The African-American Dilemma: Real or Imaginary

[N2HiTech]

Here we go again.  Black Americans are still looking for an identity.  Pick combs, Kwanzaa - or maybe Kanesha, Lavetta, Latonda, Lashonda - you name it.  Offspring branded for life – and what a damn shame at that.  From “boy” to “colored” to “black” to “Negro” to “Afro” to “African-American” and so on, it’s all become a sad joke – just hype and more African-American jive.  Unless a substantial majority of one’s ancestry is from a “black” African country along with other qualifying characteristics, they’ll never be considered to be an “African-anything”, much to the delight of those who hail from the vast continent of Africa itself, and to the chagrin of many an unknown wannabe.

Just as in the old 1/32 rule (i.e., White America’s haunting but misguided attempt at racial purity), many black Americans have been unceremoniously sucked into the endless void of distinct colorization championed by nothing more than a bunch of hypocritical self-anointed “think tank” talking heads who themselves proclaim to be the defacto leaders of a non-existent black psyche.  What is African American?  Is the jury still out?  

Funny thing - when U.S. residents of nationalities from abroad hyphenate themselves as in British-American, Jamaican-American, Chinese-American, etc., at least they have an actual country to identify with.  The so-called U.S.-born “African-Americans” (i.e., blacks) in general can’t even trace their heritage to any single country in Africa, thus it seems as if they’ve hijacked “African” as a pathetic moniker for their own delusional misgivings about being a person of color more closely associated with the indigenous “black” peoples of the African continent.  In other words, they don’t like the connotations associated with the color “black”.  Last time I looked, black was just a color and theoretically, it simply represents the absence of light.  That’s about it.

Isn’t it interesting that even though “black America” as a whole seems to be desperately trying to African-Americanize virtually everything in its domain from media to business to food, etc., skin color still is and will continue to be the defining factor within the black community when it comes to beauty, success, trustworthiness, aptitude and much more.  Forget the hair, forget the nose, blue veins are where it goes, or at least they say.  And don’t think for a hot minute that white America isn’t satisfied with watching black Americans aggressively reaffirm themselves as African-Americans.  As W.C. Fields put it, “there’s a sucker born every minute”.      

Just think what life must be like for those of mixed race (i.e., in this case, black and whatever).  Despite a longing for their own unique and perhaps justified identity, they’ve been dragged down into the African-American quagmire.  Is this simply a ploy by their elected “African-American” leaders to “pump up” the numbers and inflate the census, or is it something more sinister as in denying an entire group of people the intrinsic right to correctly self-identify themselves without fear of persecution from the “black” masses?

A brief look at the media – mainstream, cable, print, etc.  Last time I watched BET, virtually every music video featured nothing more than a bunch of big-lipped dark-skinned non-singing jewelry-dripping “black English-speaking (Blinglish – is it language, or is it bling?)” “peasy-head looking” “brothers” parading around with a harem of long-haired fine-featured high-yellow ass sisters, white girls and island-hopping Buddha heads.  Didn’t see Aunt Jemima in that crowd, huh?  Nothing wrong with sporting a little high-yellow booty on your arm, now is it fellas?  Brothers just kill me when they walk by – and you can just hear them saying, “look what I got!”  I’ve “arrived.  How insane.  The only thing they’ve got is low self-esteem.  And by the way, lest our ears deceive us, will we ever see a “black” burger commercial without some kind of “black-themed” buffoonish hip-hop jingle tune dreamed up by some white guy who thinks the “hood” is in his pants?  You know, it just amazes me how much advertisers struggle to depict the “African-American”.  They get it wrong almost every time, because “we’re’ not African-American, and never will be.  

On television, numerous “black” actors who are comedians, or who portray high-profile lawyers, prominent doctors, influential business executives, cutting-edge technologists, superior athletes and so forth are all sporting either a piece of high-yellow ass, or something close to it.  Most if not all of them profess to be “African-American”.  However, it will likely snow in hell before you’ll find a genuine “African-American” (i.e., person of significant African lineage) that is high-yellow, partly yellow, or anything in that neighborhood, to say the least.  Niggas, puhleeze.  Talk about – light-skinned blacks will date virtually anyone, but dark-skinned blacks will aim straight for the yellow, or the “cream” as some put it.  Hypocritical, or what?

Last time I looked, the genuine African-American U.N. Secretary General, the only living U.S. African-American Supreme Court Justice, the most well-known U.S. African-American entertainment promoter, and a who’s who of U.S. African-American business leaders, sports figures and entertainers are either married to or have a main squeeze that is so far from “The Color Purple” that the ink hit the floor before the book went to print. My, oh my.

Come on - give me a break.  What is this African-American bullshit?  Damn near every “black” person I know will be the first to tell you that their ancestors were from some American Indian tribe or from Europe or Asia well before they’ll tell you that their other ancestors from ten, twenty and thirty generations ago were African kings, queens and people of nobility.  Yes, those niggers are full of shit and “The Last Poets” go it right.  Good luck if you can still find that release on the shelf.

