We are not throw away people…
– Shark-fu.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with being black. Nothing!
That sounds like something a four-year-old would say, something too simple and true to be worth saying, like “the sky is blue”. But in America in 2008 it is worth saying. Because too many people, both black and white, do not believe it, not deep down, not where it counts. Their heads might (sort of) believe it, but not their hearts.
This morning on the bus I was reading Obama’s “Dreams from My Father”. In 1985, when he was working at Altgeld Gardens, he met Mary. She was one of the few whites who lived in nearby West Pullman, a poor, black part of Chicago. She had two daughters:
And I knew that the father was absent, although Mary never mentioned him. Only in bits and pieces, over the course of many months, would I learn that she had grown up in a small Indiana town, part of a big, working-class Irish family. Somehow she had met a black man there; they had dated secretly, were married; her family refused to speak to her again, and the newlyweds moved to West Pullman, where they bought a small house. Then the man left, and Mary found herself beached in a world she knew little of, without anything but the house and the two manila-hued daughters, unable to return to the world she had known.
For some reason after I read that I started crying. On the bus! Like I am simple or something, like I have no idea how the world works. But I could not help myself. I had to write this just to calm myself down.
What upset me was not that the father left, not that Mary was cut off and stuck in a world she knew little of, but that the two little girls could never go back to Indiana, that their own flesh and blood would never accept them because of the colour of their skin.
God made black people to be every bit as good as white people. He did not make black people with some secret crack inside. They are not some kind of mistake he made on the way to making white people.
I am not saying black people are perfect, but they are every bit as human and loving – and hating – as whites. They were born with the very same brains and the very same hearts (yes, hearts too). And their lives are every bit as valuable – even if the president and the police and the news reporters do not see it.
It is a lie, one of the cruelest, sickest, most twisted lies I have ever heard, to say that black people are somehow not as good as white people. It is a sick lie white people came up with to cover their sick crimes.
See also:
- Race in America
- How white people think
- black-on-black racism
- Barack Obama
- Obama at Altgeld Gardens
- The Missing White Woman Syndrome
- Henry Louis Wallace
- Black women are beautiful – another one of my sky-is-blue posts
sometimes when i read your posts, i feel like you’ve been wandering around inside my head. i’m a college student and i just had to write a paper about a play I saw. it was an adaptation of the bluest eye, so everything you just said has been swirling around my head for the past few days. not that it isnt always there, but recently, its been fresh.
just thought you should know.
LikeLike
What I find so shocking is that many white people in this country still struggle to see us as people. I feel like many of them see us as a sub specis(sp) of human beings. This is why many of them will ask us the dumbest questions about being black and out physical characteristics. For example “Can black people tan” WTF .
http://detoxology.wordpress.com/
http://jovanmiles.net
I found your blog listed on the blogs above. If I find anymore I will post them.
LikeLike
Thank you for this post. I am often asked how I can still smile when the world is so unjust. The answer is simple I refuse to let someone else define me. Race and hatred in America will never be solved. It is unfortunate that so many individuals cling to their hatred as a life line and that they are buoyed by the belief that NO one else is as good as they. America is a country like Senator Obama constantly states: “is the only place where my story could be possible”. Yet still America is a place fraught with sometimes secret and other moments (i.e. Katrina) not so secret hatred and fear. Life must go on. As hurtful as moments described in your post are, it is not what is done to you but what you do in response that really counts and will defines you.
LikeLike
Thank you, Abagond.
Stephanie B.
LikeLike
It is so funny that I read this post today because an incident that happened today had me thinking. I had a funny thought that white people should take a mandatory class in high school or college to learn about black people. I am not just talking about black history but they need to learn how to deal with black people today(2008). How do we get them to see us as human and equal and stop looking at us through the eyes of stereotypes. It makes me cringe that in this day and age I still hear white people make stupid assumptions,generalizations, and comments about black people out of pure ignorance.
