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History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography. History tells a people where they have been and what they have been, where they are and what they are. Most importantly, an understanding of history tells a people where they must go and what they still must be.

(John Henrik Clarke, p.11)

How do you view the role and relationship between history and self-understanding?

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Who are my people? Where have they been? 

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Who are my people? Where have they been? 

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WE CAME FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE NILE.

(Ancient Indigenous Egyptians and Nubians)

Describe home and community in your own words.

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Where are my people? What is going on with my people? 

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Where are my people? What is going on with my people? 

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I had no idea that they would ultimately lead to my understanding that the African Diaspora is indeed global and that communities of this Diaspora share commonalities that they usually have no idea they share. They also continue to have links with their continent of origin that they don’t usually know they have—ancestral connections often integral to revealing what they share.

(Dr. Walker, Cultural Anthropologist)

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A social theory determines the destiny of a people by establishing guidelines of life. It defines their relationship with other living things, it defines values and rituals, methods of education, how enemies are to be dealt with, etc. The ultimate achievement of a Black social theory would be the recreation of Black culture.

( Bobby E. Wright, p.33)

What is your guiding framework? What are the problems you are ready to confront, address, and solve?

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What are the words you do not have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own?

(Audre Lorde, p.14)

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What is my role in the fight against the endemic of Silence? 

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What is my role in the fight against the endemic of Silence? 

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After much contemplation, I have concluded that the 21st-century paradigm, informed by the vast body of knowledge of Black and African intellectual and creative heritage, is to transform Silence, suppression, compliance, and complicity into unmitigated, self-defined language and action.

I reside at the intersections of historical consciousness, the development of personhood, collective liberation, and optimal mental health.

Hence, the birth of Liberation Social Work™. My particular approach to optimizing wellness, fostering self-knowledge, promoting dignity, affirming cultural diversity, and cultivating critical and cultural consciousness.

How do you situate yourself, with all of your lived experiences and multi-stories, in the context of human service and transformation?

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Husband & Father

Student of Truth, Knowledge, & Wisdom

Transcultural

Liberation-Centric Social Worker

Self-Healing Facilitator for the Optimization of Community Well-Being

Optimal Mental Health Group Worker

Consultant, Counselor, Technical Advisor

‍ ‍Speaker | Presenter

Professor | Illuminator of Self-Knowledge

The Mission, The Movement, The Chief Purpose:

"Shifting the paradigm from silence, suppression, compliance, and complicity to unmitigated, self-defined language, expression, and action."

The Biography of Brotha KD Toon, MSW, CFSW

Brotha Kyle Toon, kinshiply known as Brotha KD, is an African descendant, matrilineally rooted in the Bioko Islands, New Guinea, and patrilineally rooted in Barbados and Nigeria. Brotha KD was born and raised in rural Southern Maryland by a revolutionary-loving village which consists of Grandma Toon, the matriarch, a single Mother, one older brother, and a younger sister, uncles and aunties, a host of first cousins, extended kin from Whiteville NC, church familymembers, friends of the family, schoolteachers, and kinship relations built through the neighborhood and the St. Mary's County public school system. The African proverb "it takes a village to raise a child" reflects the lived experiences of growing up in an environment that centers family unity, community togetherness, and social cohesion for basic needs, hugs and comfort, a hot meal, a good talkin' to, a life lesson, and everything in between. Southern Maryland and the Toon family taught me the importance of community-focused values, even amid chaos, disorder, strife, and trauma.

Married with three beautiful children, Brotha KD champions embracing the micro-moments of emotional connection, physical touch, intimacy, deep listening, laughing and dancing, and silence that shapes the infrastructure for a deep appreciation of the principle of life and the fortifications of Black joy.

After almost 14 years of military service in the United States Army as a Chief Warrant Officer, Brotha KD, with the support of Ahjanae, wife and soulmate, is entering into a new chapter of living, being, relating, and becoming. In 2021, Brotha KD transitioned from military intelligence, where he used skills of manipulation and persuasion on indigenous peoples abroad, to Afrocentric social work, which blends research, study, writing, teaching, presenting, and immersive relational activities on African world history, Afrocentric thought, ancestral wisdom, and cultural knowledge. As a Western-trained master of social work, the "Afrocentric" label is not a reactionary response to Eurocentric ideologies and philosophical assumptions. It is a return to the source of ancestral knowing, remembering that African people world over laid the foundations for the most ancient civilizations, and developed the spiritual systems, sciences, and arts that flowed from the Nile, Niger, Zambezi, Tigris-Euphrates, Ethiopian empire, to the Caribbean, Americas, the islands of the Indian Ocean, which retains their African cultural origns and through innovation contribute to the tapestry of being, knowing, and relating that exists today.

Today, Brotha KD is known and respected for his liberatory approach to community healing, group cohesion, social transformation, and the cultivation of cultural and social consciousness in the wake of a paradigm shift from compliance, complicity, and silence to unmitigated, self-defined rootedness in language, expression, and action. Through transformative speaking engagements, facilitation activities, presentations, and other means, Brotha KD will enthusiastically help usher in the 21st-century restoration, reclamation, reascension, and revitalization of self-knowledge, personhood, and optimal mental health. Whether facilitating group work on the invisible wounds of trauma and systemic injustices along with multigenerational Black adults, delivering a presentation on liberation-rooted, healing-centered strategies at conferences, consulting on preventative mental health program strategies along with Nigerian and Tanzanian mental health organizations, or writing mental health content for a woman-owned wellness magazine, revolutionary love enters the space with grace and humility.

Inspiration from African cultural heritage informing the interdisciplinary search and study for liberation (not an exhaustive list - just a few):

1. Brotha Amos Wilson, Psychologist

2. Naim Akbar, Psychologist

3. Marimba Ani, Anthropologist

4. Wade Nobles, Psychologist

5. Toni Morrison, Writer

6. Audrey Lorde, Feminist Writer

7. Angela Davis, Educator

8. Nile Valley Civilizations

9. The Harlem Renaissance

10. Black Panther Party & Black Power Concept

11. Malik El Hajj Shabazz (Malcolm X)

12. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,

13. Martin Delaney

14. Kwame Ture, Black Power Leader

15. Chancellor Williams, Historian

16. Cheik Anta Diop, Multidisciplinary Genius

17. Asa Hillard, Psychologist

18. Kobi Kambon, Psychologist

19. Jacob Carruthers, Educator & Scholar

20. The Honorable Marcus Garvey

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The Biography of Brotha KD Toon, MSW, CFSW Brotha Kyle Toon, kinshiply known as Brotha KD, is an African descendant, matrilineally rooted in the Bioko Islands, New Guinea, and patrilineally rooted in Barbados and Nigeria.