Blacks want to retain their "Blackness"

I've been reading (without commenting) all the arguments here about Muslims in France and other places involving the concept of them not 'integrating' into the larger society.

Well, here's another for you: Blacks wanting to remain Black in America. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35132893/ns/us_news-race_and_ethnicity/

While I understand the concept of retaining ones "roots", I see no reason how it would benefit me to somehow adapt the culture, etc. of my background which is British, Irish, Welsh, German, Cherokee, and possibly something else. And a part of my point is that that there are very few true, 100% Blacks in America today - the VAST majority of them are mixed in some way. So what does it take to be "Black"? 1/2? 1/4? 1/8? 1/16? Or what???

Personally, I'm more than happy to just consider myself an American. And I think this silly approach, as told by this news report, is actually counterproductive and would serve to only increase racial tensions and division - setting the country back 60 years. It also violates the principles in MLK's "I had a dream" as I understand it.

What, exactly, is wrong with just being an American?

 

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One of the problems with being just American is what American means

Was it Bill Cosby who once told black Americans to stop giving their children names like Mohammad?

And then I think of Sir Mix-A-Lot, who once asked, "Man, why I always gotta be Jerome? Why can't I be Tommy, or Philbert?"

In the abstract, there is nothing wrong with being "just American", which is how I usually classify myself. But, to the other, being just another American isn't particularly foreign to me. I was raised by white holiday Christians, and the advice I was given against racism was to just try harder to fit in. Of course, despite being appalled, I was one of the few I knew who wasn't surprised when Asian-Americans started having their faces surgically altered to appear more white. You know, round the eyes, reshape the cheekbones, tweak the chin just so ... bleach the skin, get some colored contacts, fuck up their hair with bleach and dye. All so they can fit in.

There is only so much fitting in people should be willing to undertake.

Or perhaps we might consider my daughter. When we found out we had a daughter coming, I was tasked with choosing a name. Initially, my partner expressed a concern about common names. After all, I'm Brian, and she's Jennifer, and ther were five of me in my grade in elementary school, and I couldn't possibly count all the Jennifers I've known over the years.

So I came up with several names that wouldn't be duplicated anytime soon. I drew from various cultures and periods; ancient Greece and Rome, Arabian culture, Judaism, and others. There were no Jennifers or Emilys or Tiffanys in the lot. (Okay, one was close to Tiffany.)

But the idea of a name with meaning was repugnant to Jen. So was the idea of so unique a name. So she counterproposed. And in light of her initial concern, I found it odd that her counterproposal was two of the most common names she could possibly find. "Emma Claire". After all, the most important thing was that our child "fit in". That she should be popular in school.

I say fucking bullshit. I've had enough of the Tommys and Philberts over the years, although they were usually named Mark, John, or Mike.

Jen was so concerned that our kid would be teased if she had a name that was off the beaten track. Really, it's not like I was proposing Esther or Gertrude, or some name that went out of fashion eighty years ago.

Now add to that my daughter's school. I was talking to her about a boy in her class who is Sikh, because I was curious if anyone gave the kid shit for wearing a pink turban. The question confused her. Why would anyone make an issue out of a pink turban?

Well, if someone wants to "fit in", not only the pink, but the whole idea of a turban has to go.

"As a black American I want people to remember who I am and where I come from without attaching assumptions about deficiency to it," said Dr. Imani Perry, a professor at Princeton's Center for African American Studies ....

.... "The ideal is to be able to see and acknowledge everything that person is, including the history that he or she comes from, as well as his or her competencies and qualities, and respect all of those things," Perry said.

(Washington)​

Apparently, being "American" means forgetting history? Is that what you meant to imply?

"It's important for us to remember that everyone has a race," Blair L.M. Kelley, an associate professor of history at North Carolina State University. "When you say we're going to transcend race, are white people called on to transcend their whiteness?"

"When (black people) transcend it, what do we become? Do we become white?" she asked. "Why would we have to stop being our race in order to solve a problem?"

(ibid)​

Adapting to the culture, then, means what? Start acting like white people?

How about this? Demographically, if the United States has a musical form that defines it, I think that would be country and western. Yes, yes, I know the arguments about rock and roll, blues, and especially jazz. But if you measure expression by sales and market presence, C&W is it.

So, let's all be "Americans". But ... where do we set the boundaries? Does that mean we all have to become Christians? Well, what kind of Chrisitan? Is "Protestant" accurate enough? Or do any Protestant sects equal the whole of Catholicism in this country?

