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ABSTRACT Title of Document: WHAT IS A BLACK MAN WITHOUT HIS PARANOIA? : CLINICAL DEPRESSION AND THE POLITICS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS’ ANXIETIES TOWARDS EMOTIONAL VULNERABILITY Tyrone Anthony Stewart, Ph. D., 2009 Directed By: Associate Professor Sheri L. Parks, Department of American Studies In an interview after his departure from television and a rumored “breakdown,” the comedian Dave Chappelle asked Oprah Winfrey, “What is a black man without his paranoia?” This question forms the crux of a dissertation which addresses African Americans’ attitudes toward clinical depression, in general, and black men’s anxieties toward emotional vulnerability, in specific. Using the concept of “paranoia” as an indicator of a healthy skepticism toward medical authority, this dissertation deconstructs the concept of depression as a discursive construct and moves it out of the bounds of science and into the precincts of cultural emotion theory. Opting for theory over science, this dissertation argues against the erasure of social and cultural narratives and explores how race and gender can inform our interpretation of depression. Using textual readings, historical comparison, and ethnography, this dissertation examines the politics involved in addressing the emotionality of black men. It is concerned with how definitions of blackness, manhood, crisis, worth, and belonging impact black men’s understandings of emotional wellness and inform African Americans’ attitudes toward the emotional performances of black men. Two popular books on African American’s mental health (Black Rage by William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs (1968) and Black Pain by Terri Williams (2008)) are examined within their respective historical and social contexts to track the changing cultural discourse on African Americans’ mental health and the role of gender in understanding narratives of wellness. And concepts family, labor, and responsibility are explored as implicit elements in black men’s attainment of manhood in a comparative examination of the Sanitation Workers Strike (1968) and the Million Man March (1995). WHAT IS A BLACK MAN WITHOUT HIS PARANOIA? : CLINICAL DEPRESSION AND THE POLITICS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS’ ANXIETIES TOWARDS EMOTIONAL VULNERABILITY By Tyrone Anthony Stewart Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2009 Advisory Committee: Associate Professor Sheri L. Parks, Chair Associate Professor Mary Corbin Sies Professor A. Lynn Bolles Professor Mary Helen Washington Assistant Professor Clyde A. Woods © Copyright by Tyrone Anthony Stewart 2009 Preface Crazy People For as long as I can remember, I have always had a fascination with crazy people. Those people who did not live by the logic of the rest of us, the ones that looked up in to the sky and directly into the sun (at times), the ones that could tell the truth but couldn’t tell the time. They smelled and were unkempt, sometimes. At other times they were as clean as the rest of us. But they were never us, they were never normal. Some of them were the center of public disturbances: every summer, every Christmas, every Saturday night. While others stood out not because of what they did, but rather because of what they didn’t do: they never grew-up, they never moved on, and they never moved out. They all had a story, but seldom were they the writers of their stories. Their lives were strung across the neighborhood like laundry, for everyone to see. Their stories were recollected as cautionary tales for children to show how drugs could destroy potential or how bad families raised bad children or how the world could break you if you weren’t careful. No one asked them about their lives or how they got to be “so crazy,” so different from the rest of us, because we knew enough already. Their stories were never for them, they were for us. They were a living lore, a walking index of symbols and events, that kept us on the side of the “right minded.” We’d speak with their parents, their grandparents, their sisters, brothers, wives, husbands, and girlfriends on the street or at the store mentioning patience and grace, Jesus and a bigger plan. We’d walk away feeling as if we had done the right ii thing, the best we could do. But in our compassion we knew that the suffering they bore couldn’t be spotlessly washed away with prayer; we knew that no miracle would descend to loose that which held their loved ones. Nevertheless, we needed them to be strong and accept that the question of “why?” would be answered in time. In placing the matter in bigger hands than our own, ours became free, but the possibility of being ‘touched’ ourselves remained. This fear helped keep everything in order: our beliefs, our behaviors, and our dreams. What interested me most, in this social calculus, was I understood early on that we needed these crazy people more than they needed us. We needed them because they lived a life impossible to know, and mystery had its uses. We could act like them, and wear that empty stare or don that voluntary neurotic tic. Acting crazy could keep threat of violence or judgment at bay, because no one would raise a hand against those not bound by rules and no one could rule against a person not bound by reason. Acting crazy also allowed us to say things we would not normally say or do. We could confront authority, curse God, damn the preacher, and incite the Devil in the same vitriolic breath and retreat to a simple explanation: “Aw, I was just actin’ a fool.” We used craziness like a second veil, in a world that needed things to “make sense,” but we knew of nothing beyond the curtain. It was a game we played when the cards were stacked against us, a game we could quit at any time. iii Crazy Nate I think of “Crazy Nate.” Honestly, I can’t remember his last name or his people. All I can remember are the uses we made of him. I was close to fourteen, when Crazy Nate made his impression on me. I usually encountered Crazy Nate when I was in places I should not have been and doing things that I should not have been doing. My neighborhood friends and I would chip in for a case of Old English 40 oz. bottles. We’d get two for five dollars and waste most of it in libation rituals we learned from watching Cooley High. Crazy Nate was our entertainment. We never physically confronted Crazy Nate; we just wanted to fuck with him. Nate wore large bifocals that hung off his face like a poorly hung painting. His brow was always sweaty and furrowed, and he wore a constant look of surprise; it was as if that expression helped to keep the glasses on his face. He wore the same clothes all summer, it seemed. Nate never drove, he always walked. We’d see him at the playground, out in back of the beer distributor, or at the basement rent parties. We’d harass him on a dare: “Nate? Where that party at Nate?” “Damn Nate, you stink! You shit on yourself!?” “We gonna take them sneakers, Nate.” “Go on wit yo’ crazy ass, Nate.” Nate would have the same response whenever we called him Crazy: “Aw, hell naw! Nate ain’t Crazy… Nate ain’t crazy.” He would say, doing a circular bop with a pivoting fist pump that I can still see but can’t describe in words, even now. The repetition of his movements and mantra was probably soothing to him, perhaps as much as we were probably a pain in his ass. iv Nate would drink and get high, too. It was usually the boys in high school that gave him some weed or a beer. He’d hang a little with them, get drunk and start talking to himself. I never knew if he wanted to be like everybody else or if he was drowning out some pain or both. In retrospect, I believe Nate had Down’s Syndrome, but, again, I am not sure. A couple of years back, I seen him in Joe Capp’s, the black hole-in-the-wall bar in Lancaster and bought him a beer. No conversation. Just a nod and a beer. “There go ol’ Crazy Nate” I’d say to those same friends. “He still around!?” We’d do the dance and sing the song, in a muted sort of way: “Aw, hell naw! Nate ain’t Crazy… Nate ain’t crazy.” Too Damn Cool And then there was Cool. Cool told the world that you were untouchable. Cool meant that you could be in the world, but not of it. Cool meant you had an awareness of something that most other people didn’t and that you felt no obligation to share this information with them. In a strange bit of magic, Cool helped us to become visible by making ourselves invisible. Style, swagger, and surface took the place of the kids we were just a summer ago; it was expected of us. When the Funky Fresh Five became the 100% Live Posse, I was permitted into the fold on the virtue of having bought two professional deejay turntables with the money that my mother had saved for college. Previous to this purchase, I was the chubby kid at the end of the street. I was not Funky, Fresh, or Live to any noticeable degree. The turntables were my talisman. v This was during hip-hop’s second era; after the music and culture had left the confines of New York City but before MTV had gone “urban.” I listened to the late night radio shows broadcasted from miles away.

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