

Because membership of a group, especially for marginalised and oppressed peoples, is a way to have shared strength and be able to relate to others' experiences and protect each other. Which is an incredibly powerful and necessary until the world is significantly fairer.

Also in the case of barbers, it is plainly obvious: Experience working with hair of a certain type.

randomopining6• 5 years ago

What I'm saying is that the people in this "group" may have almost nothing in common at all, except for having a darker shade of skin color.

Aka get rid of the simple descriptors of "white" "black" etc since they mean very little or nothing at all.

jimkleiber4• 5 years ago

I don't think the media is the only thing that determines whether we form racial or any other social identity categories.

I think racial categories are identities imposed by us and by others. By us because sometimes, especially when we're in groups of people who don't look like us, we may tend to stick closer to people who do. By others, when they see someone who looks different, they often label us with a term separating us from their group.

I agree we're all a meld and deeply human, with a lot in common, and I also think we tend to form social groups that focus on how we are different from others and how others are different from us.

sergiomattei3• 5 years ago

A shared set of experiences. I'm Latino, and when I visit the United States I get along well with other Latino folk because we share a set of experiences we can relate to.

We probably grew up in different places but there's a background we have in common, like our language.

It's called culture.

randomopining6• 5 years ago

That's my point. You share language, el mundo espanol, etc.

That's true cultural linkage.

Whereas a "white" person from Ireland and a "white" person from Ukraine have very very little in common.

A "black" person from South Africa and a "black" person from Colombia have very very little in common.

And yet these are the main descriptors used in pop culture, Instagram, the media... and it's silly.

isoskeles• 5 years ago

Funny, I don’t get along with many other Latinos despite being one. I think it’s this attitude that I’m supposed to speak the language and act a certain way as part of the “culture.”

nostromo• 5 years ago

You’re proving his or her point.

Latinos can be white, black, native, or anything else. You share a culture with them regardless of skin color.

People in the US forget that most Latinos are white. There are several South American countries that are more white than the US.

I have a friend with a European name that appears European but emigrated with his parents from Argentina at a young age. He told me he doesn't identify as Latino in the US despite being Latino because he suspects that he's being judged as an imposter.

x86_64Ubuntu3• 5 years ago

It's understood from the context that the ethnic group of concern in the article are African-Americans.

MisterBastahrd5• 5 years ago

Black hair isn't white hair and black shared experiences in America are not white shared experiences in America. Sometimes you need to talk and vent without a bunch of resistance from outsiders to that experience.

mosseater• 5 years ago

Well, in terms of this article, we're talking about black barbers. This isn't a racism thing. There is a culture associated with black barbers. I was a white kid, I grew up in the hood. I would hang out with my friends while they got their haircut. Racism didn't keep me from getting my haircut there, the literal texture and makeup of my hair did. They specialized. And in black culture, the barber shop is one of the main socialization spots. It's a place demanding similar levels of respect as going to church, minus the dress code. It's a place, outside of so many other places in this white dominated world, where they can be themselves. It's a place "for them and by them". They can be themselves, the subconscious relaxes, they don't have to worry about someone being a bigot towards them.

Like it or not, black culture is a thing. Just like white culture is a thing. No one has to feel bad about it. Color is beautiful. The whole "I don't see color" concept is disingenuous to the human experience.

adolph• 5 years ago

Why does the media make us segregate ego formation based off of these shallow descriptors? Black white etc.

the basic scenario is that we’ve had a years-long moral panic in which elite white tastemakers adopted the political posture of radical Black academics out of purely competitive social impulses, trying on a ready-made political eschatology that blames the worlds ills on whiteness and men and yet somehow leaves space for an army of good white people and good men to cluck their tongue about it all.

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/who-tells-them-what-the...

runeblaze• 5 years ago

While it is true that there is much diversity within each minority group, it is also true that the society often imposes discrimination solely based on one's skin color, and we can't just ignore society. I also think that this article is really mainly talking about the descendants of the enslaved people, which form the majority of US's black population, and is commonly referred to as the Black community.

whatshisface3• 5 years ago

If HN can look past the usual tropes, there's something interesting here. Lewis is trying to solve a problem a lot of other people are trying to solve: how can you have a normal community in US culture? Let me list a few solutions and you will see why his is better than average.

1. Religion.

Pros: Going to church has tied communities together for millennia, and if you could just find some better pastors, it could continue for several millennia more.