So ... atheists need to give it up and just become Christians. Emos need to give it up and just listen to C&W. Libertarians and leftists need to give it up and become conservative authoritarians.

What else should we throw on the list? Cat and dog owners? Maybe everyone should root for the Yankees come October?

What are you willing to give up or take on just to fit in? You know, because that's apparently the easy thing to do.

Kevin Jackson, a black conservative and author of "The BIG Black Lie," hews to the same philosophy as the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck — that people should be judged on their merits, not their color.

Yet Jackson does not want his blackness to be forgotten.

"Absolutely not," he said. "Because we have an amazing history."

(ibid)​

O! The horror! The anti-Americanism! The Negro doesn't want to forget American history! By God! how could he be so insensitive to regular, everyday Americans? How could he be so segregationist?

It's not a matter of integrating into the larger society; it's a matter of what society demands for integration.

I hear Tim McGraw is on tour this year. Perhaps we should all rally up for a show? You know, maybe after we go and get blessed by the Lord at an evangelical megachurch. Or molested by a Catholic priest. I don't know, I'll have to run the numbers on that. But I say, "Fuck Tim McGraw," and if that makes me somehow segregationist and anti-American, then fuck America.
____________________

Notes:

Washington, Jesse. "Do blacks truly want to transcend race?". Associated Press. January 28, 2010. MSNBC.com. February 1, 2010. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35132893/ns/us_news-race_and_ethnicity/

 

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Nope, nope and nope, Tissa. You are missing my larger point.

For example, what am I supposed to do about my widely-mixed heritage?

And what about the "Black" guy who is 3/4 Caucasian? Is he still Black only?

And I don't give one hoot what you (or anyone else) names their kids - what I'm trying to say is that we all need to get BEYOND race and deal with more realistic problems that face everyone.

Also, I suppose you didn't approve of ML King's "dream", eh? Sure sounds like you don't.

 

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The typical American rule has generally been if you have one drop of black blood, you're black. Now that it to the majority's advantage, it seems we're relaxing that rule.

"What black? We're all Americans! Because that's what's best for me. the white guy."

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That depends on what he looks like.

He doesn't get to choose his race, unless he can afford the surgery.

That's your privilege, if you're white. It's not something black people can do.

 

A response to disgusting stupidity

A couple of possible answers, drawn from my own experience:

• Ignore it. That's generally the best I can do. Although an old phrase of Emma Goldman's—"nowhere at home"—presses a bit close for comfort now and then.

• Calculate it. I've done a good bit of this in my time, and, in truth, if it wasn't for white people, I'd probably be just another regular American. I'm half white, was raised in a white household according to white, post-Christian American values, grew up in white neighborhoods, and went to an elementary school with something like three nonwhites out of four hundred students. Do you know who my Japanese "role models" are? Um ... Noriyuki Morita. And ... um ... er ... uh .... Oh, right. E.W. Dolch's Stories From Japan (ca. 1960). And, hey, the crew of the Yamato. I mean Argo. Even though you couldn't tell they were Japanese. So, right. A Japanese-American who grew up working in a Chinese restaurant, an old book of folk tales forgettably retold, and a bunch of white-looking characters in a Japanese cartoon in which the battleship was renamed in order to be less offensive to Americans. Really, does it sound like I'm reaching? In the end, the only reason I'm at all divorced from "white" culture is that I was kicked out of it long before I ever knew what it was, or even that it existed at all. So, in my case, the calculations led back to the apathetic option, described above.

• Embrace it. Don't ask. At least, don't ask me. I have no idea.​

Vlad Taltos° once explained that whenever he returned to South Adrilankha, a certain weight was lifted from his shoulders that he didn't normally recognize was there in the first place. I understand what he means. It's really, really weird, but there are some crowds I find myself among—and not Japanese, at that—where there are enough cultural bastards that we have better things to talk about. And in those moments, among "my own"—from any race or culture—a certain weight falls away. The world is what it is, and for brief moments, I have the wonderful privilege of perceiving the world through empowered, majority eyes. Not that it means shit when we walk back out into the rest of the world, but those moments are not insignificant, else I would have learned how to ignore them long ago.

So what do you do? Flip a coin. Or go for the bear hug of identity. I don't know. But the one thing you should not do is simply throw away history and heritage in order to fit in.

