Relationship[s], Interaction[s] & the practice of Love for Black Family Stability

Africa World Now Project

Image: ODO NNYEW FIE KWAN, "Love never loses its way home"

Kahlil Gibran, writing in the 1921, The Prophet presents us with a serious meditation on love:

Gibran writes: “Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love” (The Prophet, 1921).

Our great ancestor, Toni Morrison writing Beloved in 1977, provides an even more clear meditation on love…

Morrison writes: “Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all” (Beloved, 1977).

Love, as a praxis, a concept and practice, requires serious deliberation, specifically, in the context of relationships, interactions, and black family stability. As love is often the platform, or base, upon which family units are built.

It is also the platform upon which knowledge systems rooted in generative human progress and spirituality are built.

When broaching a conversation such as this, it spurs great, and varying debate on the fundamental meanings of love, relationships, and family. Understandably so because they impact every aspect of our being.

Yet, a cursory study suggests that every philosophy of life, religion and/or spiritual system understand that love is defined as unconditional, as it is rooted in things seen and unseen. It is the root of all life—biological, spiritual, the life of the mind…and is essential to its proliferation and evolution.

The most important experiences we will have in our journey through this material reality are directly related to the relationships and interactions we create, nurture, and evolve.

Thus, the primary task in our efforts to create, nurture and evolve, is rooted in balancing our individual and collective philosophies of life. [a task that is really the fulcrum upon which relationship and/or interactions survive the various stressors within which they form].

This brings us to today’s conversation. I would like to be clear; it is not an attempt to provide definitive answers. It is not a claim of right or wrong, promoting one perspective over another.

It is an attempt to disrupt normative assumptions about one of the most important aspects of our human existence: love, relationships, interactions, and marital stability, in our case the Black family.

Our program is not an attempt to intellectualize and disregard the emotional, psychological, spiritual, physical components of love, relationships, interactions, and stability.

It attempts to provide a platform that can provide help in understanding and balancing these, at times, destabilizing factors, molding them into lasting connections…in this world and beyond…

It is an attempt to help us find forever!

In this regard, we bring you a recent conversation I had with Dr. Antonius Skipper.

Antonius Skipper, PhD [LSU] is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Winston-Salem State University.

Dr. Skipper maintains an active research agenda that explores the social, medical, and familial experiences of African Americans. He qualitatively explores factors that contribute to the stability and resilience in African American families. He is widely published on issues such as, religion as a source of coping and resilience for older African Americans, religiosity and health, marital stability in strong African American couples, and generative fathering for Black men.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!
Enjoy the program!