Cons: Secularly administering religion like a drug to treat social ills is against the precepts of every known religion, due to the fact that we'd all expect missionaries to believe what they're preaching. People who go around saying "I believe because it helps me" but who do not actually believe anything notwithstanding, we all know that's not self-consistent.

2. An amalgamation of historical myths and power structures that tie people together on the basis of perceived brotherhood.

Pros: People love being tied together on the basis of perceived brotherhood, tribal identity has been around a long time, and there is no debating with the idea that it works.

Cons: This is a description of every supremacist organization.

3. You talk to the guy at the barbershop.

Pros: You like to talk to the guy at the barbershop.

Cons: You can't go if you don't have the money for a haircut.

None of these options are perfect... but the barbershop plan is not that bad.

x86_64Ubuntu3• 5 years ago

One word about the cons of #3, you can absolutely go to a black barbershop with no intentions of ever getting your haircut. Older black men will sometimes hang out there, or stop by through the day on the weekend just to catch up with one another.

ouid• 5 years ago

This is such a poorly crafted argument that it's hard to imagine it's not in bad faith. You listed religion twice! The only way this is representative of any kind of "normal" culture is if you have defined it that way.

Let's think about a couple more ways that you could go about obtaining a community in the US.

leisure: clubs, cafes, live music events, bars, gyms. proximity: neighborhood, induced parent communities from child communities. functional: PTAs, HOAs, coworkers, colleagues.

etc.

ceilingcorner3• 5 years ago

These would be comparable examples if religion included nothing but the physical building of a church/mosque/synagogue.

namlem2• 5 years ago

I disagree that most of your examples are comparable, with the exception of gyms and coworkers/colleagues to a degree. Getting your hair cut is a qualitatively different type of experience. You have to sit still while it's happening, you can't just wander off. And there's even a degree of physical intimacy involved, even if it's purely professional. Likewise, in church you have to sit still, you can't go on your phone or leave early without people judging you. I think there's a reason why fitness quasi-cults like Crossfit and Soul Cycle have emerged, because the same principle is at play, social interaction with strangers is baked into the process. Sure, there are strangers at bars, concerts, etc., but you don't really have to engage with them and can walk away or go on your phone at any time.

t-writescode• 5 years ago

As a person in their mid-30s who is having to meet and rebuild their friend group, it’s fascinating to me how the list of places you provide almost entirely are “go with a group, don’t want to be bothered” places.

The hunt for the Third Place, especially among those that are “not 20” is very real and comparatively difficult.

I happen to have met a smallish group of people that I can start to grow as a community with that I actually want to, but this is a recent development and I’m grateful to the people that found me.

rory4• 5 years ago

There have to be more options than that.

A country club?

A service org like Rotary / Lion's Club?

I'm not sure what's out there, but there must options other than Jihad, Kristallnacht, or barber shop.

jedimastert4• 5 years ago

Country clubs are specifically made as exclusionary spaces for wealthy, almost always white, people.

savanaly• 5 years ago

Gaming both tabletop and video abounds with groups of different varieties, commitments, sizes. The video gaming side can tend towards the superficial or toxic not as a rule but as a tendency, due to access and anonymity. But a good board gaming/RPG group is hard to beat as a third place.

Dracophoenix2• 5 years ago

Freemasonry. And for a near-exclusively African-American patronage, there are Prince Hall Freemason lodges[1]. While most Masonic lodges have a "belief in a Supreme Being" requirement, lodge activities are more secular and grounded in their application.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Hall_Freemasonry

shuntress• 5 years ago

Horse racing tracks.

jedimastert4• 5 years ago

Cons: You can't go if you don't have the money for a haircut.

This is something that people are unaware of (sort of on purpose), but barbershops in black communities become ad-hoc community centers, where black men can just go and be among other black men. Gatherings of black men were (and are) seen as suspicious or "gang-related", but if there's a large gathering of black men at a barbershop, they're all just there to get a haircut, and everyone needs a haircut.

It's not expected of people to get a haircut.

dragonwriter5• 5 years ago

This is something that people are unaware of (sort of on purpose), but barbershops in black communities become ad-hoc community centers, where black men can just go and be among other black men

Originally, it may have been a kinda-sorta-secret, but given the prominent role that barbershop-as-Black-social-nexus has played in popular media portrayals of Black American communities targeting general (not just Black) audiences for the last several decades, that's hardly the case any more.

babayega2• 5 years ago

Exactly.

