Sam Simmons

and treat the people around them.

Okay?

Because we don't leave no out for men to deal with their trauma, so they share it with everybody else.

And the more they suffer, the more the family and the community suffer tenfold.

Right, right.

Well, the thing is, you've got to take care of the problem.

It's better if you're not recognizing it, even though the water is all around you the whole time.

And the whole thing is, you don't look at the hole in the boat.

You say, well, look at the ocean.

You know, look at that water.

We're surrounded by water.

Well, yeah, but what about the water in the boat?

Exactly.

And that's how we've been conditioned to look at it from this kind of victim position.

Like, we have...

We have no hope or no part in this.

We have no skills.

But what I realized, my work in dealing with Black men and their trauma came really even more clear when I started doing domestic violence work, because when we do domestic violence work, at least initially, it was always to beat up a man.

Beat him, beat him down, you know, relive what he did to his partner and that kind of stuff, and then build him back up.

How do you beat down a population that's already beaten and then think that's going to work?