Black, a Narrative
Originally written to the Black community at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Black was ugly, sub-human. Then Black began to walk upright and find its voice. Finally, Black began to fight back in all its new found dignity and power in unity.
This is a story of me through the paradigm of my blackness. What’s it mean to be black to me? How has my black identity, or my perception of my black identity, changed throughout my college years? The hope is that my purely anecdotal experience can act as a framework through which you can ask yourselves questions about your black identity. In my experience it’s the rigorous, unabashed stream of questioning and searching for answers, the dialectic process, that brings about something you can work with and propel you to further heights. It is that rigorous process that builds confidence in your identity.
But first briefly, what is identity? To me, it is a foundation upon which I build my life. Life meaning interests, goals, desires on. My identity is what I consult before I make concrete decisions, my identity informs my life. To me, identity is not a demarcation or grouping that can be used by others to determine things for me. Identity is the lens through which I view my world. Identity is the fabric that I use to weave myself into the narrative of time.
Abenezer: The Underclassman
Entering MIT, I thought I had myself figured out beyond a shred of doubt. My mental models were largely linear and that permeated heavily into how I saw the world. Everything had order and all problems had linear arcs to solution. Paradoxes that demand honesty were assumed away in order to fit my mental models without issue. With regards to my identity, I used to rank its four attributes in a manner that made it simple for me to enter and leave conversations with my peace intact. No need to look critically within because all inconsistencies were assumed away with great fallacy and now fit perfectly into said models.
My identity was ranked as so:
- Christian
- Ethiopian
- African
- Black
This quantitative way of looking at things faced many issues. It had the appearance of grandeur and stability, ‘the Abenezer that knows himself’, but it was largely without substance. Outside of my faith, no critical thought went into the ordering system. This was merely the order in which I gained awareness. My whole world was simply Ethiopia as a young child, then this idea of Africa was brought into my peripheral and was then appended into my worldview, solely as a result of geography. This nebulous idea of Blackness was then later exposed to me, but heavily within the realm of “African American” so I tried to keep that as arms length away as possible lest I begin claiming a history that is not mine. The existence of an ordering system was also laden with problems. It denied me direction for action based off identity. Am I now going to deny someone my service, friendship, and time because of some ranking system? It was inherently flawed and the upkeep of an inconsistent mental model, for reasons beyond just identity, was exhausting and demanded change.
Abenezer: The Upperclassman
My pre-college mental models started to evolve during this time. Questions grew bolder and the world had less of a smokescreen shrouding it. Earth had a bigger context, a system of systems, seemingly infinite. I began viewing my present day reality as the sum total of past identities and histories along the continuum that is time. Past experiences feed into present day experiences. I did not exist in a vacuum. Therefore I could not operate as if I was in a vacuum. As if work hasn’t been done until now, as if I wasn’t working with future generations in mind. Operating in a vacuum looks like one thinking solely inside upper bound of a century one has on this Earth. I live inside a continuum that will continue to grow and exist. That being said, this idea of ‘Blackness’ did not come up out of nothing. It has a history attached to it, that charts it’s evolution and is a witness to its fluid nature.
So what is that history?
Black, the Ugly: The Social Construction of Whiteness and Blackness
“When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no ‘white’ people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years.” — Theodore W. Allen
In the early colonial days of America, the 17th century, there was very little notion of race save for musings about eugenics and beauty over in Europe (will never understand the obsession those people have with eugenics). For the majority of the 17th century, the demand for labor was largely filled with bondsmen (basically slaves) from Ireland and Scotland. With a handful of African slaves thrown in here and there. These indentured workers were viewed on the same level, to the point that there were instances of black people working towards their own freedom, owning land, and then even going the lengths of owning slaves — which I find equally as despicable. As the nature of their existence as low-class indentured workers began to exasperate their material conditions, the whites and africans were banding together throughout the colonies, in similar vein to what was happening across Europe, to overthrow the oppressive systems they were living under. The powers at be understood that their survival revolved around dividing the revolutionaries.
Theodore Allen, upon sorting through decades of Virginia legislation, saw the first instance of Whiteness being a legal entity in 1691. Slowly but surely, the powers that be were creating an identity for the poor whites to make them feel superior to the Blacks. The rights of the poor whites were expanded, they became free and were made managers of the incoming influx of African slaves to feed the exponential, insatiable growth of enterprise and prospect that is the bedrock of the United States. Simultaneously, the rights that the freed Black people were enjoying were rolled back to make uniform the new status quo of America. The powers that be doubled down at the ideological campaign of painting Black people as sub-human, animalistic, in order to create a twisted rationale for the increased savagery that was to come.