And when you have your special barber, he would cut your hair even when you have no money. That's another assumption a lot of non-black peoples do not know.

I'm black African. I went to live in Rome (Italy) and went 3 times in a "normal" barber shop and the Italians were just doing the haircuts as it is required by their jobs and talking about moundane things. I joined the conversation but ... They are professional. They don't have time to talk about personal problem and stuff. This is not the place.

I switched to a black barbershop and, just near Termini train station. Man, the first day I was there the barber told me and asked me personal stuff and it wasn't "unprofessional" in my view.

We bonded. And now he even call me to ask me how if a problem I have told him previously is solved yet, he has a plumber who can help me fix things and stuff...

So in our culture barbers are well respected.

koolba• 5 years ago

This is something that people are unaware of (sort of on purpose), but barbershops in black communities become ad-hoc community centers, where black men can just go and be among other black men.

This isn't specific to blacks. I've seen it first hand in every culture that has barber shops. Which is every culture.

The key ingredient is that the barbers are members of their community and there's work culture (or lack of work culture depending on the individual) that provides enough free time to actually congregate.

rendall2• 5 years ago

Has nobody seen Luke Cage? The entire plot revolves around a Harlem barbershop.

PartiallyTyped• 5 years ago

This was addressed in the tv-show "New Amsterdam". The medical director of the New Amsterdam Public Hospital identified that barbershops are indeed community centers, after an almost fatal event where a black man almost died playing basketball.

The director figured that it is far more likely that men could get their heart checked if they didn't have to go out of their way to get to a hospital, and that was the right place to do it. He trained the main barber there on how to use the machine because he understood how much he cared about his friends, acquaintances, and the community he had fostered. IIRC he did that in many other barber shops in the area.

Funny enough, this approach also saves a lot of money because health problems can be identified faster than otherwise.

twic• 5 years ago

This has reminded me of the classic sitcom Desmond's, set in a Guyanese barbershop in South London, with exactly that dynamic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond%27s

Although Desmond's wife was usually around, and he had a white apprentice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxgmRB78GxQ

klyrs2• 5 years ago

There's also therapy. Way more expensive than a haircut, and it's highly stigmatized especially among men. It doesn't provide community, per se, but it can help a person work through the issues that are making it hard for them to find and keep friends.

And, yeah. A barbershop is a decent stand-in.

whatshisface3• 5 years ago

In an ideal world there would be a professionalism gradient for mental health the same way there is for physical health. The physical health gradient starts with yourself (trying to eat healthy), passes through your friends casually assisting (participating in outdoor activities, discussing food, telling you they're staying home because they're sick), then hits easily accessible treatments (pharmacy), moves on to more difficult treatments (doctor's visit), and then finally to ultra-expensive high-risk technological approaches.

In contrast, the mental health picture for isolated urban professionals starts with self-regulation, then jumps straight to being treated by The System. Therapists catch a broad range of problems that don't need all their training just by virtue of being the first rung on a ladder that starts 20 feet off the ground.

hncurious2• 5 years ago

You might argue barbershops are better.

1. They are cheaper.

2. You get a haircut.

3. Community.

4. They are trained in the real world, and within the community they are serving.

5. The barber's incentives are aligned with yours. If they solve your problem, you're still a repeat customer. In the case of therapists and chiropractors, they are incentivized to manage your problem indefinitely or to find new problems.

neutronicus2• 5 years ago

It's also a giant pain in the ass to even start therapy, at least in my city

You look up all the providers who take your insurance, call around, all the ones you try are booked up 3 months out...

And all this at a time when small hurdles are enough to stop you from doing literally anything

whymauri4• 5 years ago

You can bond with people over similar ethnic or life backgrounds without devolving into supremacy... people do this all the time around the world. Obviously, there need to be reasonable limits around the 'tribal identity' that preclude supremacist behavior, but it's certainly a valid way to build relationships and feel supported.

hhs• 5 years ago

Lewis is trying to solve a problem a lot of other people are trying to solve: how can you have a normal community in US culture?

Indeed, in sociology this building of community is typically called the 'third place' [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

whymauri4• 5 years ago

Oh wow, this is a great Wiki article -- thank you for sharing!

honkdaddy• 5 years ago

Do HN folks have a "third place" they go to?

nobodyandproud• 5 years ago

1. Religion: Other pros:

- Highly tailored to cultural nuances. Many immigrant communities only have religion as their fallback. I cannot overstate how important this is to such communities.

