Richard S. Brookshire III
What are your thoughts…
On the freedom that comes from being a creative. In your NY Times article you mentioned being closeted and having to essentially stifle your Blackness; how has writing and directing allowed you to be your full self?
When I got out of the military, I was a shell of my former self. In some ways, it was because I’d just gone through seven years of indoctrination and forced to acclimate to a white heteronormative environment so far removed from my own identity. But also, I came into manhood in the military - and used the experience to define what that meant in the absence of a father.
I’ve always been a writer - a poet, I'd like to believe - actually. In high school and throughout the beginning of my college years, I’d often find solace in what I’d written. But when I entered the military, understanding the trauma of what I’d endure - war and all its manifestations - a desire to not remember became paramount. A desire to not document the journey was a form of survival. In order to avoid the fate of so many Black queer men who’d come before me - I shut away a lot of who I was - both physically, spiritually, and on paper. To move through those years, I didn’t write a single word. A dear friend had gifted me a journal before I went to Afghanistan and encouraged me to channel the experience into words on a page. But I couldn’t and I wouldn’t. Writing had always brought me closer to myself - and being a soldier in a white man’s Army felt so far removed from who I’d thought I’d become - at least at the time.
In the years since I exited the Army, writing has been a pathway to healing and connecting with my spirit. When I found my words again, at first it felt like I was screaming into an abyss with every stroke of my pen. There was so much pain, anger, confusion built up - a profound loneliness underneath it all. So much to process and digest upon returning from war. The gift of being able to tell my own story, in my own words - to highlight the contradictions and complexities that informed my experiences was --- freeing.
I now realize that at the heart of who I am is a storyteller. Film is just another tool to the same end - giving me the ability to capture our physical presence, our words, our movements, and our creative and spiritual imagination with such vivid clarity so that generations in the future can see themselves in our truest form, and perhaps find their way to the core of who they are with less friction.
On the art of Black storytelling and the importance of fighting for our stories to be told?
I started the Black Veterans Project, an initiative aimed at archiving Black veteran history and researching and advocating around persisting racial inequities - two years ago after I’d survived a suicide attempt. I recognized that unfortunate chapter wasn’t one unique to me, but an intergenerational trauma experienced by so many who came before. And I wanted to get about the business of helping other Black veterans tell their stories - so that they, too could be seen and heard. I spent the past two years reading - avidly - everything I could about Black veteran history. And what I learned forced me to reckon with a responsibility to do something of substance. Since the Civil War, Black service members have been subjected to racism and bias in the ranks of our military. This bias has manifested in a long history of service members being discharged in ways that deliberately locked them out of benefits they’d earned. Benefits that have long - often, multi-generational - impact; housing, healthcare, education, and employment opportunities. Even now, there is a large disparity in punishment of Black service members in the military under the Uniformed Code for Military Justice (UCMJ). Just as our civilian justice system is rife with racism, the military’s independent judicial system is a playground for racial bias and violence. And so my spirit has led me to expose these histories - both in the past and present - as we talk about building out a case for recompense - for reparations and challenging American institutions to be more accountable and equitable to Black lives. Storytelling is an integral first step to building out the framework for a reckoning. Black folk serve at some of the highest rates of any race and yet still fight a system built on preserving us as second-class citizens. We must correct the falsehoods of history and fight against our own erasure. That responsibility is on our shoulders. America can take a lot away from us, but they can’t take our stories - not if we don’t let them.
On your journey to directing. Was film school always a part of your plan or the result of life experiences?
My decision to enter film school was the result of Donald Trump.
