A Message About Clarity, Power, and Coming Home to Ourselves
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” — James Baldwin
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We are living in a moment of immense political pressure, cultural backlash, and economic unraveling. But what’s most dangerous isn’t just what’s happening around us — it’s what’s happening within us. We’ve been cloaked in confusion, taught to mistake distortion for truth. Now is the time to see clearly — and come home to ourselves.
It’s our time to turn inward — not as an escape, but as a strategy. To lock arms and minds. To reclaim what was stolen, remember what was buried, and restore what has always lived within us.
It’s time for black men to get serious about ourselves — about our mental clarity, our families, our direction, and the state of our people. As Dr. King reminded us, “Our goal is to create a beloved community...” But to do that, we must first clear the fog. We must quiet the noise we didn’t create. We must look at ourselves — and each other — not with suspicion, but with love. Not with shame, but with truth.
Because people who truly love themselves, see themselves — and walk in the strength of that truth — cannot be stopped.
While some cling to the idea of “Making America Great Again,” this is our time to become ourselves again. Not who they told us we were. Not who we had to perform to survive. But who we were before the distortion.
That distortion didn’t just cloud our vision — it disconnected us from our truth. And as Proverbs 29:18 warns, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” But now, we’re clearing the lens.
Let’s be clear: the most valuable resource in the future won’t be AI. It will be the human mind. But not just any mind. A clear mind.
And when I say clarity, I’m not talking about therapy. I’m not talking about being more focused or more productive. I’m talking about something deeper — clarity from the erroneous concepts, ideas, beliefs, views, opinions, and theories we’ve been taught to believe about ourselves.
This is deeper than just an issue of confidence. Deeper than self-esteem. It’s about what I call the Stolen Self-Image — a quiet, calculated conditioning that made confusion feel like truth.
We’ve been conditioned to believe we were thinking freely — when we’ve actually been repeating lies, false narratives, and propaganda about who we are and what we are capable of as a people.
The Stolen Self-Image doesn’t always scream. It whispers. It gets passed down in silence. In shame. In systems. In survival strategies that appear to protect us, but operate to keep us small.
It shows up as the belief that our story starts with slavery. It shows up as fear, even in success. It shows up as overworking to prove we belong, and guilt when we rest. It is inherited distortion.
From plantations to policies, textbooks to television — it’s all been about control: control the mind, control the people.
So, what do we do?
We reclaim the mind. That’s what clarity is. Not some vague self-help idea. But the daily, disciplined work of clearing out the debris we didn’t put there.
Reclaiming the mind looks like this:
It’s a father choosing to have a different kind of conversation with his son — one that affirms his worth beyond performance or discipline.
It’s a school reexamining how its discipline policies reinforce generational harm. and shifting toward accountability without shame.
It’s a church choosing to teach not just morality, but mental restoration — rooted in cultural memory, not Eurocentric respectability.
It’s a family challenging silence at the dinner table, and replacing it with conversations about what we've inherited, what we believe, and what we’re ready to let go of.
Reclaiming the mind isn’t about changing everything overnight. It starts with one conversation, one question, one honest look in the mirror. It’s the small, quiet moments that begin to loosen the grip of inherited confusion. It’s choosing to pause, reflect, and ask ourselves: What do I believe — and why? That’s how clarity begins — not in grand gestures, but in intentional moments of truth.
This work starts inside, but we’re not doing it in silence or safety. We’re trying to think clearly while dealing with housing that’s unstable.
While schools still leave out our story.
While the system takes what we give and calls it a gift.
The pressure is real. But so are we. Clarity isn’t a retreat from reality — it’s the tool we use to confront it. And if we are going to fight systems that confuse, exploit, and displace us — we cannot be mentally displaced from ourselves.
We ask:
Whose idea of success am I following?
Who taught me what leadership looks like?
When did I learn to fear softness, or doubt my own voice?
What have I normalized that is rooted in trauma?
What am I carrying that isn’t mine?
Who benefits when I stay confused about who I am?
And how do I begin to see myself clearly — without shame, without noise, without distortion?
And then — we unlearn.
Not just to feel better.
But to be better.
To see better.
Because without clarity, we build movements on top of confusion. We treat symptoms but never touch the source. We mistake survival for freedom.
But nothing changes — within or around us — until we face what we’ve been trained not to see. Because clarity is not just a path to power — it’s a return to ourselves.
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The Real Fight Is Inside
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Dr. Timothy D. Goler is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Urban Affairs at Norfolk State University. He also serves as the Director of Research at NSU’s Center for African American Public Policy. A native Clevelander, he hails from the city’s Glenville neighborhood and is co-founder of PolicyBridge.