- In some cases, a diverse set of people and backgrounds from different points in their life.

- Many religions instill a sense of humility.

Other cons: - By nature ripe for abuse, without checks and balances in the structure.

- A lot of work and time/financial commitment by its members.

- In practice, some of the nastiest and most egotistical people I’ve met attend churches.

andruby• 5 years ago

Option 3 is actually the plot of an episode of the medical drama series "New Amsterdam". The main character of the show is the director of a fiction NYC public hospital. In episode 4 of season 2 he tries to encourage black men to get medical checkups. He choses to teach the barbers how to take blood pressure and prescribe some basic meds. The episode centers around the mistrust that black people in the US have of public healthcare, and how barbers are a natural social center for that community.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Amsterdam_(2018_TV_series)...

MisterBastahrd5• 5 years ago

Once upon a time, some barbers had dual jobs: cutting hair and taking care of common medical conditions. The first modern surgeon was a barber by trade. The red and white of barber poles represent blood and bandages, after all.

zthrowaway• 5 years ago

This is common with cosmetology and all people regardless of background, my mother has been in that business for her entire working life and it’s surprising how much therapy she has to do outside of just cutting hair.

jacobrobbins• 5 years ago

This is really interesting and seems like a great example of how small businesses are better for their community than chains. When I lived in Fort Greene brooklyn I was surprised by how many barbershops and hair salons there were, like 5 or more on the single little triangular block at fulton and greene. It seemed clear they were providing more of a community function than just the utility of getting a haircut that i was familiar with. On a side note I never got comfortable with making conversation while getting my haircut and eventually settled on just cutting my own hair at home. That said I never tried the barbershop-type places and usually went to pretty generic haircut shops.

gizmo686• 5 years ago

Isn't McDonalds also well known to be a community center?

txru• 5 years ago

McDonald's is a place people come with their community. Older folks sit there for hours etc because it's air conditioned/warm. The community doesn't really intersect with the employees though, besides the employees being friendly when the people order.

imbnwa4• 5 years ago

For elderly folk, sure

rytor718• 5 years ago

The black community in America has known this forever. We've had to rely on these kinds of businesses, not just as sources of goods and services, but as literal community centers that help people out, sometimes for free. Thats still true, same for salons, corner grocery stores, churches etc. Growing up, these little pieces of community were amazing and still are. While people are of course a little different, I still see these things in the community where I live and they still have the same compassionate professionals most of the time. They dont just sell things. They also give.

djtriptych• 5 years ago

That's Clinton Hill!

okareaman2• 5 years ago

For me, this article is about mentoring younger people and benefits it provides. I mentor a young brilliant programmer who I used to work with. I maintained a relationship with him after I retired. He called me up last night frantic about some issues. I know he drinks too much and that he has mental health issues, so I was able to talk him through it. We talked about solutions for his drinking problem. He thanked me later for helping him. He calls me about 3 times a year with these freak outs. Helping him makes me feel useful and doing some good. I have a similar relationship with my son, so this programmer is like an adopted son, which I encourage because my philosophy is we are not alone in the world, but have people around us that care about us and are willing to help if we can put down our pride and ask for help. I wouldn't be alive today if I hadn't asked for help and then let people help me.

SinParadise• 5 years ago

You are a good man.

okareaman2• 5 years ago

Thank you. I think most healthy people have this goodness in them but the modern world puts more emphasis satisfying the self. I discovered the benefits of practicing kindness when someone was kind to me.

systemvoltage• 5 years ago

That felt good to read, thanks.

sandworm1013• 5 years ago

It isn't because they are barbers. That is secondary. These are men's groups. This is men helping other men. Thanks to continued differences re hairstyles barber shops are one of the very few all-male places left in modern society (other than locker rooms which have a distinct competitive air). So it is no surprise that many urban men feel at home and are more willing to talk at the barber than anywhere else.

namlem2• 5 years ago

I'm not sure that's entirely true. I feel like the same dynamic is still present in mixed-gender salons.

imbnwa4• 5 years ago

I can vouch that in both Black and Puerto Rican barbershops, the ones in my neighborhood and have attended for most of my life, the range of possible topics is much less confined than a unisex space. Like, to the degree that I have to question your level of experience.

It's not just dude's safely talking about their problems as the article highlights, that's an aspect, its literally dudes speaking freely without female intervention, e.g. men talking sex, etc.

