28
by Ranxerox_Archive
On the one hand you would think that a person either was or was not black. It should be evident.
When cops pull me over they inevitably note on the report that the subject, myself, is white. They get the color of my car right (brown or black, as the case has been over the years), but their 'training' didn't include noting skin color and forgoing the way a subject talks. Or so it seems. I feel I am obviously black (mixed, if we want to get technical in terms of my lineage), but I have had friends who have known me as black for years tell me they 'forgot' I was black (even as I was sitting in front of them) or that, contrary to my own perceptions, I was not actually black (they didn't really know what I was or what they meant by such absurdity).
My eldest daughter looks (is?) white. She has a white grandmother with blue eyes (French, Welsh, English) married to my dad (3/4 black (which might include god knows what coming out of the bottoms of Alabama) and 1/4 full blooded Cherokee (also from Alabama)), along with a grandmother who is 'Mexican' (a nationality intimating hispanic origins, including indians (natives (of this sort and that)), and a white grandfather with ice blue eyes (german). The little kid has blue eyes and light, sandy brown hair that looks blonde on most days. My other daughter, same mother, looks like an Inuit. I will not insist that either think of themselves as black, especially as the one-drop rule has been in desuetude for some time now. Still, there are those who will want to say that both are black.
The above riot of parenthetical asides is an indication that race is affiliative, associative, political, and the result of biological traits that are passed along in imperfect ways. People generally ask these traits to perform illustrative and explanatory tricks for which the traits are ill-suited.
It is strange that we refer to people as black and white, though, in spite of having deep familiarity with both colors, we fail to live according to the knowledge that no one has ever been either hue.
Blackness can refer to color or to culture or to manner or on and on. Same for whiteness. Why do we use these terms? They are useful. Do we realize that we are perpetuating logics of division and power play? Yes, a good deal of the time. Do we care? Ehh, not really. We know that the terms carry at least some of the meaning we intend even if they are loaded terms that freight alot of baggage we don't want to be connected with.
Are Africans black? Not in the way that some people want Barack Obama to be black. Even if he sounded 'African' rather than 'white,' he would not be 'black' enough. As it turns outs, for a time you could hear people suggest that Bill Clinton was blacker. It didn't take long for the desire to SEE blackness of a more color-oriented nature take the White House to make SOME people begin to change their tune about the Clintons. It didn't take long for the Clintons to change their tune, either.
My favorite bit of idiot bigotry and crippled logic is the tried and tested dichotomy between blacks and niggers. You know what I mean. Barack is a black man, Bill Clinton is a nigger.