LikeLike
A website that gets to some of your comments is “Black People Love Us”. Check it out if you have not seen it already. It is meant as satire:
http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/
LikeLike
Thank you all for your beautiful comments. It helps me to know I am not going nuts.
LikeLike
Miss Licorish: “The Bluest Eye” is one of those books I keep meaning to read. Your comment got me to start reading it! Thanks!
LikeLike
Baltimore Beauty: Thanks for the links. If you run across any more, please tell me. Thanks.
LikeLike
I don’t want to be compared to “whites” as if they are the standard of what a human should be. To say that “blacks” are just as good as “whites” is using them as the norm or the standard. “Whites” are sinners just like every other group of people. I am created by the One Who made the world. Compare me with Him.
LikeLike
Read more of my blog and I think you will see that I do not hold up white people as a model. But I see what you mean. I probably need to word it a bit differently.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Abagond:
Thank you for this. You may or may not know how many black people really struggle with this. I see so much black on black hatred (did you hear about how they are treating Usher’s wife?). This reminds me of the ingrained belief that black people are somehow less. On another page you wrote…less intelligent, less hard working, less honorable, etc. I am struggling with this. After a while someone tells you something for so long, you believe it and then you become it, whether you “mean” to or not. Thank you for saying this. It also makes me cry. Thank you!!
LikeLike
Wow, I am glad I wrote it, then. Of my hundreds of posts this is one of the ones I like best.
LikeLike
Aba:
Even before this and based on other posts you have done, I felt but this just confirmed for me, you truly posses magnanimity of heart.
LikeLike
Your words are too kind, but thanks.
LikeLike
i feel like blacks should be proud of what they got.a lot of white people waste money on features that blacks naturally have.i feel like a lot of blacks want white features (i use that term in a stereotypical sense because for real for real whites have no features that are exclusive to them but blacks and asians do) and a lot of whites want black features.if your black be proud you got juicy lips,you know how many white folks waste money on botox to get what you got naturally.be proud that you got a natural tan.1st cause you on average age better and 2nd hella whites waste money on tanning salons.
LikeLike
“It is a sick lie white people came up with to cover their sick crimes.”
I really don’t think that’s fair.
LikeLike
You can’t say that this is just a sick white lie.
Its sin my friend. Every race has been fighting against every other race for generations. And if your the same race you fight over tribal issues, or religion or foot ball teams. OR its man vs. women…and if your both women – then its short vs. tall.
As one race – the human race – we seem bent on finding things that drive us apart – not bring us together. Bent upon our own destruction.
Its sin. Evil in the world thats stench stains every culture and every corner of the world.
I have to say except the last paragraph, I agree with you whole heartedly. reading it brought tears to my eyes. The stupidy of that family to make their daughter and grand daughters outcasts.
And – regarding your last paragraph – I do understand how a person who has delt with racisim would react in the extremem the opposite way. Its the rape victem that flinches when any man touches her – even if they are their to help.
Black or white, athlete or intellect, tall and thin, thick and curvy, we all should rejoice in how god made us. God does not make mistakes.
Black people are not a mistake that God cast off. The world was ment to be populated with variaty and color..There isnt just one type of flower, or tree, or apple. Why would there be one type of person.
LikeLike
LL and Davida:
The idea that whites are better than blacks is a lie and a sick one. Which part of that do you not agree with?
Further, it has been used to keep blacks in chains and hang them from trees. Are those not sick crimes?
It may not be pretty, but I do not see how it is an unfair or extreme thing to say or why anyone would disagree with it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
oh no – i agree that is a sick lie. And the crimes are sick as well.
I am just saying its a symptom of a bigger sickness. Its not just a white sick lie…its a sikness that permeates the human race. Blonde Haired, blued eyed folks in germany said they were better than other white folks and killed and masacured them.
Suni and Shiate tribal Muslims believed one is better than the other and butcher each other.
Native American Tribes believe they were each superior to the other and made slaves and raped and masacured each other.
Croations and Serbians are butchering each other today.
