Suicide? (Re)Introducing the Bobby Wright Social–Political Model of African-U.S. Own-Life Taking or African High-Tech Lynching

Personal Reflexive Statement

Quantitatively speaking, Dr. Bobby Wright did not produce a great deal of published scholarship. However, I regard as unsurpassed the quality of his scholarship in its sublime perspicacity at analyzing root causes of societal behavior that is anti-African and its resulting negative impact on the African–U.S. (descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States) population. He was an excellent orator who with poignancy turned many an original phrase. He had appeal in diverse circles of the African-United States like revolutionary nationalists, civil rights workers, ordinary folk, and intelligentsia. Bobby Wright captured my attention circa 1980 while I was a graduate student. Although he joined the ancestors in 1982, his thinking and unmitigated advocacy of African-U.S. racial struggling has stayed with me all these years and without a doubt is a pillar of all my professional productions, not just the present article. For searing as well as healing thought and practice, I adjudge Wright among the topmost in centered African psychopolitical relevance past and present. It has been said of Bobby Wright “It is true that we do not recognize greatness among us” (Madhubuti 1985:vii). Carruthers (1985:v-xii) and the DVD Bobby Wright (1982b) provide good overviews and (re)introducing him here hopefully will pique interest.

The Need for a Model of African-U.S. Own-Life Taking

Suicide and self-harm are included as priority conditions in the World Health Organization’s mental health gap action program (Fleischmann and Sarena 2013), as annually 1 million deaths worldwide are attributed to suicide (World Health 2012). It seems that suicides occur in every societal grouping in all societies. The fact that among certain groups suicides generate more attention is easily explainable most times. A college student, for example, whether of African descent or not, inside or outside the United States, taking his or her own life may receive plenty local media coverage and frequently resounds throughout the campus. In the United States, suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students (Lamis and Lester 2011) and the third among persons 18–24 years of age (Bauer, Chesin, and Jeglic 2014). Concerns about litigation are legitimate as are the impact on students, faculty, and staff. The impact on students alone is probably difficult to quantify but is doubtlessly of major concern for them, their parents, and all parties at the university. Lester (2013) points out that more needs to be done regarding college suicides. That many students conceal their suicidal ideation (Denmark, Hess, and Swanbrow 2012) adds to the resulting sensationalism when it happens. The attention is warranted.

Own-life taking among the African-U.S. seems not to receive the same societal attention. It would seem downplayed by comparison. This juxtaposition is not tritely offered as in “my pain is greater than your pain,” but as an indicator of harmful racial maltreatment of African-U.S. in the mental health profession that has a long history (Anderson 2003; Azibo 1993; Belgrave and Allison 2006; Guthrie 2004; Thomas and Sillen 1972; H. Washington 2006). Among the African-U.S. population, the alarming increase in the rate of own-life taking ideation, attempts, and successes reported since the 1980s (Bridge et al. 2015; Jackson 1990; Myers and King 1980; Riesch et al. 2008; Suicide and Suicidal 2012; Vega et al. 1993; Watkins and Neighbors 2013; Watkins et al. 2013) is doubtlessly reflected in the increasing acceptability of suicide among African-U.S. persons nationally (Stack and Kpsowa 2011). Brown and Grumet (2009) found in their sample of 229 urban African-U.S. youth that 45 percent screened positively for suicide attempt or ideation and 20 percent continued to currently endorse both. Their finding that stigmatization of suicide behavior was decreasing was reported as good news by Witte, Smith, and Joiner (2010) but is seen as ominous in the present context. This apparent turn to own-life taking as a legitimate coping strategy among the African-U.S. is warranting of major attention from mental and medical health workers and society at large, as it has been over three decades in the making. As this involves real deaths and family and community rupturing, it is not academic minutiae. That under internal and external colonialism and their aftermath things certainly do fall apart (Achebe 1994) is what African-U.S. own-life taking reflects. Kaslow et al. (2009) presented a culturally sensitive postvention treatment model. Still, not attending to African-U.S. own-life taking behavior as a foremost priority, these past three decades or so has facilitated a death ethos reverberating among the African-U.S. sentiments like “Man, you know, I ought to just ‘bang, get it over with’” are not uncommon. The consequences, again, have been large-scale real death and population destabilization, and in Wright’s thinking would represent a fait accompli of anti-African ethos of the United States (Wright 1979, 1981, 1985:chaps. 1 and 2). More consequences may still loom even if the high-rate increase of the 1980s and 1990s starts to taper off as regression toward the mean suggests it must. Nevertheless, the scope of the problem can be gauged from the finding of a whopping 234 percent increase in the suicide rate for African-U.S. males aged 15–19 between 1960 and 2000 (Berman, Jobes, and Silverman 2006).