Words have power, and with great intention, Blackness and whiteness were created. As is apparent throughout history, when ideas are brought to life, they begin to establish themselves in corridors of history that they were not initially created for. Blackness became an antithesis to whiteness and one needed the other to exist and be a reasonable classification for identity.
And that identity for Blackness is this, Black is ugly, Black is sub-human. It is the natural order of things for Black people to be treated as such.
Black, the Human: The Humanization of the Black Person
“In every truth, the beneficiaries of a system cannot be expected to destroy it.” — Asa Philip
This timeline for the humanization of the Black being is not the same for all populaces that were labelled so by the white man. By the late 19th century, Africa was just going through colonization, and similarly were just beginning to be labelled “Black” as a racist demarcation of class and position in the new society they were being forced into. So I will try to chart the term “Black” in its most advanced form by this time. And that is the new “Black” person being claimed by those operating in the Black cultural revolutions, while going through the process of humanizing themselves. There are many cultural revolutions that occurred in the context of Blackness during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, but I will focus on two that stood out to me and chose to really look into my junior year, the Harlem Renaissance and the Paris based Negritude movement. These cultural revolutions worked to take ‘Black, the Ugly’ that the white man created and commanded and transform it into ‘Black, the Human’.
I’ll start with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. We all have at the very least heard the names, although may not have attached them to this renaissance. Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, the list goes on. These were the active members of the fraternity (gender neutral) that was brewing under the identity “Black”. Marcus Garvey embodied the fervor and urgency that defined the times. Du Bois, the peripherals of the intellectual capacity that remained to be fully unleashed. Hughes, the sweet fragrance of a voice beginning to find itself. These dynamics were what made up the vanguard of Black, the Human. The Renaissance was a time of culture building its effects still found in modern Black art and mental models. “I was inspired” is an understatement. I was insatiable for the writings that voiced my internal dialogues so clearly, so profoundly. The decade laid the foundation for the jazz that I love. Garvey’s urgency for the Continent and the Diaspora to reunite in glorious fashion paralleled my own romantic fantasy of the unity. The history of the Abyssinian Baptist Church spoke to me and my identity in Christ. The church was applying the true teachings of Christ to the modern day reality of a “Black” individual. Making the case that Christ was just their Christ as he was any other’s Christ, throwing away the bonds of the ‘white man’s religion’. They named it ‘Abyssinian’ (ancient term for Ethiopia) because the Christianity there came directly from the first missions. The ministers of the time preached of a radical Christianity, one that spoke directly to the pains of its populace and provided both hope and dignity. Similar energy was brewing across the Atlantic over in Europe.
Negritude, unlike the Harlem Renaissance, was a purely ideology centered endeavor. This movement birthed the likes of Franz Fanon and Aime Cesaire. This movement came out of colonialism rather than slavery, and the nature of the literary work is a product of that. Negritude’s writers used an array of tools, including Marxist analysis, to create a radical body of work paving the way for a Blackness that can break the chains of colonialism. These masters of the written art effortlessly wove together analysis, theory, poetry, and plays in their works, creating engaging narratives that would captivate the mind itself. They incisively called out against the French academic mould they had to break free from after their ‘formal’ educations. These incisive words are what shattered the proverbial glass in my world. They helped me understand the nexus of my self consciousness and what was my ‘academic prowess’. To be fully embraced in the upper echelons of the white intelligentsia that ran the world, I had to make a Faustian bargain. One that put my Blackness up for sale and, in return, gain the structure, elitism, and modernity of the West. These authors brought to light the terms of the transaction that brought me to America for further education. Their words, however, did not leave me in despair without hope.They showed me what I was being moulded into yet assured me that I could stop the process, with intentionality, and forge for myself an identity that embraced the Black, the African. Complete with its contradictions to the Western ideal of life.
This new cultural paradigm that was brought forth by the cultural revolutions paved the way for future events with regards to Black people worldwide. The new host of Black institutions were becoming the foundation of a budding radical culture, defining Black as not only human, but also a political entity. This idea of ‘Blackness’, however, was still only centered around the cosmopolitan metropoles of the world order. ‘Blackness’ was still not a component of the mental model for Africans and therefore was separate to the continent of Africa. Slowly but surely, whiteness and all its ills was seeping deep into every facet of African life directly or indirectly.
Black, the Powerful: The Making of the Black Body-Politic
“Power is the ability to define phenomena and make it act in a desired manner.” — Jimmy Johnson
Black was ugly, sub-human. Then Black began to walk upright and find its voice. Finally, Black began to fight back in all its new found dignity and power in unity. The mid to late 20th century was a highly volatile time for the world. Revolution was the mantra of the contemporary. Africa was throwing off her chains and was not mincing words. The Africans from the metropoles were coming back as the Africans still in the continent were demanding their freedom. The process of decolonization was a very Black affair. An affair that strung together the Black peoples of North America, Europe, the Caribbean and Africa into a fully fledged body-politic. This was the portion of the history of Black that drew me in and held me close. Black, the Powerful. A conduit for righting wrongs and a medium for bringing together together a billion-plus people under a singular banner.
