Here's where I'm trying to go with this: racial blackness as a white invention has already been broken down. "Nigger" has been analyzed and over-analyzed. Now we need to discuss a different kind of blackness.

Firstly, your use of the term "primordial" is not only on point, but quite beautiful here. In a way…everyone has their "blackness" (for example, Han Chinese revere their [mythic] primary ancestor as "the Yellow Emperor" but if you were to ask about the "Yellow" aspect, the Han would likely tell you that while skintone is a factor, as mentioned earlier, it is but one of several factors and ultimately the least important).

Secondly, you've internalized some toxic Western thinking, which is to be expected. Detachment is the best antidote. When discussing blackness – as I'm discussing it – you have to discuss as though whiteness – as you're discussing it – doesn't even exist. They are not dichotomous. They are not reflective of each other. They are not connected in any way.

One preceeds the other by thousands of years, and instead of seeking to conquer the universe, it promotes the notion of simply finding your place in it, and existing harmoniously with others.

Thirdly, you really have to start studying African history, as written by African authors. You'll find it's more than just dates, names, and places. We have a way of thinking that is unlike most other human beings on earth (despite many similarities to other ancient cultures). One reason for this is that we were "the first", and when you're the first and you're still around after everyone else comes along, you tend to see things a bit differently.

Fifthly, it's time we started emailing each other.

I'm also not trying to exclude other people of color. I am just keeping my focus narrow – one because I do not know enough about the perspectives or situations of other people of color to analyze them with this sort of depth. And I wouldn't want to treat it superficially. Two because this essay is long enough as it is, and it would become unwieldy if I spoke too broadly about race. The purpose of this essay is to deconstruct racial blackness in particular.

It's not a false dichotomy because I am not positing that black versus white is the only conflict; I am merely addressing this particular conflict.

Racial blackness and whiteness are artificial, but they play a role in our consciousness, and only by deconstructing them, exposing them as illusory, can we be free of them. We can't just cast them aside without any critical thought. Especially without defining "blackness" as you consider it, and distinguishing it from racial blackness.

If not, and you are subdividing humanity along non-racial lines, then what are those lines? This is what my essay is all about – how the lines that have been drawn do not reflect any biological or cultural reality.

I do not think that what each of us are saying is contradictory. I am talking about the fallacy of the white invention (or "recasting") of "blackness" – you are talking about something more primordial that has yet to become clear to me. Therefore we are talking about two separate things. I think that deconstructing racial "blackness" may actually be the first step in understanding what you're talking about. Since you did not grow up in the "African-American" context, maybe you were liberated from that race paradigm early on. With my essay I am trying to reach that same place and to help others do the same.

If they renounce racial blackness only to embrace a different sort of blackness, then so be it. But that blackness will need to be defined.

This essay – reflecting upon it – does not stress me out. It makes me feel liberated. The only thing that stresses me out is that other people do not see things this way – that they are bound to the race paradigm.

This statement: "You've been gone too long. You've simply forgotten" is extremely meaningful to me and emerges in my personal philosophy with regards to the nature of reality. I've long had a sense that this entire world laid out before me is an illusion, some artificial construct that obscures an earlier more inherent knowledge and perception of reality. I call it the "static" – see my philosophy page.

So I really want to understand what you mean.

This is what I meant earlier about you speaking as an American. I don't speak as an American. As a child in Cameroon (and in a Cameroonian household while living in America), I was taught very strictly that while we are not a "monolith" (starting to retch an increasingly overused term), we are one. It's not about just skintone and aesthetics (i.e., "black is beautiful"). If blackness were a solar system, skintone and aesthetics would simply be two of several planets.

And it is not about whiteness whatsoever. Which brings me to:

"Blackness TODAY – which is all I'm talking about – is a white invention."

You really shouldn't be talking about it all – that's the point. When you do, it makes you angry, it makes you frustrated, it makes you want to "flee the PLANET sometimes." This is not healthy. It does not empower you.

Moh-wah…Africans have a saying; it's almost like a term of endearment for those who were taken from us so long ago: "You've been gone too long. You've simply…forgotten."

We can remind you if you like. But when we do you, you have to leave the "whiteness" out of it.