African-U.S. Own-Life Taking Since 2000

The most recent data from the first national survey of the African-U.S. (Joe et al. 2009) remain alarming as “in recent decades, the suicide rate for black youth has increased dramatically …. It is estimated that at some point before they reach 17 years of age, 4 percent of black teens, and more than 7 percent of black teen females, will attempt suicide” (National Institute for Mental Health [NIMH] 2009). Roughly half of teens who attempted suicide did not have or were never diagnosed with a mental disorder according to NIMH. In a study of 179 nine- to twelve-year-olds, Riesch et al. (2008) reported 56 percent of those screening positive for having thought of killing themselves were African-U.S. Overall, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports (Suicide Prevention n.d.) between 1999 and 2004, the suicide rate for African-U.S. of all ages was 5.25 per 100,000. Young males (ages 20–24) had the highest rate of suicide, 18.18 per 100,000. Suicide was the third leading cause of death for those between the ages of 15 and 24. Youth statistics in the 12 months preceding the 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Survey showed 7.6 percent of African-U.S. high school students reported having made a suicide attempt, 9.6 percent reported having made a suicide plan, and 12.2 percent reported having seriously considered attempting suicide.

Any model of how this has come to pass the last 55 years or so should be enlightening as well as helpful for intervention and prevention. Most extant suicide models would seem explanatorily inadequate on this score or, at the very least, something is missing. Could there be a role for racial dynamics like white vigilantism, structural poverty, police brutality, and so on? If yes, how would this be modeled? If yes, it also signals the need to move beyond the current theories of suicide which continue to limit conceptualization of African-U.S. own-life taking to individual pathology.

The Role of Depression

Many hold that preventing own-life taking will frequently involve understanding depression (Emory cares 2012). Much suicidal behavior occurs within a context of a mood disorder (Savitz, Cupido, and Ramesar 2006). The general etiological framework outlined below implies there will be much depression experienced by African-U.S. people as a result of living under Caucasian civilization. Also, research with college students implies there may be inordinately high amounts of defensive behavior occurring in the African-U.S. population that is related to psychiatric symptomatology with depression showing the strongest relationship (Azibo 2007, 2015a; Azibo, Jackson, and Slater 2004). That many African-U.S. people will continue to be psychologically debilitated across generations because of living under the welter of Caucasian civilization is a foregone conclusion for many (e.g., Azibo 2011, 2014). Own-life taking as discussed by Wright (1981, 1985:16-22) may be one result. Depression, then, operating as a proximal variable in African-U.S. own-life taking is itself distally induced systematically in the social ecology. Targeting depression in African-U.S. persons has been recommended (Molock et al. 2006; Spann et al. 2006) and insightful techniques reported (Breland-Noble, Burriss, and Poole 2010).

Perspective: Trace History, General Etiology

As culture focusing is regarded by some as indispensable for multicultural competence (Azibo 2003), a sociohistorical perspective for culture-specific context regarding own-life taking behavior seems in order. Relatively little own-life taking is reported in studies of African civilizations of the distant past. When it has been found, it seemed to be purposefully emitted in the context of resistance to Eurasian incursions. Cleopatra VII appears a case in point. Her own-life taking is much more a last ditch act of warfare or defiance of Roman (Caucasian) takeover of her predominantly African country (African as in “Black” in origin, development, and population, see Bauval and Brophy 2011; Ben-Jochannon 1991; Diop 1974; Finch 1990:7-20; Hilliard 1995, 1997; James 1976; Tarharka 1979; Van Sertima 1994; Williams 1976:59-117) when interpreted as a communication to the citizenry the idea that “I’ll die at my own hands before I surrender and submit to Roman humiliation, a luta continua” than a lamentation over a lost lover. In point of fact, Cleopatra VII deceived Marc Antony, did not take her own life as he thought, pursued a liaison with Octavian in order to stay in power, and upon failing that took her own life rather than submit. African-centered history concurs with this assessment (Clarke 1999:50; Diop 1978:vii, 117-18). Another example is found in the Haitian revolution where an entire village of African people walked off a cliff to imminent death rather than surrender to the enslaving French. This act of resistance daunted the French enemy (Carruthers 1985). Oral histories, folklore, and reports of slavers record many intrepid, brave Africans enslaved by European descent people who took their own lives and their children’s in defiant resistance to accepting life under Caucasian civilization. Baruti (2005a:55) points out that many such “suicides deserve a special look … as acts of remarkable bravery.… intelligent acts of warriors” as the author views Cleopatra’s. A case in point from the 1960s is Huey Newton’s promulgation of “revolutionary suicide” meaning “to fight against the oppression of racism and poverty, as well as the agents of that oppression, the police and the government.” The action was revolutionary because of what they fought for, and suicidal because confrontations with the police and government would expose the revolutionary to almost certain physical injury or death. Newton also stressed that the work of the individual to fight oppression should advance the entire cause. In other words, according to Newton, “those who engage in ‘Revolutionary Suicide’ should not—and do not—desire to die by their own hand; instead, the ‘Revolutionary Suicide’ engages in acts which might lead to his death at the hands of his oppressors” (Yates 2014:para. 18).