The impulse to define ourselves and segregate ourselves from one another is almost genetic it seems…and the desire to put ourselves above each other is also ingrained. its not just a cultural lie…its a sickness, an evil, a sin nature, that all of man possess. Its why, despite all of our advances, it still exsists. It can not be taught out of us…we get rid of one form and another form will rear its head.
LikeLike
Say it Loud… “Im Black and Im Proud!!!!!”
LikeLike
People know most about the people they are around and grow up with. If they lack an intimate understanding of people who come from different backgrounds, that is to be expected. They should not be condemned for not understanding people of different cultures as well as they understand their own. I now next to nothing about shintoism or the Greek Orthodox Church. I have never lived as a neighbor to Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis or Croatians, Ukrainians, Hispanics, only to name a few. I will say, I have preferred by far ALL of the black neighbors I have had to the Appalachian Scots-Irish family from West Virginia who live across the street from me. But because we share education values and other things, I am closest to my immediate neighbors from Pennsylvania. So what?
So I won’t condemn you for your ignorance about people who are generally caucasian, who in the USA are derived from many different cultures, with a wide variety of outlooks.
Personally, when I encounter people who are different from me, my first reaction is curiosity and caution. I always judge people as individuals, because it is their character that matters: intelligence(s), integrity, honesty, thriftiness, prudence, hard-working, punctuality, a sense of duty, a sense of proportion, some humility. What is their value system? How do they behave?
I do not apologize for having my own value system, nor will I say I am not disappointed when other folks show themselves to be sad examples of the human race. There are hierarchies of values, people do differ in what they deem important. Color of skin is a biological adaptation to environmental conditions. I give it no more importance than that. Given about 10,000 years in the arctic, and all the black folk might end up pale as the Swedes.
When my brain in a perfectly normal way reacts to circumstances it has repeatedly encountered and has received imprints from (myself, female, alone on a dark street, a person following me; a person deliberately holding me up as they cross the road, with a challenging stance; someone or group breaking in line; rudeness; foul language; really bad driving; aggression with sound systems in their cars (a problem with ALL kinds of people, you will agree); poor dress habits and hygiene; an attempt to use guilt to manipulate me), I let the 90 seconds of reaction flow through me and then I return to my place of compassion and try for understanding. Doesn’t mean I won’t come away reinforced with a bad opinion, doesn’t mean I will automatically apply that opinion to the next stranger.
No, I am not “white” any more than “black” people are “African-American.” Africa is a continent. People who were sold into slavery by black people from other tribes are from TRIBES and family groups, not from nations. They may reside within national boundaries now, but those states have been formed subsequent to the abolition of slavery in Western European countries. American people of color are usually miscegenated, too, and so could just as easily see themselves as deriving from various American Indian tribes, the Irish, the French, etc. Sadly, many “Africans” still buy and sell their fellows even today.
I know your readers, being highly informed as they are, are aware of these facts, and are righteously outraged that their brothers and sisters back home continue with this inhumane practice. I am sure they are doing all they can through their churches to stop the African Slave Trade today.
Finally, I am glad that I hear black Americans admit they bully people they think are “white” and automatically deserving of rude behavior, and that they use “white guilt” to manipulate people they have sadly automatically decided are their enemies. Perhaps THEY are CREATING enemies where there were none before or perhaps these sorry individuals are responsible for what they receive from “white people” by creating or perpetuating prejudices.
Finally, I find that culture matters, family matters and in the end, individual character matters. I don’t like everybody, and I don’t have to and I don’t have to feel bad about that. And neither do you. That is freedom. To be LEFT ALONE. But your rights END where my nose begins, as they say. Your “rights” end where my property, my family, the things I love begin. And a “right” is not some entitlement. It stems from nature, not from the nation-state, Jeremy Bentham notwithstanding.
LikeLike
Corricopat:
I do not know what to say to you. You need to open your eyes. Everything you just said was extremely self-serving. I am ignorant, yes, but nowhere near as ignorant as you want to believe.
