Part 1 of the Black Dilemma Series
It should be understood from the start that I am writing as an American and I am talking exclusively about the experience of the African Diaspora in the United States. How the terms mentioned apply globally to various other groups of people is beyond the scope of this essay.
Blackness does not exist in a vacuum. It exists only as a reflection of whiteness. It represents both how peoples of the African Diaspora have been regarded and treated by white people – racism, discrimination, subjugation, and annihilation, both physical and cultural. It also represents how the Diaspora has responded to these conditions – submission, acceptance, and resistance.
Blackness also further validates whiteness, existing as a point of reference. White people can claim “We are not that” – that being the exotic or inhuman “other”.
At some point, American society determined that the word “nigger” was inappropriate in the public sphere. That which was a commonly accepted term to describe so-called “black people” – here defined as enslaved Africans and their descendants – became unacceptable only because of its direct association with slavery, or the slave-holding south. That it became taboo has nothing to do with any sudden revelation on the part of white people that slavery, subjugation, or inequality was wrong, and thereby the terms that imply those processes should be abolished.
It became taboo as white society scrambled to erase the stains of the past from its consciousness – a feat that has been mostly achieved in contemporary society. The word “nigger” is one of those beacons that penetrate the veil of delusion, that remind “black people” as well as “white people” that the legacy is not dead, that it has merely transformed. Those who use the word in a racist context are considerably more genuine than their apologetic brethren, as they do not suffer under any pretenses of equality. They acknowledge and celebrate it – abhorrent for certain – but that at least makes them conscious of it.
The etymology of the word “nigger” has to do with a mispronunciation or warping of “negro” or similar words which in the European languages of the slave-holding Europeans meant “black”. It is not that the word “nigger” itself, as some unique linguistic phenomenon, confers lesser inhuman status upon darker people. It is that in meaning “black”, an exaggeration of darker skin tones, it also came to mean “inferior” due to its association with those darker skinned people. In other words, the less-than-human status was conferred first, and then all things associated with them as such, came to refer to inferiority. In this way, “black” – is just as fundamentally racist as “nigger”. This becomes even clearer when you hear people use the term “blacks” instead of “black people” – again a removal of the human element. Of course those same people also probably say “whites”, but there is no dehumanizing dimension to whiteness, and therefore it does not carry the same connotation.
Categorization is an everyday practice in every human society. We facilitate our understanding of a multitude of phenomena by trying to group them by their common traits. This is true of everything – objects, animals, ideas, and people. “Black” is used to categorize people who are perceived to have common traits. However, these traits are numerous. They are not exclusively biological, as there are as many differences within that group as there are similarities, just as there are between “black” people and any other perceived group. The biological differences between human beings are fluid in how they pervade the entire species, and do not create such distinct separations. The traits are not merely visual, as the spectrum of so-called “black people” incorporates incomparable diversity.
This is not to say that there are not identifiable biological differences between human groups, or that all systems of group classification are invalid. However, those differences do not at all correspond to how those groups are identified in America – our conception of race. Furthermore, genetic differences are really only relevant within the context of medicine, and even doctors are careful not to attribute the prevalence of disorders within perceived groups to biology alone. They realize that those disorders may have as much to do with bad practices transmitted through culture, such as diet.
Within the medical context, to whatever extent racial classifications are helpful in identifying high risk conditions, and in fostering a culture of illness prevention, then they should be examined further. But there is little need for these classifications to be transmitted into American culture, as they have proven only to be divisive.
The differences between people aren’t merely social either, as “black people” also exist at nearly all levels of the socioeconomic spectrum, albeit with a clearly uneven distribution. They are not intellectual or emotional, because no one can claim to know the minds of an entire group of people, what they think or how they feel.
Then on what grounds do we even classify certain people as “black”? So-called black people themselves, here in America, may see the term as synonymous with “African-American”, and claim that a certain group of people share in the experience and history of subjugation, discrimination, hatred, and oppression. Indeed there is a group of people with this shared experience, but even the degree to which they experience it exists along a spectrum, with some able to blissfully ignore it, while others feel that they suffer under its influences on a daily basis.
It is not merely that generalizations are made about “black people”. Blackness itself is the generalization. Blackness purports that all people of visible African descent have the same experience without exception, and denies any claims to individuality.
If black, then, is defined as a group of people with this shared experience, then it reaffirms my earlier claim that it exists only in response to whiteness. The aforementioned experience was created and is maintained by so-called white people, who continue to need some justification for the sense that they exist in opposition to, or at least distinct from, a darker skinned “other”. Many so-called black people themselves cling to this identity for the same reason, accepting their place as a minority “other”, although now in some way resisting the experience rather than succumbing to it. But they still only exist as a response, rather than due to anything inherent to their being or character. Of course, for all my pedantics here, I realize that most people use “black” to describe themselves simply out of tradition. “It’s not that deep”, someone might say. Until it is. And, really, it has been since the beginning, but it’s been so co-opted into “black identity” that it’s been taken for granted.
