What Black Is, Really

“Excuse me, but um…what are you?......No, I mean what are you, really?.... Yeh, but what else?”   This line of questioning is so familiar to me, I’ve started a collection: “Give me a dollar and I’ll tell you.”  I figure the frequency of the inquiry should give me enough money to set free every black man in jail or kill U.S. poverty, whichever shame is greater. If I must explain my existence to such bold interrogations before I am even asked my name, by complete strangers, I believe I should at least be paid for my time and the indignity of having to justify why I claim my identity.     Cornell West is right: race matters when you ain’t white.  It matters more than your name or where you come from.  Ironically, names and country of origin were the first nobilities stolen from Africans upon arrival in America.

“Sure, whatever, now back to the question.  What are you?” the stranger insists dogmatically. What precisely do you mean? I think. Socially? Biologically? Politically?  Economically?  Spiritually? “Racially.”

Right, of course. What else can I be in this color-blind-slavery-is-over-we-are-the-world-post-race-Obama-nation? We might like to think we don’t think about race, but have you ever tried to not have a thought?  In our effort to not think about it, we only think about it more.  There are those who follow-up the “what are you” question with “I’m just curious,” as if to assure me the reasoning behind the inquiry is innocent and my answer will not be held against me.  Yet, my experience has been a strict teacher.  If I say Black and leave it at that there is a notable change in their behavior.  They speak to me differently, casually like they know me; we cool, they’re down, it’s all good.  Many, however, refuse my answer, insisting instead on employing the antiquated one-drop rule^[1].

“In concrete numbers, please.”

So I begin with the standard one dollar government issued identity speech.

“.25 Black, .15 Chippewa, .10 Quapaw….really must I go on?  I get mixed up with numbers.”  I was never any good in math. My white teacher knew I was Black, and therefore stupid, so I quit arithmetic in the second grade and became a writer so I could tell on her.  “She undermined my potential!” which is so not true, I simply hated the idea of only one right answer. Any mistake I made in the beginning ruined the end, forcing me to start all over again.  Writing, however, granted freedom to explore possibilities before coming to a conclusion, and so long as it was supported, my answer would stand. “Don’t change the subject,” the impatient stranger warns.

Photo Courtesy: Laurinda Stockwell, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Fall 2008, cafam.org

“My apologies,” I offer, understanding his hurry to wage my identity through mud covered telescopes of what Black is and isn’t so he can get on with presuming to know me, but not really, just enough to know how to treat me.  Any information beyond that challenges the auto pilot, and we’ve all got places to go, people to see – on the surface at least; racial categories are convenient in that they are only skin deep which keeps us from getting close to who we are on the inside.  That’s too much information for today’s generation Z. Keep it short and sweet, only what I need to know to get paid.  If it can’t be IM’d or Tweeted you need to shorten your identity. Time is money, stories are cheap and everybody’s got one.

My story is told in two parts: the first is written to Black America, the second is told to everyone else in the audience (conveniently separated in another article so as not to mix musings.) Because of my socio-political identity, I’ll start with the traditionally disenfranchised first and write this ode for us (or “them” for there are many who don’t count me as part of us.)   

Centuries ago the stripping of our African selves was so complete, it became easy to do the next worst thing: steal our sense of solidarity by creating jagged-edged boundaries.  Discolor communities into simple boxes of separatist dichotomies, repositioning who is with us, who is part of us, and who ain’t.  And woe to thee who ain’t visibly part of we, for you will be tested. Because of ‘dem back ‘den who passed for white to get out, you gotta prove your blackness now if you want a pass in.

“Who yo’ kin? Where you been? What drama have you lived?”  And even if you ace the suffrage quiz, you still ain’t trusted. Not really.

There was a cretin, Mr. Willie Lynch, who devised this divisive inheritance. Allow me to reference his address to a historic audience. I imagine it started out something like this: “My fellow rich, white, male masters of deceit….” (Forgive my indulgence. I will now quote more directly).

Photo Courtesy: discriminatie.nl
“I have outlined a number of differences among the slaves: and I take these differences and make them bigger.  I use fear, distrust and envy for control purposes….” Divide based on the surface markers, skin complexion, hair texture.  He said, “You must use the dark skin slaves against the light skin slaves and the light skin slaves against the dark skin slaves.” The black slave after receiving this indoctrination shall carry on and will become self-refueling and self-generating for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.  But Slick Willie warned slave owners: this orbiting cycle will turn on its own axis forever -unless a phenomenon occurs.

What phenomenon is that?

Knowledge of facts.
 