There is plenty I do not know about white people. And, yes, some of my statements are a bit too absolute. But there is one extremely important difference between you and me when it comes to the truth about white people: your mind is bought, mine is not.
LikeLike
RE: “What upset me was not that the father left, not that Mary was cut off and stuck in a world she knew little of, but that the two little girls could never go back to Indiana, that their own flesh and blood would never accept them because of the colour of their skin.”
=====================
The CAUSE of the problem is that *the father left* the family. This is accepted by you as less of a problem, when it is the REAL problem in this situation. That child will be exposed to hate, and love, for the rest of her life. But, she may never have her father in her life again. He is needed in the child’s upbringing just as much as the child’s mother is needed for a well-rounded and balanced childhood.
This is too common and too accepted by society.
Fathers, men of all groups, should be held fully responsible for bringing a child into the world.
LikeLike
Of course what the father did was way worse. I even listed it first among the things that I would expect to upset me. But for whatever reason it did not. Maybe because it has become too common like you said.
LikeLike
@ Heather
I remember when I was younger, before I understood more of how the world worked, I used to always ask why blacks were always compared to whites as opposed to say -Asians or Hispanics.
You bring up a terrific point that needs to be stressed more often.
LikeLike
The problem is (well, one of the many problems) the fact white is considered to be “default” human. Even without open racial hate and problems like the one described in this post, seeing one group as “default human” is wrong.
Thirty years ago, “default human” was white male. I don’t know if situation is any different today (is it, perhaps, white female?) but in any case it’s wrong.
LikeLike
Thank you so much for this post. I’m a young woman who has dark skin, and in middle school kids used to make fun of me all the time. Names like “blackie” and other offensive terms were always thrown at me. It got to the point to where I really hated myself. But growing older and seeing the world for what it really is. I love me and every last drop of melanin in my skin. You’re right there is absolutely nothing wrong with being black. I love being black. You’re blog has been eye opening. I live reading what you write. Also, until recently I used to feel very hateful towards white people. After talking with my grandmother I let it go. Especially since she reminded me that at the end of the day white people are going to have to stand before God just like everybody else and they will be held accountable for their actions.
LikeLike
All our minds are bought, Abagond. It’s just that some of us know who made the purchase.
LikeLike
No. There is nothing wrong with being black. I am very proud and thankful to be black – especially as a woman over 35 it’s like the fountain of youth. LOL.
And I want to add there is nothing wrong with being African American. We have a proud history and yes, we do have our own distinctive culture.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I cried reading this… I did. It’s sad that you have to make a post like this in the first place.
LikeLike
You were are correct about the simplicity of your statement. Basic and still as profound as any 15 minutes of rhetoric that it could evolve into.
An excellent example of Ockham’s Razor.
LikeLike
You are totally right about that! Blacks were born every bit just as good as the white. Asians too were born every bit as good as the white. Whites are also just equally good as other races.
Everybody were born equal, it don’t matter the class, the race, the size. Everybody is a grown up baby ❤ (And I say it with love) just who adapted to be more responsible, more sensible,… You know what I mean…
It is merely clouds thats been put over just just like the tall poppy syndrome.
Never believe in negativity, anything that makes you less of who you are cos everybody has the ability to be the biggest, brightest, lovable star, anything you want you can get, anything you dream to be you can be. Love others like your loving flesh and blood family even if they don't already see it like you do ❤
LikeLike
I love this post, and happened upon it at the perfect time! I’m so tired of being considered less-intelligent then my peers, simply because of the color of my skin. Anything I say is questioned or not taken seriously, while things that my white co-workers say is taken as the gospel truth – even if they’re talking out of their respective, collective @$$es. It’s very frustrating! 😡
LikeLike
But there is something wrong with being immoral and black, white, red, yellow, or brown.
LikeLike
Still my favorite post.
LikeLike
Abagond,
I haven’t commented on this post, but I should’ve because this is surely needed in today’s world where blackness is seen as a pathology daily.
