If a cat has kittens in an oven, that doesn't make them biscuits"
"Today most Africans in America accept the nomenclature "African American." But what does that mean? What does it mean to be African American? For some it means that we are Americans who happen to be descendents of Africans. These African Americans want to emphasize their Americanness. Some even see African as an unnecessary prefix they would have removed so as to simply be viewed as American."
Full Monty on this timely piece by Ewuare Osayande here:
But there lies a deeper question. Why define Black Identity for the 21st Century. Why bother? Who needs it?
Posted by: Cobb at December 2, 2004 04:05 PMIMO - three considerations apply here;
1. As the first modern group whose culture was externally imposed, we have a stake in asserting a greater degree of control over the flow, direction, and acceptance of that continuing memetic imposition. (Internal brand definition)
2. Since the Baudrillardian continuum will encompass you no matter what chorographical surroundings you find yourself in, and that image continuum (also produced, distributed, and externally imposed) will determine how you are received in your new settings (External brand definition)
3. The present and forseeable economic cycle will continue to escalate into a series of world wars of indeterminate duration. (Brand selection will be politically mandated)
..who was it that said, "you're either with us, or against us!"
Posted by: cnulan at December 2, 2004 06:47 PM
From: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=6970330
"...Blacks, who represent about 13 percent of the U.S. population, made up 51 percent of all (AIDS)diagnoses from 2000 to 2003..."
From a different context, but applicable: "you're either with us, or against us!"
And I ask: are we genuinely for OURSELVES, or not?
Cobb, you said
'Any attempt at identity that defies physical distance, travel, climate, and surroundings cannot be relevant.'
Your entire ditty centered around the physical distances between places, people, and things.
However, I am from NJ and live in RI. No one can take the Jersyian out me any more than they can put in the Rhode Islander. In other words, just because you move, or in this case forcibly expelled, from whence you came doesn't make you less of a person from your hometown as it were. To argue contrawise would be to assume that we are only objects without any historical memory.
We are not.
You also said,
'Why define Black Identity for the 21st Century. Why bother? Who needs it?'
Interesting. This questions probably says more about your views than the whole of your previous comment. I argue that every human being NEEDS an identity. For centuries the identity of black folk has been one of displacement, disenfranchisement, and simply getting dissed by the people who brought them here from their homes. The struggle has always been this: do we identify with our captors or do we go back to a home we can no longer remember?
There's the reason blacks in the 21st Century need an identity.
Two for one thread collapse...,
Don asks; "The struggle has always been this: do we identify with our captors or do we go back to a home we can no longer remember?"
Do we have to go back that far? Can we instead remember and resurrect the high black culture of the old school right here in America?
Here in KC, all black folk lived north of 29th and east of Troost with the now mythic main drag hub down at 18th and Vine. Missouri was after all, a confederate state and though not identified with Alabama or Mississipi during the 20th century struggles, managed to maintain quite a few of its apartheid ways.
Out of this externally imposed socio-economic pressure cooker emerged an interpersonal communion of black folx that produced high cultural expressions the likes of which have not been equalled anywhere else for decades.
TL asks; "are we genuinely for OURSELVES, or not?"
Was the American pre-integration high black culture for itself, or not?
Do we possess a collective sense of identity substantive enough to voluntarily resurrect the interpersonal communion and high culture of our formerly segregated communities?
Personally, I believe that my children need it and that it's worth the effort. The alternative is abandonment of America because the culture of predation, consumption, and perpetual war is not an acceptable path for me to put them on.
Posted by: cnulan at December 3, 2004 11:32 AMI am black.
There are no european American, there are German-America, Italian-Americans.
Africa is not a country. I have no know relatives I go to visit or call in Africa.
Calling yourself African American is delusional and stupid. There are African American if you are like me the decendant of slaves in America you are not one.
We are black.
Posted by: Scott at December 4, 2004 10:34 AM
Funny, I always come back to the term 'native alienation'. It means that as chattel slaves in the new world, we were the first truly modern people whose language, land and religion was given to them.
Osayande is post-modern. I found no reference whatsoever to region or land in his piece. As he speaks about 'malcolm x-ray vision' making blackfolks see themselves more in tune with africans than with whitefolks, i wonder how he makes that vision see through buildings and moutains and follow the earth's curvature from compton to lagos. it can't of course, he's dealing in literary metaphor - which makes perfect post-modern sense.
I'm not like blackfolks from Illinois. In fact, what I know about Chicago can fit into a 500 word essay, period. O' needs to recognize geography and people's relationships with their surroundings.
I raise this particular objection because of my immanent departure from the US to go work in China. This time next year, I will probably have brought my family along, and I will have another world of knowledge about black American expats, expats in general as well as International schools by that corner of the jet set. Any attempt at identity that defies physical distance, travel, climate, and surroundings cannot be relevant.
Posted by: Cobb at December 2, 2004 04:04 PM