I grew up wanting to be in politics - inspired by Barack Obama. A cliche of sorts, but I can admit the ways I idolized our first Black President - and in many ways, still do. I did everything I could to achieve that goal, too. But, when I got my first job in politics - I realized where true power lied; in the propaganda of film, television, and media. It’s how we learn social norms, how many of us learn who we are, and in some ways even what we are capable (or seemingly incapable) of. It’s how America was introduced to the man who currently resides in the ‘white’ House; first, in gaudy, glitzy primetime television specials about his opulent wealth in the 1980s and ’90s. Then, through the advent of ‘reality t.v.’. That indoctrination - the posturing of Trump’s capacity for ‘leadership’ was intentional on his part - it’s what convinced poor and middle-class white America of his qualifications, destiny even - to be President. I realized it was equally important to put the truths I knew - in their rawest form, at the heart of those mediums of propaganda. I understood that political projects rely on the histories we capture and tell - and that it can serve either evil or truth - sometimes, both - simultaneously. I now understand that changing hearts and minds, pushing for folk to think differently, act differently is directly tied to the stories folks hear about themselves and others they perceive as other. And so when I decided to step away from politics, it wasn’t me running away from the dream I’d once held, it was me running toward it - in a more provocative, honest, and intentional way that would allow me to speak salient and uncomfortable truths about Black American life. Art can be a catalyst for change. I believe that.
On being a free Black man. How do you define being “free”? And what are your hopes for Black men who may not feel free?
Freedom begins in the mind. When I was enlisted, I used to liken it to a form of indentured servitude. I’d never felt less free, and likely never will. But I know now, that no one can quite ‘give you’ your freedom - it is something you take. Malcolm said that. And it always stuck with me. And so freedom thus begins with a thought. We live in such a complicated time, where ‘freedom’ becomes much more difficult to qualify - because our economic and social structures can bind us to such oppressive realities. When Black bodies are locked in literal cages, when families are imprisoned in poverty, how Black queer people live in fear for existing as they are - are not lost on me. Black men who haven’t quite arrived at a space where they feel free - I hope that they find space to connect with spirit. It began with reading the words of the ancestors. Every book that tells a history is an opportunity to connect with their power - and lead you toward your own. I hope Black men who may not feel free, connect to a sense of self that is not defined in any way by their circumstance - but by deepest roots of their own humanity - and that they free themselves from the prisons built in their own minds about the beauty of who they are and the boundless potential of who they can become and are already becoming. When you find that freedom, there is peace and stillness that guides your life. And that is what I wish for my brothers.
On the importance of mental health. Our community is plagued with many physical ailments that mental health often takes a back seat. Why is it important that we not only acknowledge how systematic oppression aids in some of the mental illnesses we see in the black community but have real conversations about what it means to suffer from mental illnesses?
We first have to understand that trauma and pathology are often passed down generationally. That though we have the autonomy to actualize into whomever we choose - we must marry our gifts with our consciousness and understand that we are the result of a generational struggle toward defying the ways the white gaze defines and binds us. As much as we may be connected to a legacy of enslavement, segregation, and all its modern manifestations - we are also connected to something much greater, within ourselves.
That often comes with a lot to unpack.
We as Black people must recognize how vast our collective experiences are and that some of the gifts we are given are qualified as ‘mental illness’ under a white western project; seeing and hearing ancestors, being two or multi-spirited - they sometimes call that schizophrenia; being a deep empath and connected in ways that can weigh and disrupt spirit - psychiatrists might call that depression. That's not to dismiss how these realities/conditions might manifest in our very very modern complicated lives - but when we begin to understand that we are humans living in an unprecedented organized society built around anti-Blackness, we must also challenge what the frameworks used to interpret how our mind processes this violence. And I think that's also a tension Black folk navigate - entrusting a system that isn’t informed in any way by African traditions and customs, handing over their minds - for some the only thing that feels like it even remotely belongs to them - to be ripped apart, analyzed and, often - dismissed. We open ourselves to the prospect of great violence when we seek out mental health care and without that conversation leading our effort to confront the psychological challenges we face - we haven't arrived at full honesty. Many Black folks I know suffer from an overwhelming sense of anxiety. And it's to be expected. It’s what's often crippled me. It took years to get help. And I experienced that same dismissal. I understand the language and classist underpinnings of psychiatry.
I’m not married to the idea that only western psychiatry can solve our mental and spiritual wounds. I believe that starts with community, with conversations, and support systems. Many of us have experienced the brink of insanity when we arrive at a fuller consciousness. And sometimes, you might need help moving through that - and more of us need to reckon with what ‘help’ really looks like.