Well, well, well.  The hair thing - big, isn’t it?  Not that big, really.  If you haven’t noticed, long flowing hair is in, or should I say hair weaves?  Guess those famous tennis sisters had better look out for the rain folks.  It’s just damn shame that blacks, mulattos, 50/50’s and the like are still hung up on the African-American crutch when as a whole, “African-American” really constitutes a wide and ethnically diverse group of people in their minds; but in reality – only the African-Americans from Africa justly claim that right.  Too bad it’s not recognized and admired as such.  Interesting enough, the term African-American seems to be “played on” more often when 1) there is an attempt to marginalize, 2) there is an injustice, 3) there is an effort to isolate or 4) it’s time to complain.

We could go on and on and on, but you get the point, or maybe you don’t.  African-American’s we’re not.  Black Americans we’re not.  Proud Americans we definitely are, with our own great culture that rivals the most renowned of the breed.  Mixed Americans virtually all of us are.  Of course, if we identified with that category, we’d certainly rob other groups of their opportunity to not be white, and definitely not be black, or African-American.  Who’s being fooled here?  Last time I looked, even the Asians were dying their hair blonde, surgically changing their eye shape, getting blue colored contact lenses, and just about everything else that could fit on a credit card.

And yes, for all y’all black “blacks” out there (and I don’t mean yellow or cinnamon brown, you know what I mean), unless you’ve got MJ’s (skin color changing) type of money – you’re going to black and maybe even purple black (i.e., real black) for the rest of your God Damn black lives, so get used to it.  And what exactly “is” an African-American?

You might not say it, but most of you play it.  “The color game.”

And So It Goes…


         
   

[preach]

Due to all of your ranting and raving I missed the point.

[jemba]

this is the best post I have ever read

[Ndugu]

You have several faulty premises at work in your thesis. First is the notion that African equal dark skin. There are many Africans who are light skin. Have you Ever been to Nigeria, Tanzania, Ethiopia….and please don’t mention the demarcation area of Africa that divides black Africa from Arab speaking Africa. Moreover, the “San” tribe is Southern Africa is the tribe that is believed to have given birth to all other races, because all other races carry their genetic marker. This tribe is very Carmel colored.  Furthermore, I am a very dark skinned person who is the child of a light skinned African American. My father is also dark, but if one mixes light and dark…they should not come out with dark…but a shade between the two. What that means is that my mother had to contain the genes for darkness (African in origin) even though she did not manifest darkness in her hue. Hence, the external phenotypic characteristics are not necessarily the DNA sequences that exist within. In other words, you don’t have to look 100% African on the outside, to have 100% African DNA traits on the inside.

The next fault in your thesis is that you dismiss the use of the geographic marker of “African”, based biological reasons, while favoring the geographic marker of “American”. Well, America has nothing to do with our biology. Do you even overstand the phenomenon of evolutionary adaptation to environment and how that has produced the different phenotypic racial characteristics, subsequent to human migration out of Africa? It is ENVIRONMENT that has shaped our human biology, thru mutation and adaptation. Ergo, our biology and DNA was not designed by AMERICA, rather, it only exists in America. It is the indigenous peoples of this land who are biological Americans and whose DNA has been shaped by this climate….everyone else is simply immigrants. The truth is most black people in America have the evolved DNA for survivals in Africa….and hence are biologically AFRICANS. Furthermore, there IS NO COUNTRY CALLED AMERICA. The America’s is a continent. Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians, Argentineans and United States citizens are all part of the land mass of the Americas’ named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. So before you start labeling us proud Americans, you best use the proper terminology that isolates to this country.

Where a person is does not represent who or what the person is biologically. You may define your self by your citizenship; you may define yourself by your geography, your culture and or your biology. You are certainly free to define yourself as you wish….but the truth of whom and what you are is not bound by ignorance. Hence, being the human design created by and for Africa does not require your recognition to be true.  

[N2HiTech]

To Member Ndugu:

Yes, I'm well aware of what America really is and stands for, and in this context, it's the country of the United States - defacto.  We don't need a regressive lesson on that.  Also, most if not all of us are well aware of the fact that the African continent host many peoples, and not all who hail from there are "black".  The point is, in the context of the passage I wrote, the inferences are aimed directly at "black" America first.  By the way, I've lived with Nigerians, been there, done that, and so forth.  So, take it all in stride.

Have a good one.

p.s., Don't sweat the small stuff.  The passage is simply a mechanism of conversation and nothing more, unless you want it to be.

[jemba]

Hotep Clear Thinking Brothers and Sisters



Only about 5% of Afrikans in the united state will one day go back to their ancestral land to live, the rest are going to stay within the United States and face hell.
Lets face it if the devil wanted a land that would represents all his work it would be the>>>>>>>UNITED STATES.

Sorry I mean it is HELL on earth!!  

[S._Leonean_Lion]

I came across this thread and thought I would comment. My family is from wanjama region in Sierra Leone. I live in america and I have to tell you, if you are afro american, or afro carribean it really doesn't matter. Africans (many not all) look down their nose on blacks who are decedent from the slave trade. There are many in my family (aunts and uncles) who hate Jamaicans with a passion and think they are low class people.

my point in saying this is never be so quick to judge someone else and their situation because there is others who are doing the samething to you.

I know in england the afro carribean peoples are the lowest of the low as far as society is concerned and this view is held by white and non white alike so don't fall into this trap of putting others down to make yourself feel good.

[N2HiTech]

If you can't stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen.  Been to Africa, lived with African's, and have heard them sing.  It's more than making noise.  It's serious business.