I think there has to be a serous discussion and movement to tackle this issue. Everywhere you go you see blacks in a negative light much more often than you see them in a positive light. To add insult to injury this society will judge the whole black race for the actions of a few especially if those few are the only kinds of black people they are attracted to. That’s why so many black people fear of hearing about a violent crime. They are afraid that the suspect is black and will confirm white people’s racism. Plus, they are afraid that white people, since they mostly run society, will punish entire communities for the actions of one person.
It’s messed up that some white people think it’s fair to judge the entire black community for a few screw ups, but don’t think it’s fair to judge them the same way no matter how many serial killers, school shooters, terrorists, child/animal molesters, drug dealers/users and ordinary people doing stupid stunts come from white communities.
I see it like this, if you (white people) would like to be seen as individuals and as good people, then we more than deserve those same damn rights.
I’m sorry. I just had to get that off my chest.
LikeLike
Abagond:
Un-Blackness is the issue. Deep down, white racism is racial envy cloaked in anger…Bottomline! Black people are hated on because god gave us beautiful cola, brown, and caramel skin. We’ve been looking at this issue from the wrong perspective from the jump. Black people have no control over the thoughts of others, if someone of another race is not happy with who they are, that’s not our problem to worry about.
Tyrone
LikeLike
This is an excerpt from “An Open Letter to My Sister, Angela Y. Davis by James Baldwin:
The American triumph—in which the American tragedy has always been implicit—was to make Black people despise themselves. When I was little I despised myself; I did not know any better. And this meant, albeit unconsciously, or against my will, or in great pain, that I also despised my father. And my mother. And my brothers. And my sisters. Black people were killing each other every Saturday night out on Lenox Avenue, when I was growing up; and no one explained to them, or to me, that it was intended that they should; that they were penned where they were, like animals, in order that they should consider themselves no better than animals. Everything supported this sense of reality, nothing denied it: and so one was ready, when it came time to go to work, to be treated as a slave. So one was ready, when human terrors came, to bow before a white God and beg Jesus for salvation—this same white God who was unable to raise a finger to do so little as to help you pay your rent, unable to be awakened in time to help you save your child!
There is always, of course, more to any picture than can speedily be perceived and in all of this—groaning and moaning, watching, calculating, clowning, surviving, and outwitting, some tremendous strength was nevertheless being forged, which is part of our legacy today. But that particular aspect of our journey now begins to be behind us. The secret is out: we are men!
But the blunt, open articulation of this secret has frightened the nation to death. i wish I could say, “to life,” but that is much to demand of a disparate collection of displaced people still cowering in their wagon trains and singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” The nation, if America is a nation, is not in the least prepared for this day. It is a day which the Americans never expected to see, however piously they may declare their belief in progress and democracy. Those words, now, on American lips, have become a kind of universal obscenity: for this most unhappy people, strong believers in arithmetic, never expected to be confronted with the algebra of their history…
We know that we, the Blacks, and not only we, the blacks, have been, and are, the victims of a system whose only fuel is greed, whose only god is profit. We know that the fruits of this system have been ignorance, despair, and death, and we know that the system is doomed because the world can no longer afford it—if, indeed, it ever could have. And we know that, for the perpetuation of this system, we have all been mercilessly brutalized, and have been told nothing but lies, lies about ourselves and our kinsmen and our past, and about love, life, and death, so that both soul and body have been bound in hell.
The enormous revolution in black consciousness which has occurred in your generation, my dear sister, means the beginning or the end of America. Some of us, white and Black, know how great a price has already been paid to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new people, an unprecendented nation. If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name.
If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own—which it is—and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.
You can read the whole letter here: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/itcitmbaldwin.html
LikeLike
This story is not the same as mine but I understand it fully.
When I was a baby, my mother wanted to leave my father and tried to see if her parents in her Alabama hometown would take her in.
The response was NO, hell NO. No mixed race baby allowed to live with them!
She moved back in with my Dad. Thank God. I am sure I would not have survived growing up in a small “Forrest Gump” -type Alabama town.