Although not exclusively an experience of African descent peoples as other communities when under deadly persecution have doubtlessly evinced similar “remarkable acts of bravery,” there is little doubt that the historic context of own-life taking being acceptable only in defense and service of the collective was part of the epic memory of African-U.S. people who struggled to hold on to their African heritage, even to use Jennings’s (2003) language as Africa eventually became a dim memory. Yoruba culture takes this position that own-life taking is acceptable when done in defense and service of the collective today as well as historically (Adeboye 2007; Ajisafe 1924). In large part, this cultural memory may be responsible for the mistaken view that suicide as a lifestyle choice, meaning unrelated to conscious resistance and collective service, was an insignificant phenomenon among African-U.S. people. Indeed, by the mid-twentieth century, it was held as common knowledge among African-U.S. people that they “don’t become depressed or commit suicide” (Jones and Shorter-Gooden 2003:21).

By the early 1980s, however, this folklore was giving way to evidence that depression and suicide were growing problems for African-U.S. people (Brown 1990; Jackson 1990; Jones and Shorter-Gooden 2003; A. Mitchell and Herring 1998:128-36; Myers and King 1980; Stewart 1980). It had become more undeniable as well that depression and suicide have likely been taking a toll on African descent people living under Caucasian domination all along. The Breggins (Breggin and Breggin 1998), Wamba (2004), and H. Washington (2006) remind us of the poignant, tragic case of ancestor Ota Benga. In 1904, he was exhibited as an object at the St. Louis World’s Fair and in the Bronx Zoo in 1906 displayed in the same cage with an orangutan. Despite rescue effected by African-U.S. Harlem residents and relocation to Virginia where he lived with an African-U.S. family, by1916, he was profoundly depressed and took his own life. Coker (2015) chronicles his story. Wamba asks how many other African descent people live and die like Ota Benga in responding to the anti-Africanism that Caucasian civilization visits upon them. Apparently, acculturation and acculturative stress (broadly defined) are indicators for suicide risk among African-U.S. people (Walker 2007). Findings that mixed ancestry youth are more vulnerable to suicide risk factors than nonmultiracial African-U.S. counterparts (Roberts, Chen, and Roberts 1997; Wong et al. 2012) may reflect this.

The Wright Social–Political Model: Societal versus Personal Impetus

Wright (1981, 1985:16-22) argues persuasively without any hedging whatsoever that all persons of African descent living under Caucasian domination who take their own lives are victims of White supremacy as “Black suicide is a political dynamic …. [a] programmed … self-destruction” (1985:19, italics original). Wright’s argument is an indication just how front and center the issue of depression influenced own-life taking by African-U.S. people had become by the 1980s so much so that “[B]lack suicides [now] represent a critical barometer of social health” (R. Washington and McCarley 1998:226). The general idea underlying Wright’s thesis and reflected in postmodern suicide theory (R. Washington and McCarley 1998) and contemporary case reports (Jones and Shorter-Gooden 2003; A. Mitchell and Herring 1998) is as follows:

the anti-Africanism thrust of Caucasian American civilization → a psychology of oppression → faulty, dysfunctional psychological adaptation → → depression influenced own life taking activity, where → means engenders and → → means eventually engenders.