The cultural phenomenon known as “black pride” is a paradox. On the one hand proponents acknowledge their perceived differences from others – while somehow ignoring the reasons for those perceptions and their basis in demonization – while espousing a pride within that identity. How can an individual take pride in the characteristics ascribed to a entire spectrum of people? How can one be proud to be considered inferior? Now of course no so-called black person would consider themselves inferior, but in accepting the term “black”, they are validating that exact perception of their being.
The so-called “black experience” is a fact of many people’s lives. Its effects cannot be underestimated or ignored, and certainly should never be forgotten. However, this does not mean that it must be used as a basis for people’s identity. Our lives are certainly affected by many natural and cultural phenomena, such as thunderstorms and earthquakes, the loss of a job or the loss of a loved one. We do not then become Thunderstormians or Unemployedians. There is clearly a sense of identity that exists before and supersedes those events. In the same way, so-called black people possess a fundamental character and identity that exists apart from, albeit influenced by, the “black experience”.
This identity is dichotomous, because on the one hand each person has a uniqueness that prevents them from being totally submerged within any system of classification. Yet on the other hand they have so much in common with every other one of their fellow human beings as to under certain circumstances ignore their differences altogether. As a hypothetical scenario, were a hostile alien race to suddenly set upon the earth, they would become the exotic and reviled “other” and the whole of humanity most likely would unite against them.
A distinction must be made here, between the “black experience” and identity as “African-American” – a term I begrudgingly tolerate. It is not merely a matter of word choice. If the word black is understood as fundamentally racist, then the “black experience” is only the shared experience of being subjugated and defeated by racism. On the other hand, there are many things – cultural phenomena – which have been transmitted through generations of people from Africa. Art, religion, music, food, kinship systems – in fact, practically all aspects of African-American culture have been influenced in shades by an African heritage.
The problem is that Africa is a giant continent, not some small country, and a continent with such immense diversity that even the demarcation of nations there does not represent the distribution of biological and cultural variation. This is to say that there is no homogeneous “African” culture, and therefore no single culture to which American members of the Diaspora can trace their identity or customs. There is also the fact that many so-called African-Americans do not even know from which region in Africa their ancestors came. Therefore, more than any of the cultural practices that stem from the African continent, the central current of African-American identity is also the “black experience”, that is, the shared legacy of slavery.
The United States is one of the only places in the world with such strong cultural distinctions between its members. A place like Indonesia may have 2,000 ethnic groups and 500 languages (those numbers are arbitrary – the point is to say that there are a lot) but the differences between them probably exist along a spectrum rather than in a large number of discrete and seemingly irreconcilable groups as exist here. This being the case, even the “American” identity is subject to question. If there is anything distinctly American, it is that the American cannot be defined as any one thing.
At least that is the reality of the situation, but in practice, those things which have been deemed “American” are those ideologies and practices of “white people”. Everything and everyone else is so distinctly un-American that they require an additional prefix. There are Asian-Americans, Arab-Americans, and of course African-Americans, but those who subscribe to the white identity are simply “American”. These include Spanish, Italians, Dutch, Irish, Polish – and in some cases Jewish people – except where these groups retain their cultural differences and identify as whatever particular kind of American. And this is what has to change. We who consider ourselves American need to stake our claim upon that identity and see it become more adequately representative of our diversity.
After all, if American-ness is something that can only be fully claimed by “white people” and African-ness is diluted, unidentifiable, then where does that leave so-called African-Americans in identifying themselves? With the “black experience”. Again we have a situation where a group of people are almost forced to identify themselves through the atrocities and grievous injustices once committed (and still being committed) against them. Again their identification is based on the actions and perceptions of another group of people – a group of people who have chosen to regard them as less than human.
If your rosy picture of reality leads you to think that this is not still the case, that there is no legacy to slavery, that “black people need to get over it”, or that we live in anything sort of “color-blind” society, then you are delusional. It was only eleven years ago that American “scholarship” produced a book that presented “scientific evidence” that so-called black people – something they even had trouble defining – were on the whole less intelligent than so-called white people. The ease with which the views of that book and similar “scholarship” were accepted into the mainstream, and continue to color people’s perceptions of group differences only reminds us of the strength of slavery’s legacy.
The perception of certain people as inferior on the basis of their “blackness” – buried as it may be beneath pretenses of tolerance and misguided “diversification” initiatives – is still an undercurrent to American society. Why should anyone be complicit in this demonization by routinely accepting the label of inferiority? Blackness has nothing to do with African-ness, except by chance. Had the colonialist Europeans decided to take most of their slaves from China, then the Chinese would be “black” – in terms of status, as obviously a different term would’ve emerged. Instead, blackness has everything to do with whiteness. If whiteness itself is a fallacy, and black identity only exists as a reflection of it, then it is equally inauthentic, and equally representative of the most ill-conceived stratification of humanity to ever exist in all of history.
Blackness, as I’ve said, is not a characteristic of anyone. It is something that was and continues to be inflicted upon a perceived group of people. In other words, no one is born black, but rather they are “blackened” by society. Just as different peoples of European descent “bleached” themselves in taking on a white identity in order to benefit from the corollary status advantages.