Fact: although culture exists, race is merely a socio-psychological construct, systematically designed and institutionalized to determine who gets what and how much. Who gets the privilege of being treated like a human being, and who does not?  Racial identity is a silent, steaming train following a track laid against trust, its engine conducted to self-destruct.  I am witness, if only because “What are you?” is most often asked by us.

We may not admit it, but we are color struck and whether or not we choose to smell dirty laundry and despite who first fouled it up, it’s pissy stench is aired every time someone speaks it out in ignorance.  “You ain’t Black, not really.”

Or maybe it’s just me and my insecurities. Perhaps these are simply my “personal identity issues.”  Fair enough. I will concede, at least to the degree in which it is an issue that has been thrust upon me, and so, I guess, it’s mine to address.  Although if I ask myself, “Yo’, E, what are you?” and strip down to nakedness, all I see is me – no, I mean me really.  The insecurity of being the ugly nigger-lipped African bush monkey the white kids called me from age five to 14 till I moved out of that cracker town to live ‘round folks who were Black like me, but not really. I wasn’t Black enough.

Maybe I’m just over-sensitive and those glaring stares I get are mere figments of what I think she’s thinking I think I am.  “Who she think she is with those eyes, that hair and that skin?  What she know ‘bout the pain of racism?  How dare she be with a Black man!”  These words aren’t spoken.  Some things you just feel, the energy trail so invisibly real it seems I weep for no reason, except internal bleeding.  The ignorance of white folks I can live with, but within group rejection kills me none too softly.  Thus, I have found myself reclusive at times so as not to offend others’ insensibilities.

“Who cares what other people think, just be yourself.”  Can I?  Really?  Not if I’m living racially.  And for those of us who live in America, we can’t help but live within the confines of this distorted reality.

Yet, I know God ain’t as petty as race.  To be true to higher wisdom, I must erase this face reflected in the mirror and instead see me.

No, I mean me really.

The inner beauty and compassionate spirit loved by the Almighty God who designed me to be exactly as I am, baring this cross no matter how often it brings me to my knees.  I stock up on cocoa butter so the wounds don’t scar too bad and keep moving. Stumbling at times when questioned, especially when asked by those who get offended when I resist satisfying their selfish curiosity. I proceed with a weary sigh.

“I’m Black.” Then they want to argue, which I’ve never been able to understand. Didn’t he ask me how I identify myself? That’s like telling a grown woman the correct way to spell her own name.

“You’re not Spanish?” If I let the world tell my story, I’d be Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Brazilian, Mexican even. They can believe anything but what I tell them.

I shake my head, “Black.”

“You don’t look Black.” Would someone please tell me, with unmitigated authority, what Black is supposed to look like?  Matter of fact, while we’re at it, let’s think beyond the matrix and explain: What is Black?  A look?  An act?  Stand bare for a moment and ask “What are you?  Take away the external programming of how race has been stereotypically cast and simply see you.

Below : Discussion on African Diaspora


No, I mean you, really.

Absent skin or eye color, nose size and lips.  No Ebonics, no bass rhythm, no phat gear or Jordan kicks.  In the silence of the nothingness, what does exist?

You can’t see.

You can’t smell.

You can’t hear.

You can’t speak.

What’s left?

The answer strikes deftly the heart of being: what remains is what you feel.  Love. Hate. Fear. Rage. Restlessness. Peace.  Enslaved. Free. What exists is conscious awareness of these feelings and our response to them. What we are is an intricate pattern of responses to what we feel about how the world treats us. Patterns can be interrupted or repeat themselves out of habit, training, fear of change.  A pattern can skip a person or curse a generation. The pattern of our physical lives defines who we are. More poetically, Black is, quite simply, spirit living in color.

Citation:

The one-drop rule was a system institutionalized during American slavery.  It was a means of measuring the blood of descendants from inter-racial unions.  Misogeny, the racial mixing of people, produced children who could pass for white to acquire greater privilege.  To make certain this practice did not spread, laws were designed to assign racial privilege, or more importantly, exclusion.  One drop of black blood, made a child Black, and thus she would receive the appropriate treatment.

Comments

Your story is my story. I was born in Trinidad of mixed parents and in the USA I am constantly asked "what am I". I am usually Hispanic until they see my name and then the twenty other questions begin to flow. It was almost comforting to read this article and hear your point of view on this. It was so well written and expressive, I could not have said it better myself.

The article deftly pressed mind buttons of truth sequestered within rooms - wanting out. Well written, documented, and reminded me of a poem I'd written in the not too distant past. Blessings and grace to you.

I love the article. It's very passionate and I can't relate but I am compassionate. Your lyrical passion sounds like our father.