It is pointed out that multilevel models are actually subsumed by the Wright social–political model at the point of “faulty, dysfunctional psychological adaptation.” That is, it is at this point that myriad known and suspected influences like religiosity, psychological Africanity (racial identity), socioeconomic class, stressful life events, perceived burdensomeness, thwarted belongingness, and so forth, come into play. For example, it is at this point in the Wright social–political model that influential multilevel theories like the integrated motivational–volitional model of suicide (O’Connor 2011) or the interpersonal–psychological theory of suicidal behavior (Joiner 2009) would enter. Thus, the Wright social–political model expands the gestalt of own-life taking behavior pertaining to African-U.S. while more accurately emplacing the prevailing Western-based perspectives. Therefore, the penchant for dismissing Wright as dismissing wholesale Western-based perspective is, well, dismissible. His position is formidable and is better dealt with than disregarded. Nothing could be more antiintellectual or intellectually dishonest than the asinine dismissal of Wright’s suicide thesis in one sentence by Crosby and Molock (2006): [Wright] interpreted Black suicide as a method of genocide that was perpetuated and controlled by Whites and thus argued that there was no such thing as “Black suicide.” Their commentary is unfortunate, as it represents a surface-level treatment and unwarranted brush off of Wright’s thesis. Indeed, if their observation held any merit, the present article would be unworthy of attention.

Many, like Rutledge (1990), may view African-U.S. own-life taking as an outgrowth of personal identity that might be influenced by structural factors but are not necessarily. Kral (1998) in contrast contests presumed preeminence of the personal–individual factor(s) in the etiology of suicide. Regarding African-U.S. people, national survey data identify western residence as the strongest correlate of own-life taking (Stack 1998). Comer’s (1990:ix) perspective is that “Because of the unique status of minorities in this country [United States] … the question of the role of social structures and practices in individual behavior will not go away.” The positions of Comer (1990) and Wright (1981, 1985:16-22) as far as favoring societal/social structural impetus over personal impetus are in agreement and seem well established today.

The Wright Social–Political Model in Perspective

Drawing from Wright’s central thesis that own-life taking among African-U.S. persons is ultimately an expression of the anti-African/Black ethos pervasive in U.S. society, the Wright social–political model of own-life taking behavior foregrounds this insight and subsumes multilevel etiological models. As they are currently conceptualized, multilevel etiological models fail to offer fruitful prevention and intervention strategies, as they do not adequately account for structural and systemic anti-African/Black racism. As a result, most Western multilevel models offer versions of contextualized psychopathology that fail to conceptualize depression among African-U.S. persons as distally or structurally imposed. This results in the continued primacy of a Eurocentric view of African-U.S. own-life taking and thinking and an inadequate response on the part of mental health-care professionals. There are three provocative assertions. First, own-life taking among the African-U.S. may be qualitatively distinct from suicide among people of European descent. Naturally, if base cultures—centered African versus Eurasian—differ, then not all behaviors at the psychobehavioral modality level at the surface structure of the two cultures will be isomorphic. It is wrong and ethnocentric to assume African-U.S. own-life taking is in form not significantly different from Caucasian-U.S. Second, it follows from the first assertion that the Eurasian-centered model of suicidality may not only reflect a cultural bias and blindness to the nature of systemic anti-African-U.S. racism, but this ethnocentrism undermines attempts to stem the tide of increased own-life taking and thinking among African-U.S. persons. Third, as Eurasian civilization continues to confront the problematic of endemic sexism, it follows that gendered racism might be significantly impacting African-U.S. women (Perry, Pullen, and Oser 2012).