The institutions that arose during this time under the banner of Black politics; the Black Panthers, the Pan-African conferences, the multitude of political parties all across Africa, were fiercely aware of the power of unity. This awareness rocked the earth and whiteness, the power structure, faced a formidable foe. The backlash, a testament to the power Blackness collected over two centuries. The power structure used the FBI to systematically slaughter and terrorize the Black Panthers in response to their demands and organization. It used our differences to murder African leaders calling for African Unity and the end of our exploitation. Regardless, Black, the Powerful powered on, drawing more and more under its cause as they witnessed the carnage of whiteness.
The fifth leader of Upper Volta particularly embodied the image of Black, the Powerful I have in my mind. After taking the reins of the nation, he changed the name of the nation from the colonial Upper Volta to Burkina Faso (meaning “Land of the incorruptible people”) and christened its inhabitants the Burkinabe (“Upright people”). He was known for his fierce aversion to anything that came from the old oppressors under the guise of ‘aid’ famously saying, “He who feeds you controls you”. He saw right through the ploys of the western ‘multilateral’ institutions to rein the nation and its resources into their sphere of control and influence. What sets Sankara apart, however, was not his strict adherence to ideology, but his audacity to walk the talk and inspire a people to work to their improvement. His administration was known for its large scale public projects that worked towards women empowerment, food self-sufficiency, vaccination, and literacy. Solidarity, audacity, and a voracious confidence is what defined this era in Burkina Faso. Reading about him gave me the audacity to let my imagination run wild, fantasizing who we could be as a black people. Letting loose the chains of dependency and a crushed collective self-esteem.
Where do we go from here?
I started with Black, the ugly and how blackness was birthed in the most disgusting fashion and historical context. Then Black, the human and the humanization process Black had to go through. Like a phoenix that rose from the ashes to a phoenix fighting to clinch its freedom. Once the mental battle for humanity was won, then came the physical battle. This physical battle was done under a banner, in unity, with a mission that is cut from the same cloth.
I did fall into some missteps along the way, however. Missteps that I’ll describe in brief so that you may be able to avoid them. I fell into the trap of over-glorifying (beyond just the point of respect and understanding) that 20th century body-politic. Primarily the revolutionary ones. Think of history as a stream. Streams only work insofar as they are allowed to flow into their point of exit. When you try to contain a stream, the water, and sediment along with it, start to collect and create a swamp. With a stream, you can intelligently siphon off and irrigate to use for power generation and agriculture. A swamp is useless. We have to let things allow the evolution they need, for them to remain fluid, to be able to accommodate modern times and modern issues. They were their times’ contemporaries, we are our times’.
This dialectic journey I went through gave me evidence and a history to base my identity in. So what does blackness mean to me now? It is a political call for action that now encompasses Africa, Europe, America, and Latin America. It is a framework (singular, not my sole framework) through which I analyze dynamics between people on planet Earth. Dynamics that need to be understood in order to properly effect change. Blackness is a badge of honor that pays respect to this continuum of experiences and identities that have formed the current day black body politic, as a label of unity. Blackness is an idea that I hope to propel forward without keeping it trapped in the confines of history. Black to me is a call to action for thriving towards building institutions that break the Western middle class ideal that the whole world has been convinced into via colonialism and the ensuing neoliberal order. Creating institutions that match up with our culture, our modes of thinking and operating, our sociology.
Disclaimer
Also want to mention that some of this writing is romanticized as it is a narrative and not a critical academic paper. There is a time and place for everything, and now is the time to encourage people to dive into their own blackness and dialectically question it in a manner that leads them to their own truth. I do not want to put words into anyone’s mouth. I do not want this to be quoted when you come to terms with your own identity. I want you to aggressively understand yourself, and where you come from. This is what blackness is to me. This is what blackness is to me, how I have claimed it, and how it will inform the actions I take in my future.
A Parting Thought
As blackness has continued through history it has continued to shift along with other world dynamics. Blackness is no longer solely synonymous with the lowest economic class. A form of black middle class and, even opulence, has begun to be associated with Blackness. In terms of historical materialism based analysis, some black people have even entered the class of oppressors. Black people are also now firmly bought into the notion of the nation state but minus the initial optimism they experienced it with. Blackness has continually tried to reform and strengthen the political connotation of Black without simultaneously strengthening the social and religious connotations of Black that gave it so much of its ‘breath of fresh air’ so to speak.