When a mother comes in to drop off her son or waits idly with him until he's gotten his cut, or a barber's girlfriend makes a quick stop in, the topics will change. Dudes don't just keep talking about the multiple women that they're engaging simultaneously in the presence of women (I understand one may find this topic distasteful but that's how some men use that space) , particularly since in these neighborhoods there are three degrees of separation or less, if not out of simple decency.

Edit: Just to inflect this even more personally, my mother even was explicit about her desire for me to be acculturated more thoroughly in common Black masculinity by dropping me off at the barber shop because I was, relative to the other men in the world I grew up in, too bookish and (what gets called) introverted (I don't really like the use of that term but that's a different discussion), i.e. relatively feminine. That didn't really work, lol, but it was one of the few times she made her thought process explicit in my presence, which is why I distinctly remember it.

ceilingcorner3• 5 years ago

It goes against pretty much everything in the zeitgeist, but yeah, men and boys are really hurting from this lack of all-male spaces. I hope culture boomerangs around enough to permit them sometime soon.

sandworm1013• 5 years ago

Shooting clubs. The really aggressive ones that meet in the woods to "train". Still predominantly all-male.

tejtm• 5 years ago

and on the other hand I see clubs such as Machining, Astronomy (and to a lesser degree HAM ?) struggling not to just be a dwindling old guy club.

at_a_remove• 5 years ago

Duke has a space for men: "The Duke Men's Project is an initiative to call men in to conversations about feminism and gender oppression. It aims to create a space of brotherhood and fellowship dedicated to interrogating male privilege and patriarchy as it exists in our lives, our campus and our society." as sponsored by the Duke Women’s Center.

That's pretty much the kind of thing that is available for men.

vmception4• 5 years ago

Barber shops are also full of the most toxic ignorant drivel you can possibly find in the physical world.

This article and the positive comments highlights a need for actual mental health advocates aimed at men.

alex_sf• 5 years ago

So they can be trained to think 'correctly'?

imbnwa4• 5 years ago

Eh, as a Black male, the possibility of ignorant shit tends to accord with how young the age average of the barbers is, older/elderly barbers aren't treated as peers usually and so have a modicum of authority to curtail discussions when they feel its out-of-line or inappropriate, not to mention they're usually more thoroughly religiously observant. The church use to be a space for discussion with an authority figure like that but most Black men, particularly younger ones, have evacuated the church.

hncurious2• 5 years ago

You may not realize this, but policing the speech of communities and advocating that they be re-educated by the proper authorities has historically been the stuff of nightmares.

mbrodersen• 5 years ago

Interesting. How many barber shops have you researched to reach that conclusion?

emerged2• 5 years ago

I recently came to realize that many addiction groups are actually a social replacement for buddies who used to go out drinking / partying all the time.

Since they can no longer party, a replacement group is needed and they all immediately share in common that they don’t want to drink or take drugs.

Maybe this is common knowledge but it was a lightbulb moment for me when I realized it.

kgin• 5 years ago

I’ve long wished for AA type groups for people who arent necessarily struggling with addiction.

We’re all struggling.

holdupnow• 5 years ago

I wish I had this at my barber.

jjtheblunt• 5 years ago

No mention of Coming to America, where this happens?

That resonated with white kids in suburban america too (i'm one) who had the same experience, with friends' grandfathers the longtime town barbers. My grandfathers had both died when i was tiny, so it was the only grandfather situation i had recurringly, and it wasn't just white or just black, btw.

it's just a healthy thing, so good seeing it still goes on!

ceilingcorner3• 5 years ago

This used to be the case for most communities in America, before we decided that externalizing and professionalizing everything was the "economically efficient" solution. If you had a problem, you'd talk to the elder folks in your community and see what they thought about it. Now we barely know our neighbors and our community elders are shipped off to special-purpose holding facilities.

tartoran• 5 years ago

Yes. Let’s hope it makes a comeback. The current direction is unsustainable..

ProjectArcturis• 5 years ago

I don't know, the confidentiality of a professional therapist is huge. Plus a lot of the elders I know would advise you to deal with depression by sucking it up. Or try to pray the gay away.

kzrdude• 5 years ago

Now a professional therapist might not want to tell you to do anything at all. The ones I've met have been very passive. They listen, it's great, but they don't point in any direction.

bsanr2• 5 years ago

It's give and take. Everyone knowing your problems can make you a target for persecution, but it also makes it more difficult for you to get involved in things that your community disapproves of (again, sometimes this is bad, but sometimes it's good).