To continue with the Wright model as practically viable, it would help to make plain (1) the value added of a culture-centered approach that deals squarely with the enduring impacts of systemic anti-Africanism/Black racism, (2) a more thoroughgoing assessment of the multilevel etiological models’ insufficiency that the proposed “Wright social–political” model attempts to correct, and (3) the recasting of depression as structurally rooted to a large degree. The first two can be accomplished by scrutinizing a study by Riesch et al. (2008). Riesch and colleagues intended to show the efficacy of the multilevel social disintegration model in predicting suicide ideation. This model affords a summary of intrapersonal (how the youth thinks of self-regarding problem coping), interpersonal (parent–child communication, caring, and functioning), peer network (how the youth feels connected or linked to school and reports ease with developing friendships), physical (bodily changes due to puberty), and health risk behaviors (weapon carrying and alcohol use) measured in individuals. As such, it appears an adequate multilevel model. The findings were that those screening positively for suicidal ideation exhibited more internalizing behavior including acting sad or depressed, having low self-esteem, being easily embarrassed, and experiencing isolation and social anxiety; were more likely to be involved with alcohol use and weapons carrying; perceived less supportive school climate and lower school connectedness; and had lower educational aspirations in comparison to youth not reporting suicidal ideation. Of the suicide ideators, 25 percent reported they would keep their feelings to themselves, 72 percent had formulated a suicide plan, and 31 percent had made attempts. These results are very helpful to the psychological worker, to wit “the factors identified and discussed … provide a basis from which … actual or potential suicidal risk [can be assessed]” (Riesch et al. 2008:273). But, the limitations inherent in the multilevel paradigm seem glaring, to wit, despite their sample being 52 percent African-U.S., not one of Riesch et al.’s results speaks to, let alone can help with, systemically structured impetus to own-life taking among African-U.S. To accept as comprehensive rather than limited to proximal variables, only the conclusion by Riesch and colleagues—which is the same in form as other multilevel models—is a disservice and malpractice to African-U.S. Acceptance of such findings as etiologically comprehensive renders as mere mouthing all mental health talk of cross- and multicultural competence. The value added of the Wright social–political model is that with it culture-based comprehensive etiology (distal and proximal factors) can be accounted for. As a plausible scenario, suppose using the Wright model and the multilevel social disintegration model which it subsumes that police killings and state cover ups were implicated in client own-life taking behavior. Treatment could attack both nonrhetorically. Consequently, society’s institutional and individuals’ personal contributions to own-life taking behavior can be impacted by psychological workers.

U.S. society has contributed across centuries and generations an ecology that is so psychoculturally devastating to African-U.S. as to destroy their sense of peoplehood and threaten their personality integrity en masse warranting reparations (Azibo 2011, 2012, in press). Struggling against the following nonexhaustive smattering of structural realities that negate African-U.S. people probably contributes to own-life taking behavior for many:

Deaths due to legal intervention among 15- to 34-year-old males from 1960 to 2010 are more than double that of Caucasians;

While listing disparities could go on seemingly endlessly, the point to be taken is that existential reality for the African-U.S. is daunting and more likely than not engendering of depression and depression-linked own-life taking behavior. This is racial realism (Curry 2008, 2014), and it is neither academic nor normal. It is an unnatural fact of life Eurasian domination imposes and forces African-U.S. to inure. If distal sources that contribute to own-life taking for African-U.S. differ from Caucasian-U.S., then the form of own-life taking behavior might be different also. Indeed, forms of African-U.S. own-life taking have been identified as “fatalistic” response to Eurasian hegemony (Houston 1990:136-41), “durational” in which instead of one desperate act a lifestyle inextricably linked to a looming death is chosen (Baruti 2005b:47-54, 177), and “ablossoming” (Wilson 1990:165-71) with one’s life ahead of him or her as “Black suicide is a youth phenomenon” (Rutledge 1990:339).

It is right to give prominence to structural factors because the own-life taking dynamic starts there. To elaborate, the form of the dominance enjoyed by Europeans, Arabs, and others in the current world order is certainly unnatural for African descent people (ADP). The domination takes place through rank oppression and Eurasian cultural imposition. It is more insidious this squashing of African forms of living through their displacement imposed by Eurasian forms of living. The result for ADP is massive frustration and failure regularly observed. Forced to negotiate this unnaturalness, disorder and problems in living in African populations are generated. On top of this, under the Eurasian world order access by ADP to the societal resources that might be ameliorative is obstructed. Naturally, mistrust of the “system” is fostered and fatalism ensues for many. When accessible, the provision of mental health resources is usually inadequate sometimes to the point of malpractice (Azibo 1993). Small wonder many African-U.S. come to engage in own-life taking behavior, a category that could be expanded to include deaths from substance abuse (R. Washington and McCarley 1998).

Notes on Terminology

As it appears that Wright’s position on etiology has merit, it follows that terminology will need updating. Specifically, the term suicide is inadequate to describe African-U.S. own-life taking behavior. It fails to connote and diminishes the idea of deliberate social structural intentionality in influencing African-U.S. people in the taking of their own lives. To continue using the term unguardedly, then, would seem irresponsible and implants the personal impetus perspective. Therefore, in reference to African-U.S. people, the term “own-life taking” is preferable to suicide. Using the latter term is restricted to instances where it is unavoidable.

