African? American? Both? Or neither? “Black” seems to be an accepted hybrid term that falls short of claiming either entity yet still denotes exceptionalism in this society.

Nonetheless, this ambiguity isn’t entirely neutral, as black people generally seem prone to distance themselves more from Africa, than America — either consciously or sub-consciously.

So says Malik Washington in his NPR piece Embracing The African In African-American.

Yes, but not for the reasons he thinks.

For me, the choice to identify as Black rather than as African-American isn’t a rejection of my African descent. It’s an embrace of the fact that my condition — how I perceive the world, how I relate to the world, how I am perceived by actual Africans, as well as my familial history, and racial identity — is distinctly American.

The story of how I got here is wrapped up in the history of the “New World,” and the United States. Some of my ancestors were (we think) from France, possibly England, Ireland or Scotland. Some were Cherokee. Some were undoubtedly west African. My family roots extend at least five generations into the soil of North and South Carolina, perhaps as far back as the 1700s. That’s an American condition — in both the “Western Hemisphere” sense and the “United States” sense. There isn’t much African about it.

As Ana Paula da Silva writes in, Black tourism in Brazil, a post I return to regularly when I think about black American racial identity:

Having pestered many Americans about the topic, it seems to me that heritage can best be described as a myth-making attempt to fix claims to certain elements of history as personal or collective property. It thus disturbs me when black Americans come to Bahia in search of their heritage. What they seem to be saying is that Bahia — and by extension, Brazil — makes no useful sense on its own terms and holds little interest for them except as it fits into their personal mythologies of identity.

Swap “Brazil” for “Africa” and you begin to understand my issues with identifying as an “African-American” or as an “African.”

“African-American” is too nebulous to be meaningful. “African” is just inaccurate. I am not — and most black Americans are not — African. Africans aren’t “African.” They’re Nigerian or Ghanaian or Moroccan or Zimbabwean. They’re Yoruba, Hausa, Akan, Ashanti, Berber, Tuareg, or Shona. Africans don’t become “African” (or “black,” for that matter) until they move to Europe or the United States or Canada — places where the brown skin common to peoples of the continent are visibly different and “Othered.”

Not only does “African-American” feel to me like an acquiescence to the idea that black people aren’t wholly American, but, like “African,” it turns a complex continent with over 50 and roughly 2000 ethno-linguistic groups into an imagined monolith. It ignores African cultures and history for the sake of making black Americans feel good. And it also erases a rich black American history of resistance and perseverance.

Still, I get the need to claim an ethnic origin. I, like many post-Civil Rights Era black Americans, had my identity crisis phase. At one time, I embraced “African-American” in part, because “black,” on its surface, felt empty.

“Black,” after all, is an arbitrary racial designation. It’s a color. It lacks any sort of ethnic specificity.

“Black” does not, however, lack a history.

I identify as “black” now because I understand that race is a construct rooted in history and bound by circumstance. In Brazil, for example, I might be moreno or mulato because of my mixed ancestry and light skin color. In the United States, I am legally and culturally black. My blackness is defined partly by my African ancestry, but mostly by U. S. history, culture, and law.

So while “African-American” acknowledges my geographic origins, “black,” particularly when used with “American,” recognizes that my cultural worldview is shaped by my experiences in the United States. It says not only do I belong here, but that I am of this country.

Also see:

• On institutionalized racism and global politics
• On privilege
• When ‘American’ is not enough

It seems the Baracka Flocka Flames controversy has heated up since the October 26 publication of Prez N the Hood: A Hip-Hop Parody Stirs Up Issues in the New York Times (video below; article requires log-in).

America’s foremost old cranky black man, Stanley Crouch, had nothing nice to say about Baracka Flocka Flames in his recent column for TheRoot.com. He dismissed the video as ‘minstrelsy.’

That shouldn’t surprise you, of course. According to Crouch, anything hip-hop — even if it’s satirical or in parody form — is What’s Wrong With Negroes. Rather than rebut Crouch myself, I will point you to Bomani Jones’ post Stanley Crouch, I think I’m on to you….