The loss of meatspace community can mean falling into a counterculture that is, ironically, at once met with suspicion by the mainstream, but also better at helping members manage difficulties and better at enforcing certain nominally-embraced but practically-ignored moral standards. For example, late-century LGBT communities (who encouraged unconditional love for one's neighbors better, them or your local ministry?).

neartheplain• 5 years ago

the confidentiality of a professional therapist is huge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_of_the_Confessional_and_t...

stronglikedan• 5 years ago

I think that was just a natural progression brought on by the advances in psychology/psychiatry. Similar to how we've decided trust people with mental health issues to take their meds while participating in society, instead of just locking them away in an institution like we used to. Plus the other good points that people have brought up, like anonymity and generally sound, unbiased advice.

dangus• 5 years ago

This strikes me as rose-tinted nostalgia, along with straight up misinformation/weasel words. “Elders are shipped off to special-purpose holding facilities?” Really?

That’s just not a good-faith statement.

Younger people meet friends through work and school. Some of them – gasp – even know their neighbors!

But let’s be clear here: for even very close friends it’s often not preferable to burden them with my deepest chronic mental issues. They aren’t professionals and they don’t know how to approach those problems.

On top of that, there are negatives to that “village” system. Namely, peer pressure, shunning, gossip, etc. Sure, I want to confide in my family and friends, but there’s a line I won’t cross where a skilled, neutral, confidential party is the better choice.

I see the professionalization of mental health help to be an overall good thing. If I don’t trust my neighbor to help fix the engine control unit in my car why would I trust my neighbor to help me sort out complex mental health issues and find management tools and medication?

I’d guess that most of my family or neighbors’ or friends’ mental health advice is clinically, verifiably wrong/damaging/counterproductive.

ilamont• 5 years ago

Unfortunately, the trusted person in many communities could sometimes make things far, far worse. In my community there were a handful of priests and teachers at a local private school who abused children entrusted to their care.

hallway_monitor• 5 years ago

Can priests get married yet or does the Catholic church still want sexual abuse to continue?

motohagiography3• 5 years ago

Viewing masculine gatherings and mentoring relationships through the lens of "therapy," is patronizing and another example of filtering culture through the narrative of powerlessness. Here's another take. Most people who say they want you to talk about your feelings are predators looking for angry and vulnerable young people who they can manipulate with sympathy and groom for other pipelines and agendas. The barber shops represent a barrier to those people because heterosexual men typically don't relate well to the sort of enablers who prey on young men, and those personalities cannot navigate masculine environments well.

It's useful to ask whether people who say they are operating on the pretext of "healing," and "trauma," are really just morbidly attracted to weakness and vulnerability, and if so, why. These barbershops are places created by black men as a place to gather and have some community, and the reasons for a CNN reporter to pay them any attention at all should be treated with suspicion. Journalists aren't part of the communities they cover, they are scavengers and mainly a nuissance to what they perceive to be power, so if you start seeing them, it's probably because there is something nearby whose vulnerability or weakness has made it a target to co-opt into their narrative. Those barber shops are community treasures, and I'd wonder whether they benefit from having someone else co-opt their story and re-tell it on their behalf.

whymauri4• 5 years ago

Most people who say they want you to talk about your feelings are predators looking for angry and vulnerable young people who they can manipulate with sympathy and groom for other pipelines and agendas.

I'm not really sure what this means... are you lumping in licensed therapists and social workers in here? Seems unfair to me, IMO.

I guess just a little clarification would be useful, not trying to tear down your view or anything. I'm equally skeptic of journalists from big orgs like CNN coming into these spaces.

motohagiography3• 5 years ago

The examples I was thinking of came from growing up in a city where there is a layer of social workers, teachers, "educators," and even therapists who encourage young men to blame their problems on society and an oppression narrative instead of equipping them with the tools to develop constructive masculine friendships with boundaries. There are real systemic social issues that men who are american and black must face, but the article reframing normal relationships as therapy is precisely the kind of framing that harms male friendships.

Maybe this coalition is doing good work, but anyone who leads with problematizing men talking about their feelings earns very reasonable suspicion, imo. The main reason I see men having trouble connecting is because they haven't spent enough time around another men to learn the normal cues and boundaries. Setting up their friendships in yet another relationship that treats them like problem children isn't going to help them.