Now the word “inflicted” carries a negative connotation, and indeed blackness is a negative attribution. For proof of this, all anyone needs to do is consider in what context they use the term. “Black people”…what? Invariably what follows is something negative, either a racist generalization on one end or a claim to victimization on the other. Either way, blackness refers not to the people in question but to the status conferred upon them.
Identity is a fluid concept. It is constantly changing and must be highly adaptable to changes in the surrounding environment. For this reason, and because of its foundation, and because of its self-renewing and detrimental effects, the so-called “black” identity needs to be eliminated. This does not mean forgetting the legacy of slavery, subjugation, and oppression. That can never happen. This does not mean being oblivious to the ways in which people classify others, and how those perceptions shape our culture. That would be blissful ignorance. The acknowledgment of the institution of race is as much a necessity as dressing properly for bad weather. This does not mean that we have to let it define us as human beings, or define the relationships we share with other human beings.
To be a “black person” is to play right into the hands of those who seek to retain you as so necessarily different and so unacceptably “other”. So-called “black people” need to get on with the business of being human again – humans with a unique history and plight for certain – but still humans who need not be defined by it.
So for all of this, what am I really saying here? That self-identifying “black people” need to start identifying themselves in a way that is truly representative of the great diversity and uniqueness that makes up the rich spectrum of humanity within that perceived group, rather than falling into this self-limiting stigma of “blackness”. I would say one ideal would be – as I mentioned earlier – to fully claim American-ness, to wrest it from white exclusivity.
This means claiming it through our language, through our self-estimation, through our actions, such as being more active in the socio-political process. This is especially important when we consider the nation’s diminishing reputation throughout the world, and how this reflects upon us as people. So-called “Black people” and “African-Americans”, their history notwithstanding, need to play a more significant role in defining what it means to just be American.
There are problems with claiming “American-ness”, however, inherent in the fact that there is a prevailing disconnect between African-Americans and the mainstream society, one sustained by institutional inequality. It is difficult to find identity within a country that rejects or dismisses your contributions, and rejects you bodily, linguistically, and culturally, and a country where the demographic majority dismisses your particular hardships as a thing of the past or the result of “hyper-sensitivity”, and refuses to discuss how history continues to echo into the present.
And history is important to identity; roots are important, if only for suggesting a foundation that belongs to an individual or a group of people, rather than identity being formed in opposition to the mainstream, or defined by the perceptions of outside groups. People whose cultures have been anchored firmly in the soil of history tend to be more resilient in the face of adversity, their core identity sustaining itself against attempts to destroy or assimilate it. There have been many attempts in the academic sphere and through smaller cultural movements to tie African-Americans back to continental Africa, to reunite the Diaspora with the motherland. This would be an alternative to claiming American-ness, but like that, comes with its own difficulties.
As already mentioned, Africa is a continent, one with as much cultural and ethnic diversity as virtually the entire rest of the world. African-Americans have very little in common with Ethiopians or even Nigerians, who for their place in West Africa might be closer related ethnically and culturally. However, amongst peoples from Africa who migrate to the West, especially the United States, there is a certain sense of African unity, of Africans being one people at least as strangers within this country. There seems to be no inherent paradox between individual identity as Ethiopian or Nigerian for example, and also identifying more holistically as “African”.
However, this unity does not, by default, extend to African-Americans, who exist in a strange limbo between their very present American identity and their distant African identity. It becomes a question of whether or not it is possible or even practical, for African-Americans to enfold themselves within that continental identity, as opposed to American identity. For the cultural, geographical, and historical distance, it seems difficult and even awkward, especially where African-Americans know so little about the continent of Africa itself, a result, invariably, of the “dark continent” paradigm in the West, where very little time is spent investigating the rich history and cultural diversity of an entire continent, leaving countless people viewed through persisting stereotypes, exotification, and definitions imposed by European colonialism, including those that emerge from racism.
The dilemma of African-American identity is one that has remained since enslaved Africans set foot on this soil, and one that is not likely to be solved in one essay or one discussion. In the meantime, I personally have found some solace from such psychic dissonance in the increasingly popular classification “people of color”, which while it also defines itself in opposition to whiteness, is one that has been willfully taken on by people who are not white, rather than being imposed on them by white people.
In that way, more than blackness, it exists as a statement of defiance to the mainstream U.S. culture, and suggests solidarity rather than group subjugation, amongst those for whom the mere existence of whiteness as a construct has determined their ability to integrate themselves into this “American” culture. It, like the idea of unity amongst continental Africans and the Diaspora, suggests a global connection, rather than merely a local one.
More than anything this essay is a call to all progressive-minded people to make a change in their language to remove the persisting blight of racism. If you find yourself struggling with how to categorize someone, ask yourself if they even need be categorized within the context of your dialogue. Is he a “black doctor” or just a doctor? In these situations, also have the courage to recognize what your language says about your perceptions of others.