Additionally, the own-life taking term can be improved upon with culture-focused terminology reflecting more of the dynamics involved. Wright cannot make it any plainer when he states “Lynching by any other name is still lynching” (1981, 1985:17). His thesis is that since Eurasians are guilty of directly or indirectly specifying the environment within which the African-U.S. live, Eurasians therefore are responsible at a distance for the behavior taking place there. The soundness of the argument makes the conclusion compelling that African-U.S. who attempt to or take their own lives are pushed into it by Eurasian civilization and not pulled into it through the exercise of their own agency. This is a point of emphasis for Wright. In other words, African-U.S. are duped, bamboozled into thinking own-life taking is solely a function of their so-called free will and other proximal factors when it actually is much more a distally predetermined option imposed by U.S. society alongside other negative options like crime/the underworld and the criminal justice system and its forebodings, accepting the frustrations of living a second-class citizenship (living while African/Black), and/or hitting the glass ceiling in the legitimate world. When pictured like this, for a dependent and dehumanized/deAfricanized populace, own-life taking behavior resembles a lynching. Azibo (2014) added the high-tech idea that derives from the bamboozling being delivered via modern media technology mostly like the Internet, television, music, and sundry high-tech gadgetry. Ironically, the aha moment that crystallized the African high-tech lynching term for Azibo was Clarence Thomas’s October 13, 1991, race-card play claiming at his Senate confirmation hearing that a technologically delivered media lynching blitz had diminished him, to wit “From my standpoint, as a Black American, [this] is a high-tech lynching … by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree” (Council on Black 2002:293-301).

From Azibo (2014), the serious thinking about or the undertaking of the taking of one’s own life defines “African high-tech lynching” which he proffers to displace the suicide term. “A single attempt to take one’s own life is diagnosable. As well, seriously thinking about the behavior 4 times or more or 10 or more recurrent, but not serious, thoughts of committing the behavior within the last fortnight warrant the diagnosis” (p. 104). Altruistic own-life taking behavior is excluded from the definition. African high-tech lynching clearly represents mental and emotional disturbance.

Implications of the Wright Social–Political Model

Future Work and Conclusion

The Wright social–political model shakes up standard operating procedure (SOP) pertaining to African-U.S. own-life taking significantly. It slows down the medicalization freight train for mental disturbance as less does it emphasize organic disease treatable with pharmacological therapy model, thereby potentially decreasing the doctor–diagnosis–drug cycle (Amos 2014), in favor of a racial realism (Curry 2008, 2014) contextualized African-U.S. culture-focused (Azibo 2014) approach. Thus, the model empowers the mental health worker who is unsullied by pursuit of economic interests and the social capital attainable in adhering to SOP of the Western mental health establishment.

Yet, it is important to note that the Wright social–political model does not throw out the baby with the bath water. Actually, as indicated in the scenario, it brings together structural and multilevel perspectives in a workable framework for African-U.S. own-life taking behavior as we have seen. Coming again at suicide? as African high-tech lynching does no harm to the role of proximal factors while simultaneously exposes the hidden hand of distal and often anti-African-U.S. forces in the society. It is only after exposure that cancerating societal impetuses can be attacked in the regular activities of the psychological and health workers who without a model to guide their activities would more likely proceed without addressing them (We are doing our best, but ‘I can’t quite put my finger on it’). The Wright social–political model makes not addressing the ecological distal factors disservice at best and maybe unethical. The relative weight of structural (distal) versus individual’s personal (proximal) factors might be researched as the model lends itself straightforwardly to path type analyses. Also, application of the model to continental and diaspora societies outside the United States might be studied.

Ultimately, this article challenges scholars of suicidality to base analyses of African-U.S. own-life taking in racialized power differentials, and thereby expand conceptualization of etiological factors to include those embedded in systemic anti-African/Black racism. Problematizing the place of power consciousness in theorizations in African-U.S. own-life taking is a step forward in step with Wright’s thinking. To conclude, there is much to recommend Bobby Wright’s work as, arguably, Wright was right most of the time, though he did not write nearly enough. Alas the future impact of his small collection of work (Wright 1979, 1981, 1982a, 1982b, 1985) might be great but is awaiting scholars as 35 years after his passing there is little work in the sociology and mental health-abnormal psychology literatures, African-centered and Western, that references and builds on his basic ideas save Azibo (1989, 2014), Olomenji (1996), Baruti (2005b), and the present piece which happily (re)introduces him.