GavinMcG• 5 years ago

The idea that abusers "cannot navigate masculine environments well" is absurd, ignores the fact that much abuse has taken place in masculine environments throughout history, and imagines that abusers somehow give themselves away by not presenting as traditionally masculine. Where are you getting this?

exolymph• 5 years ago

He's not talking about all abusers, but a particular type.

motohagiography3• 5 years ago

Abuse, e.g. sadism, opportunism, deception are all definitions of unmasculine behaviours. There are men who behave in unmasculine ways, and I'd reassert they usually disqualify themselves from deeper friendship with men who don't. Among men, I would also say that negative traits are necessarily also unmasculine because they are usually immoderate instances of other qualities.

Of course, this is a practitioners view which perhaps does not reconcile itself to theory.

mrxd• 5 years ago

I think you are right that many therapists expect their clients to adopt a position of helplessness and submission, and label them as uncooperative if they don't. We constantly hear about the stigma among men against going to therapy, but no acknowledgment that men's approach to emotions is influenced by the fact that men are the main breadwinners in most households. The typical stoic male approach to emotions isn't just arbitrary "male culture", but a product of the fact that if you as a man can't get out of bed in the morning, people go hungry.

A second, related issue is that the culture of therapy since Freud is heavily influenced by romanticism, a 19th century social and aesthetic movement that prioritized sentimentality and emotion as the source of individual authenticity and creativity. Being in touch with your emotions can be valuable for certain kinds of artistic expression, but in many circles those ideals has become so powerful, they're synonymous with mental health. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the values of the artistic class don't find traction among working class.

wobbly_bush• 5 years ago

A question on the article title from someone who is not aware of the latest words to use w.r.t. race - why is it "Black barbers" but "African American men"? Why aren't both "black" or both "African American"?

dang• 5 years ago

Questions like that can be interesting but unfortunately there is no way that a comment like this will lead to interesting responses—just flames from users who, for whatever reason, have other, stronger feelings than curiosity right now. Therefore it's best, as the site guidelines ask, to "Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

pvaldes• 5 years ago

Most probably just a style choice.

Is discouraged to repeat the same adjective again and again in a paragraph. Using a synonym the second time you see again the same concept is better.

Rules for poetry are more permissive or sometimes even encourage it for emphasis. In prose to see -black- barbers... -black- clients... -black dogs-... -black- neighborhood... would sound stupid and boring after a while.

racl101• 5 years ago

Because I have thick hair that grows fast I have to go to the barber often. So when I go to a barber I go for the quietest most disinterested barber I can find. I'm not good at doing small talk with the people cutting my hair. If they don't speak English even better.

Thankfully my hair is simple to cut, although.

joncrane• 5 years ago

This is timely because just yesterday I was watching "Central Intelligence" with Kevin Hart and The Rock.

Early in the movie Kevin Hart's wife tries to get him to go to therapy and he says 'Black people don’t go to therapy. They go to barbershops to talk about their problems. And then they watch “Barbershop.”'

I think therapy can be useful for people of all races, shapes, sizes, and genders, and I support all initiatives that encourage mental health.

kelvin0• 5 years ago

I think being able to talk about issues in your life and have an attentive ear is 50% therapy right there. Too many men keep things to themselves for too long.

Once they feel cornered, their only perceived course of action is usually anger and violence in extreme cases.

armchairhacker• 5 years ago

Barbers are one of the few jobs left where the people servicing you actually converse with you. Grocery stores, restaurants, ride-shares, gyms, even your office are getting more impersonal.

Which is honestly not a bad thing. I don't need to bother someone or get bothered when I'm going shopping or just want a meal, and I might not necessarily socialize well with my co-workers even if I work well with them. But we need other avenues for adult socialization. Current apps like social media and Tinder are garbage.

Apps have the fundamental intention down: connecting people with similar interests. But online is not a replacement for in-person, all these popular social media apps are gamed and monetized. It's a hard problem.

Slow_Hand• 5 years ago

The option to speak at length with a client while carrying out the work is a very satisfying quality in a job. I drove a pedicab every weekend for five years in downtown Austin and one of the great pleasures of the job is having your clients’ undivided attention for 5-10 min. It’s a perfect amount of time to get to know someone. Many times I would hit it off with them so well that we either exchanged info or I parked up up my cab and we continued to hang out for the evening. I’m someone who abhors small-talk, but if you give us time enough to connect in a sincere way it leaves you feeling great about the people you can meet.

Black barbers have become mental health advocates for African American men

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