A Black Thing...

Aight, here we go...

"Black people"--- let's break that down. "Black"--- a color. A people of color. What color? Black.

What is the color Black? Scientifically speaking, Black is the color that absorbs all frequencies of light in the electromagnetic spectrum. What is its appearance? The color of pitch. The ultimate darkness. Night without the moon and stars. Coal.

That's the scientific angle to it.

You want me to tell you what Black REALLY is though, don't ya? I mean, Black as it pertains to "Black people"... And no, Black doesn't mean African-American; because every person of color is not necessarily of direct African descent, or at least any more so than your average White person. And Black is a term used in places other than America. And it definitely doesn't mean skintone, because I don't know many people of pitch, nor do I know of a color that ever defined a person's significance. Does "content of their character" ring a bell?

I'll tell you what Black really is: Black is a creation of the established culture for the purpose of separating a group of people into a social "Other"; Black is a label that people of color have accepted and embraced for the purpose of amassing numbers in order to oppose the established culture; Black is a deculturalization of many rich, diverse, and beautiful ethnicities into a new identity whose existence is totally contingent on the state of racial conflict.

THAT is Black.

As an African-American, I recognize the racial plight of dark-skinned peoples not only in my country, but in other parts of the world as well. I also recognize that this is not the case ALL over the world, and that being "Black" does not inherently call for unity or oneness amongst "Black" peoples.

Nor do I feel it should.

Why not? I'll give you an example. I'm African-American, and I have a lot of African-American peeps. The truth of the matter is, none of us has any idea who our ancestors are. Am I West African? East African? South African? North African? Dunno. Why is that significant? Because, contrary to popular belief, Africa is not a country; it's a continent. That means that Africa is a large place full of many different countries and many different races of dark-skinned, and even some light-skinned peoples. And the truth is, THEY were not unified. They warred with one another and killed one another, just like the countries of Europe and the peoples of any other continent. They lived and bonded according to their ETHNICITIES, RACES, and NATIONALITIES, not their colors.

For some reason, we have this idea that your skin tone automatically makes you kindred to people of the same skin tone. To a degree, that's just a deeper form of racism; to assume that all are one because of the shade of skin?

However, this line of thinking is not entirely false. There is this argument: our mutual African ancestors lost their identities in the New World and were subjected to the same fate as one another. Thus, no matter where our African lineage may take us, we share in common the lineage of New World African slavery. We African-Americans are indeed a race in and of ourselves.

But, notice I said AFRICAN-AMERICANS, not BLACKS. I know it may seem to be splitting hairs, but here's why I'm doing this:

As long as we refer to ourselves as Black, we define ourselves in terms of our relation to the established culture; our existence is merely a reaction to a conflict, meaning we don't exist outside of that conflict. It's like when a woman goes on a so-called feminist tip and decides to dress in apparel traditionally attributed to men... even though she's not comfortable in it. (I say 'so-called' because this isn't true feminism) She may claim feminism, but she's only redefining herself in terms of socially constructed 'manhood'; she's sacrificed who she really is, whatever that may be, to pur herself in discomfort to prove a point to people who prrrobably don't care WHAT she wears. And we're doing the same thing when we call ourselves "Black"; we're trying to rise above the classification attached to us by the established culture, but adopting and internalizing that label at the same time.

I felt bad for Tiger Woods when he first came on the scene, because we were the first to exert this deeper racism on him. Tiger is part African-American, part Asian-American; we decided to attempt to nullify his race/ethnicity/nationality to attempt to lump him into "Blackness" to gain more power for the fight against the established culture. That was wrong. And even I've experienced this form of racism; I have Native American (Cherokee) on both sides of my family, but as a youth, anytime I mentioned it, I was told, "But YOU are Black." I'm sure many of you have experienced that too...

It's terrible that racism is so deeply ingrained into our very beings that we see all things in terms of racial struggle. But we must realize that, by being "pro-Black", we are actually reinforcing that categorization set in place by the establishment. And as long as we carry that torch for them, we'll never truly be free.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was wise in that he was not a man solely dedicated to "Black" people; "Black" people forget that Martin Luther King's vision was for ALL people to love and accept one another, not just "Blacks" and "Whites". Even now "Black" people are mad because a Chinese man was chosen to sculpt his statue; they missed the point. We should've figured this out long ago; if we hope to defeat the establishment, the answer lies in approaching it as human beings versus oppressors, not as "Blacks" vs. "Whites".

My 7th grade Language Arts teacher made a big to-do about making sure I used the term African-American and not "Black". I understood what she meant, when she said "I am not a color", but I didn't understand her passion about it. Maybe what I think now is what she thought as well: calling ourselves "Black" to try to amass power actually serves to further dehumanize us in the same stroke, and when the smoke clears, we will have lost our identities for the sake of the struggle.

And the struggle will never end, because the struggle is for our humanity, not for our socially constructed label.


Ultimately, the Only Race is Human B-J