Kweku Akyirefi Smith's unique voice helps him navigate racial tension in Milwaukee, a city plagued by high levels of trauma and segregation. Meet usatodayopinion LeadersofChange.
Veteran psychologist Ramel Kweku Akyirefi Smith has worked in locker rooms across the National Football League, including with the Green Bay Packers. In his hometown, he has been a team psychologist for the Milwaukee Bucks.
“But I also think it’s time for us as a people to make sure that what they’re doing can be followed up in so many other types of matters. And that’s one of the things in which I’m trying to do right now. Making sure they have leverage.” Voices such as his have become more crucial as social agencies, clinics, nonprofits and foundations have begun to coordinate to address an epidemic of psychological trauma and chronic post-traumatic stress faced by people of color.
"When you are standing in the land where you were taken from, you breathe in air that's giving you life like you've never felt before," Smith said last week, recounting the trip.Two years ago, Milwaukee psychologist Ramel Smith made a pilgrimage to Ghana where he was renamed Kweku Akyirefi. He also washed in the same river...
Earl Ingram Jr. broadcasts his radio show with his guest Ramel Kweku Akyirefi Smith, one of the most prominent and best credentialed psychologists in Milwaukee’s African American community.At a time when Milwaukee's social agencies and nonprofits say they want to address the trauma epidemic, too many initiatives smack of “missionary work,” he said. Often, social agencies with predominantly white leadership don't easily make inroads into black neighborhoods.
Smith cites another legend, Herschel Walker — winner of the 1982 Heisman Trophy and one of the NFL's all-time greatest running backs."He was a freak of nature. He was like Jim Brown. He had flash-like speed," Smith said of Walker. But after his 1997 retirement from football, Walker opened up about his struggles with mental illness and multiple personality disorders.
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