LikeLike
@Jeje
I am living in a small ”Forrest GUmp” type of town in the South and I hate it! Most of the people there are ignorant. racist and xenophobic!
I hope to go back to New York this summer and go back to civilization not people who think like they are still in the Civil War.
This is a good post because I grew up hating my cocoa brown skin, brown eyes and kinky hair and I wanted to look White because that was what guys in my town thought was pretty: White skin, light eyes and long, straight, flowing blond hair or any type of hair color which was straight or wavy. I thought I was ugly in middle school because of it and I got over it as I got older and now I am 18 and love my brown skin and brown eyes.
These days I am loving my cocoa brown skin and kinky hair. Heck, I am deciding in leaving my town for good to have a better life and more opportunities.
LikeLike
I think this is my favorite post of yours I’ve seen Abagong. It’s been so long since I’ve been here, sorry about that.
It is so true. Almost everyone, black or white especially (I generally would capitalize those like pronouns to show I’m referring to people and not colors but due to low levels of remaining respect for them in general I won’t).
They, like you said, KNOW this on the surface, know that they’re SUPPOSE to know this. But instinctively, in their hearts and souls feel otherwise and express it unconsciously. It’s hypocritical. The blacks and the whites alike perceive whites as better, truer, more deserving, more perfect, deserving exaltation and blacks the opposite – no good, crummy, deserving distrust and affliction and it’s no accident. It’s like blacks are just blacks, not EVEN human. These days you don’t need to be white to be a white supremacist.
I gotta reference the Boondocks. Like how Uncle Ruckus said blacks must hate their blackness and that even though Robert Freeman has money he’s still JUST a *n-word coming* nigger (and I don’t mean niggA)
These hateful idiots always with the pre-judgement and the prejudice, prejudice, prejudice. It never ends. White people get old, sick, die, struggle, suffer and do bad and folly, too, just like every other race; they deserve no special elevation, sh*t!
@dcnot420 – They’re the only race with multiple natural hues of hair and possibly iris color. Brown and red hair especially seem to be uniquely European, but this is all beside the point.
@Heather – Right on.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@ Symphonic Zambophones
This post is one of my favourites too, even though I should never have had to write it in the first place.
LikeLike
its all a waste of energy but its funny how we still think race exists, a black girl born to white parents 1955, there was never a dormant gene anywhere, the couple was in South africa, perhaps a surgence of melanin bursts returned to create the original. isn’t that obvious. the same for a blond girl born to Nigerian parents 2010 in the UK, not being in the sun created a less or next to non melanin baby,yet to scientists that we listen to says “a rare mutation”, when exactly did that mutation occurred, 100 thousand, a million years back? when we or shall I say they left Africa, then became white (losing their melanin), surely this is very clear now, why do we continue to waste our breath or allow a lesser being to call us names like blacks or….., when do we take back whats ours and own it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Adeen I am so proud of you, at 18 you recognised in yourself “a golden treasure” a superb being from our creator, the giver of life. this realisation took me 40 years. In us our spiritual self will rise if we allow it, there is more to life if you have melanin, the ultimate connection to our creator, we have become consumed of worldly things and couldn’t see beyond, we as Africans have joined the lesser being who fears the Unknown,( who says our connection with our creator is black magic, it is another lie, they think we will never wake up, we are now) and believes what we are told, not questioning the lies to keep us from ever tapping into our spirituality, please don’t eat the chemicals, additives or use creams (they produce to tan them) or foods processed (they have added what WE have artificially to grow their babies}, when we eat this stuff we go mad and start killing each other, or we use the creams and we become darker or come up with skin diseases. we carry on eating this stuff we will no doubt become white or diseased, please spread this info, find ways to grow your own natural foods, move to the Sunny Califonia or warm climate and meditate. Take care
LikeLiked by 1 person
I just found this site. It was everything I needed… especially right now. I am in tears. THANK YOU.
LikeLike