A The Black Man’s Shadow

Kwaku Dapaah
Nov 1 · 3 min read

At the risk of painting the experience of black men as a monolith, it is important to make clear that there is no one definitive black male experience. While much of what this piece tackles will resonate with black readers, parts may be alien to a subset of them and others. I wholly accept this and urge the reader to continue with an open mind. I am not an academic, nor am I an authority on the issues covered. I am simply a 25-year-old black man attempting to address a topic that has personally affected me, and many others of a similar background.

It is also important to stress that many of the topics I touch upon are equally, if not more, applicable to the experience of black women. Other minority groups in this country, at this present time Muslims in particular, may well recognise many of these experiences — albeit in a different form. For a number of reasons, some of which are symptomatic of the issues I will address, it seems that black men’s perspectives are infrequently projected from our own voices, leaving room for others to author our narratives. This piece is my contribution to changing this.


The shadow archetype

The shadow archetype is a concept in Jungian psychology that represents the unconscious personality that is suppressed by the conscious ego.

Aptly named, the shadow can be thought of as the “dark side” of an individual which, perhaps to conform to societal norms, is rarely outwardly expressed. That is until inevitably, as Jung describes, due to some event that makes life seem “meaningless and empty”, the eventual encounter with this dark side takes place.

The idea of the shadow self is well-established in popular culture. It is a regular feature in the concept albums of musicians in which through their creative endeavours, the personalities of Beyonce’s Sasha Fierce or T.I’s T.I.P., for instance, are brought to the forefront. More interesting explorations of this concept have been addressed in stories such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or represented in films like Fight Club , Me My, Myself & Irene or the cult classic, The Nutty Professor. In contrast to the carefully curated alter-egos of the previously mentioned musicians, the consistent theme of these works is the physical manifestation of the protagonist’s shadow archetype, whom after a period of mutually beneficial coexistence, attempts to overpower them, eventually culminating in a violent and decisive battle for control.

This theme is pertinent to the experience of black men because for many of us, existing within society is to constantly be in battle with a shadow character. But this shadow is not shaped by the darker, suppressed aspects of our own personalities, as Jung alludes to. For black men, a shadow emerges in the form of a caricature of ourselves, created not by us but imagined by an ill-intentioned other and subsequently perpetuated by society at large, producing the burden of another “opponent” to defend ourselves against. With a battle on two fronts it is no wonder that many of us feel exhausted — the mental gymnastics we perform daily, firstly as men in a patriarchal society (yes, men lose in this system too) but secondly as black men in a white supremacist culture, we pay a heavy tax on a fleetingly scarce resource in modern, capitalist societies — peace of mind.

reflecting and occasionally documenting the process

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