Yes and no. The one-drop rule persisted into the 1980s. And the only real pushback I've seen in recent years about how to identify partial blackness came with Barack Obama. We needed to celebrate his whiteness so that middle America wouldn't have to admit we elected a black president.

Depends on where you are and what the question is. There are no one-color-fits-all solutions.

Well, maybe you need to pay better attention to the situation, then, before you go spouting off with a bunch of racist bullshit like your topic post.

I think it is incredibly bigoted of you to pretend skin color and culture are the same thing. It's downright disgusting and intellectually dishonest.

See, this is why I have so little appreciation for hatemongers like you. At no point can you manage even the slightest bit of honesty or human decency.
____________________

Notes:

° Vlad Taltos — A fictional character created by Steven (Karl Zoltan) Brust for a series of adventure novels that rely substantially on Hungarian culture as a counterpoint depiction of minorities. When entering South Adrilankha, Vlad was leaving behind his daily life among a pompous and convoluted majority, and despite the poverty, the stench of garbage and slaughterhouses, and the general misery that accompanies an oppressed people, he found that he felt better when back among people he understood.

 

More seriously, I don't see that racism is gone as practiced against blacks, so I think it's fair that we want them to stop considering themselves black, that we eliminate racism that effects them first.

 

HOLD ON!!!! And back up about 8,487,371 steps!!!!!! I expected FAR better from you than that!!!!!

I'm NO racist, no bigot or ANY of those obnoxious things - I HATE them all !!!

I, along with several other Caucasians, marched with the whole crowd from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery during the Civil Rights marches of the '60s. And that was far from all.

So before you go ANY farther, you most certainly owe me a PUBLIC APOLOGY before you post another single word!!!!! You are making YOURSELF appear the hate-monger here!!!

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You must feel so mixed up being white, white, white, white, and Cherokee.

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You can do like everybody else and do whatever you want. Just because you're a part of a certain culture; doesn't make you not an American. Black culture was created in America, I embrace it. I love the food, music, dancing, singing, the way people talk, the hair care...etc. The heritage is also a source of inspiration in many ways, knowing where my ancestors have been and what they fought for pushes me to try harder when I feel like giving up. Why would I want to forget all of that? I'm an American through and through, but I don't have to forget my heritage in order to be American. It's kind of what America is supposed to be all about.

 

Don't you have any Black friends Mr. tolerant? Why are coming you to a forum and asking asinine questions like this. White people refer to themselves as White, not Human, Blacks refer themselves as Black, not Human. In a perfect world, everyone would refer to themselves as Humans, but we don't live in a perfect world.

 

Bite your tongue - I have MANY Black friends, of course! It's pretty obvious that you are making the same mistake as Tiassa in that your reading comprehension leaves a lot to be desired. (That's what flabbergasted me so much about Tiassa's posts - usually so MUCH more perceptive!)

 

Spare us, bigot

Coming from you, that means about as much as a fart in the wind.

Whatever you say, sweetheart. You're the picture that goes with the definition of "trustworthy".

In Hollywood, they have a saying: "Yes, but what have you done for me lately?"

What you did then, and what you advocate now, are apparently two different things.

Something about the ravages of time go here.

Get off your self-righteous soul train. You get no apology or anything of the kind. Why not? Well, let us consider:

• Your thread title is not supported in the source article.

• You freely interchange race and culture, the color of one's skin and their basis for action.

• You make a shallow appeal to Martin Luther King, Jr. while betraying the very speech you appeal to.​

Start with those three. The implications are like a cargo hold full of horseshit dropped from a C-130 at 20,000 feet; the splatter effect is enormous.

Anytime someone misrepresents a source in order to raise the old "blacks should be white" canard, people get suspicious. Perhaps you hadn't noticed, but it's not just me that wondered.

For someone who marched to Selma, you don't seem to give a rat's ass about the rest of history. Not Dred Scott, not Plessy v. Ferguson, not the one-drop rule, not anything that might actually serve as a road sign to point you to your destination.

And here's the one that gave you away:

"And I don't give one hoot what you (or anyone else) names their kids - what I'm trying to say is that we all need to get BEYOND race and deal with more realistic problems that face everyone.

Also, I suppose you didn't approve of ML King's "dream", eh? Sure sounds like you don't."​

So ... what about Dr. King's dream?