Now I am one who thinks Baracka Flocka Flames’ “Head of the State,” is f#cking hilarious, bordering on brilliant. Part of the humor for me is that I imagine the Obamas are Grade-A sh#t-talkers behind closed doors. You see glimpses of this sense of humor when President Obama speaks. You saw it when Michelle Obama was cracking on her husband’s dirty sock habits. So I can totally see Barack Obama making off color jokes along these lines for sheer sh#ts and giggles.* Plus, James Davis does a killer job of imitating Obama’s diction, making every utterance of “nigga,” downright funny. But that’s not the only humor I see inreason I love this piece.

“Head of the State,” for those who don’t closely follow hip-hop, is based on Waka Flocka Flame‘s “Hard in the Paint.”

Yeah.

Let’s just say that if Stanley Crouch titled his next column “Waka Flocka Flame is What’s Wrong With Negroes,” I will heartily co-sign. Waka Flocka Flame not only has a stupid-a## name, but he has also said he’s in it for the money, not the craft. And if we’re talking about topical content, <ebonics>this n*gga just stay ig’nant</ebonics>. This video, as Jones points out, fits much more closely with Crouch’s idea of minstrelsy, or the performance of stereotype for commercial gain.

“Head of the State” plays off the imagery and lyrics of “Hard in the Paint,” and by doing so, I think it becomes a multi-layered, satirical critique of class and race stereotypes and hip-hop video tropes.

Let’s think about this: Barack Obama was largely raised in Kansas. He not only attended college, but has degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Law — two Ivy League universities. Michelle Obama is similarly educated. So the idea of BHO unironically thug posing and rapping about his “main bitch,” and having his “own SK” is absurd. It is completely, utterly, and absolutely absurd.

And that absurdity makes “Head of the State” uncomfortable for the thinking viewer.

My second and third reactions were “Wow, this is rife with stereotypes, innit?” and “Sh*t, the tea baggers will have a field day with this.” And I suspect much of the criticism of “Head of the State,” from Crouch and others is related to W.W.W.P.T. — “What Will White People Think?” As Jones wrote, the truth is that, for better or worse, the mass media is America’s only introduction to black people.

But if you believe it’s plausible that a middle-class raised, currently upper-class, highly-educated black man, particularly the president of the United States would be chilling on the front steps of an abandoned house in a dangerous neighborhood, smoking Newports and dancing with a bottle of Smirnoff while surrounded by persons of questionable repute, I must ask who clings more tightly to the black-man-as-thug stereotype — you or Baracka Flocka?

And that’s why I love this “Head of the State,” video. It sticks a finger square in the eye of fake thug rappers who pimp gangster imagery for profit. And it sticks a finger in the eye of those who see Ivy League educated black people in the White House and manage to reduce them — and by extension all of us — to a narrow, negative stereotype.

Related:

Jay Smooth’s Raw Footage “I Forgot He Was Black.”

*Okay, raise your hand if an inappropriate HNIC joke has crossed your mind January 20, 2009.

Segregation in Hungary doesn’t happen as a result of racist laws. It’s de facto segregation. For different reasons in different locations, all of the Roma children, or at least large majorities of them together with financially disadvantaged non-Roma, wind up in the same classrooms or schools.

So says Lilla Farkas, a lawyer with the NGO Chance for Children. Farkas was quoted in the GlobalPost.com article In Hungary, segregation begins at school. “White flight” seems like an odd term to use here since Romas would be considered white by United States standards. But it’s essentially the same phenomenon: an ethnic/racial/linguistic majority systematically discriminates against a minority group and uses its material means to segregate. In Hungary, it seems to be expressed as flat-out disdain and hostility. In the United States, we classy-up our discrimination saying that we want our kids to attend schools where the kids “have the same values.” But really? Where in the world do kids and parents actively disdain education?*

* I am not talking about people who express cynicism about the efficacy of education in achieving upward mobility. I am not talking about people who choose food money now over more food money later. I am not talking about people who question the ROI of a college degree. I am not talking about people who don’t like the snooty tendencies of y’all, edumacated, smarty art Negroes. I mean where in the world do people actively say that education, knowledge and learning are not worthwhile pursuits?