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.​

So let me see here. You want people to get beyond race and deal with more realistic problems. But you've also sidestepped issues of culture and behavior—

"And I don't give one hoot what you (or anyone else) names their kids ...."​

—as part of an appeal about integration:

"I've been reading (without commenting) all the arguments here about Muslims in France and other places involving the concept of them not 'integrating' into the larger society."​

Hmm, so you start on culture, reject cultural considerations, and then invoke Dr. King's dream. The only apology I can honestly give is, "Sorry, dude, but that's bullshit."

Think about those mighty words: "The content of their character."

How do you define character? By the color of a person's skin, or by their actions?

And how should we judge your character? If we go by your actions, you show the character of a racist. You start with questions of integration, suggesting tacitly that black people should just blend into white culture, then reject cultural considerations in favor of some vague notion of more important issues, and then invoke Dr. King's dream of judging people by the content of their character, and then, having thrown out cultural (and, therefore, behavioral aspects, thus leaving only skin color) invoke Martin Luther King, Jr.

At this point, you're grasping at straws. Just like a devoted racist.

I should know better than to treat racists like yourself sincerely. Or at all.

And, yet ... life goes on.
____________________

Notes:

King Jr., Martin L. "I Have A Dream". August 28, 1963. AmericanRhetoric.com. February 1, 2010. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

 

Nope, not one little bit - I consider myself a "person" - no more, no less than anyone else.

[/quote]You can do like everybody else and do whatever you want. Just because you're a part of a certain culture; doesn't make you not an American. Black culture was created in America, I embrace it. I love the food, music, dancing, singing, the way people talk, the hair care...etc. The heritage is also a source of inspiration in many ways, knowing where my ancestors have been and what they fought for pushes me to try harder when I feel like giving up. Why would I want to forget all of that? I'm an American through and through, but I don't have to forget my heritage in order to be American. It's kind of what America is supposed to be all about.[/QUOTE]

I have no problem of any kind with heritage - except, as in the case of Muslims staunchly refusing to adapt to a different culture surrounding them and now some folks wanting some sort of special recognition because they are Black. I know MY heritage and they know theirs - I would rather that everyone was satisfied just being "a person" without bringing extra, unnecessary baggage into it.

I really like the idea of just being a person and believing in "live and let live" - so why complicate it?

Incidentally, I'm also the kind of guy who doesn't go around boasting that I'm from particular state or city - as if one is supposed to somehow "better" than another. (I've lived in several different ones and found things I liked and disliked in all of them - no big deal.)

 

Yes, indeed - life DOES go on - even though you TOTALLY misunderstood my intent from the very beginning.

I'll also add that you get no points for becoming a foul-mouth, either. Something I've never done once in all my time here.

And not that it will make any difference to you, but I don't wish to be distracted by your poor attitude so you will now become the only person on my ignore list. I certainly won't miss anything important.

 

Obviously you don't. If you did, you wouldn't of have to ask a retarded question like this.

 

Blacks have always eagerly integrated into White American Society. Giving their kids White American names, and adopting more White Cultural practices than African ones.

That article has nothing to do what the question your asking.

Can you give me an example how Blacks try to retain their roots. What African Cultural norms have American Blacks embraced? Language, Clothing, Polygamy?

So these alleged Black friends you have. I assume they speak english? I assume they dress like Americans, I'm sure their not wearing robes and head wraps right? Name some of the behaviors that your alleged Black friends illustrate that's consistent with their African counterparts?

Based on American history, it takes one drop to be considered Black.

I know a lot of Black Americans who think the same. So don't think you're special.

Now your trying to insinuate that Blacks are a separatist group that bares resentment towards America. Nor do they want to consider themselves American. Like I said, you have no Black friends. If you did, you wouldn't sound half as ignorant as you do now.

 

Silly, silly boy! As I said, your lack of attention and reading comprehension is pretty bad. In the first place, that's exactly the SAME article I linked to in the OP. Secondly, even the title of the article says " exposes divisions." And it's the "divisions" that I've been addressing and questioning all along.

As I said, that very article indicated divisions (based on race) and divisions are NOT conducive to a fully peaceful society. Divisions cause trouble.

My Black friends consider themselves "people" just as I consider myself a "person." And both they and I know of those who INSIST on being called "African-Americans" even though for most of them, their only connection to Africa is a convoluted twist well over 100 years old. My Black friends don't mind at all being called Black - but they do NOT like being called "African-Americans" because they are perfectly happy with just being "people" or Americans - because America is where they were born, raised and live.