Internalized racism is defined as acceptance by members of the stigmatized races of negative messages about their own abilities and intrinsic worth. It is characterized by their not believing in others who look like them, and not believing in themselves. It involves accepting limitations to one’s own full humanity, including one’s spectrum of dreams, one’s right to self-determination, and one’s range of allowable self-expression.

Yep. That’s from Levels of Racism: A Theoretic Framework and a Gardener’s Tale by Camara Phyllis Jones, MD, MPH, PhD. In 2000, it appeared in American Journal of Public Health. Jones’ goal was to help doctors and public health officials understand how race tinges policy and health outcomes. Despite it’s health-centric focus, the piece provides an excellent framework and vocabulary that we can use to discuss racism.

In it, Jones describes and explains three levels of racism: institutionalized, personally mediated, and internalized, and offers a parable illustrating how these levels of racism can play out.

(Via “Facepainting” on Floating World)

Or the black bartender who said to me: “A black American and a white American … you all are the same to me.”

It was another awkward compliment, but from his viewpoint, he equates the lifestyles of black Americans with white people, both in America and in South Africa.

I suppose in a way that’s a good thing, because it indicates that the perception of American life includes widespread equality.

The problem, though, is that it implies privilege. Am I blessed? Yes. Hard-working? Absolutely. Privileged? Never.

That quote is from ESPN columnist Jemele Hill’s essay on being a black American in South Africa.

Oh Jemele, you have fallen into Blackness Trumps Everything trap. But you know what? I’ve been there too.

It’s a awkward thing to realize that you, despite being a minority, have privilege that you trade on, consciously or not. As black Americans, we’re all about The Struggle. Comtemporary blackness is defined by it.

The Struggle is this idea that you are always oppressed, that race trumps all, and that black people have to stick together to get ahead — collectivism, unity, self-determination, and the other principles of Kwanzaa.

Yet if you know anything about intersectionality, you know that lacking privilege in one area doesn’t mean you’re not privileged in another.

And, girl, this is the trap you have walked into.

You are a college-educated journalist who writes for a major media outlet — one that could afford to fly you to another continent. You are cisgendered. If you are heterosexual, add that to the list. Your college education puts you at the 91st percentile of American society. I’d guess your income hovers around the US$50,000 mark, making you squarely upper-middle income. You have a solidly middle-class occupation. So yes, you are privileged in both an American context and a global one.

I understand the impulse to compare Jim Crow America, busing, and our return to de facto segregation to South Africa during and after apartheid. I understand the desire to forge a bond between yourself and “our people” on the continent. I even understand the tendency for middle-and-upper-middle class blacks — especially those who moved into the middle-class, rather than those who started off in it — to feel guilt, or unease about having “made it” relative to those who are still trying to.

But to deny your privilege ignores the ways in which you are part of a system that is predicated on structures which not only reserve global mobility to a privileged few, but which also reserve the right to represent and interpret what is seen and experienced to those same few, to use Ana Paula da Silva’s words.

In fact, I will point you to da Silva’s words because her essay Black tourism in Brazil does a far better job than I can of explaining international blackness and privilege.

Meanwhile, I will simply ask that you broaden your own ideas of what black is and is not.

Also see: When “American” is not enough

Historically, Mexican-Americans have generally been considered “white” in Texas; they served in white units of the segregated military, including the National Guard, and were allowed, during the Jim Crow years, to marry white (but not black) partners. In the early ’40s, the Texas Legislature even passed a “Caucasian Race Resolution,” which affirmed their status as white. Today the U.S. Census treats “Hispanic,” “Latino” and “Spanish origin” — terms that apply to anyone of Spanish-speaking background — as an ethnic category. Race is a separate category, with various options, including a nonspecific “some other race.” In 2000, about half of all Hispanics checked “white” for race. Castro told me that he was planning to check “some other race” in 2010. He is uncomfortable referring to himself as “brown,” and he doesn’t use the term “people of color” when he discusses Mexican-Americans.

From the May 9th New York Times Magazine piece profile on Julián Castro. Castro, 35, is the current mayor of San Antonio, Texas and a rising political star in the Democratic Party. A few observers think he has a good shot at being the first Hispanic — though the piece suggests he prefers ‘Latino’ — president of the United States.

Though the piece is about Castro, it’s also about Hispanic/Latino political influence, Chicano versus Hispanic/Latino identity, and assimilation (Castro doesn’t speak Spanish). Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants make up 60 percent of all Hispanics. Border and immigration issues often dominate the Hispanic agenda, even though Cuban-Americans largely arrive(d) here legally as defectors, and Puerto Ricans are American citizens. Plus race means that Afro-Latinos, Asian Latinos, and aboriginal Latin Americans may form different identity-based political alliances.

For Castro to win national office, he will have to be a bilingual Obama. Like Obama, he will need to reassure white voters that he is sufficiently American and doesn’t secretly hate white people. He will also need enough Chicano-ness to woo Mexican-American voters without alienating other Hispanic/Latino voters. And finally, he will need to woo black voters in places like Georgia and California where blacks and Latinos often compete for jobs and neighborhood presence.

Also see: Liza Sabater’s excellent 2007 post On why I hate Hispanic Heritage Month for an explanation of ‘Hispanic’ versus ‘Latino.’

Way tangential point, though related to Liza’s piece: even the “Latin American” label is problematic. It makes sense, I think, to group countries by language or colonial power. Grouping countries where Spanish is the official or predominant language is understandable. But ‘Latin America’ also includes Portuguese-speaking Brazil and French-speaking Haiti while excluding the English-speaking South American country Guyana. It includes the French departments Martinique and Guadeloupe, but excludes English-speaking Dominica, which lies between the islands. It includes Puerto Rico and Haiti, but not Jamaica. And yet, the region as a whole shares a history of colonialization, subjugation or extermination of aboriginal Americans, and varying degrees of participation in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. So how useful is it to draw those linguistic boundaries, and where should we draw them?

‘The Beige and the Black’: Segregation in Marriage

Twelve years ago, the New York Times magazine published a piece by Michael Lind on race, intermarriage, and demographic trends titled The Beige and the Black.

According to Lind, demographic trends suggest there will not going to be a nonwhite majority in the 21st century. Rather, there is going to be a mostly white mixed-race majority. After all, For the 25-34 age group, only 8 percent of black men marry outside their race. Less than 4 percent of black women do so.

And thanks to our history of race and law in this country, any portion of black lineage makes you black. Those bi-racial black people will be legally excluded from this mixed-race majority, and could well be excluded culturally and economically. As Lind explains:

On the positive side, the melting away of racial barriers between Asians, Latinos and whites will prevent a complete Balkanization of American society into tiny ethnic groups. On the negative side, the division between an enormous, mixed-race majority and a black minority might be equally unhealthy. The new mixed-race majority, even if it were predominantly European in ancestry, probably would not be moved by appeals to white guilt. Some of the new multiracial Americans might disingenuously invoke an Asian or Hispanic grandparent to include themselves among the victims rather than the victimizers. Nor would black Americans find many partners for a rainbow coalition politics, except perhaps among recent immigrants.

This may be the most curious twist to our discussions of immigration and the ‘browning’ of America. The degree to which immigrants are assimilated is determined by a mix of educational attainment, ethnic and national origin, length of time in the United States — and perhaps most importantly — color. A 2000 New York Times piece Best of Friends, Worlds Apart illustrates the issue well with its story of two Cuban immigrants, one black and one white.

With this current wave of immigrants — from Central and South America, from Mexico, from Africa, from the Caribbean, from Asia — I wonder to what degree they will become accepted, assimilated or marginalized over generations. And I wonder what that means for whiteness, blackness, and America’s handling of race.

The reality is that America has a long history of welcoming immigrants who will never be able to check that white box on the census, and unfortunately that means America also has a long history of discrimination against those people regardless of their status in the country.

So says Christian Lander, white Canadian American and the dude behind Stuff White People Like in his CNN.com opinion piece How we became white people.

There is an institutionalized racism in the way these poor black disaster victims are treated. The victims of Katrina were treated with so much presumption, as if you could assume they were going to loot, because they were black. Just like we know that the people in Haiti are bad because they’re black.

And:

When the media reports on disasters, they’re inevitably going to focus on the dramatic and antisocial, even if it’s one percent of the population committing these acts. And even back then, the looting myth always came to the fore of media reports.

The Looting Lie from CampusProgress.org. (Via misterjt)

Also see:

• Stop calling quake victims looters (via Liz)
• dear newscasters: just because haitians are black doesn’t mean the situation is or should be compared to hurricane katrina. just sayin’ (FriendFeed.com Thread)

Previously: On Haiti, Part 3 and Post-Katrina New Orleans, Part 1

“Are Lebanese white people?” we asked the 71-year-old gentleman who considered himself white. “Yes,” he said, “although they’re real dark.” How about Italian Catholics; are they white? Sure. And Jews? Yes. What about the Chinese? “Yes,” he said, “they go to the white schools.” And Mexicans? “They’re becoming more white,” he said. “More of them are getting an education.”

Then what is a white person? we asked. After some confusion, our interviewee gave us this answer: anybody “who isn’t black.”

From The dark side of white by Gregory Rodriguez in the Los Angeles Times (via Cecily).

Or as I like to joke, Italians, and Greeks, and especially Middle Easterners and west Asians (Turks, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Afghanis) are considered “off-white.” Because they have an identifiable ethnicity and a name that is not one found in most northern European countries, they don’t have the full privileges of whiteness.

It seems to me that “whiteness” requires at minimum two things in American culture:

• Not being black (“black” understood here as sub-Saharan African and not descended from colonizers or other migrant ethnic groups).
• Sufficient numbers (or loud enough protests) to justify creating a new Census category.

That said, by this erasing of culture and ethnicity for some groups (blacks and whites), but not others, I wonder if we are really privileging some groups as more American and reinforcing the black-white racial binary.

On the one hand, the ghetto is a part of a city historically defined by race and class. On the other hand, being ghetto refers to a set of tastes that emerged as poor people of color developed fashion and cultural artifacts that proudly expressed their identity. Just as physical spaces and tastes are organized around and shaped by race and class, so too are digital environments.

From “White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook” by danah boyd. [Draft; PDF file]

Now, let’s start by saying that Jennifer Hudson is a capable actress. She blew Beyoncé out the water in Dreamgirls and by all accounts she did her thing in The Secret Life of Bees. But like all outfits aren’t for all weather conditions, all parts aren’t for all people. It was an outright shock to learn she had been picked to play Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Good luck to her, hope she does the part justice, but it just seems a little, well, opportunistic. It’s like getting Salma Hayek to play Benazir Bhutto because they are both olive-skinned.

AfriPOP magazine offers up this criticism and gives Hollywood some advice in case it wants to cast black Americans in African roles.

It’s absurd to expect every piece of black art to reflect everyone’s black experience, but that’s exactly what many black artists are expected to do. This discourages black artists from taking the kind of risks that make what they’re creating worth consuming, because unless you want to draw someone’s ire for “making black people look bad” or “reinforcing stereotypes” you have to make something, well, boring. The paradox is that if we had more commercially successful black art, there would be less of a crisis of representation and more opportunity to make books and movies that would offer more insight into the diversity of the black experience in America. It would also mean more and better art.

From The Problem With Black Movies Is That There Aren’t Enough Of Them. (Via @negrophile)

Also see: On black folks and the movie “Precious”

With just one swing of a golf club, Tiger Woods’s wife, Elin, has shattered, or at least cracked, the stereotype of the angry and uncontrollable black woman. I, along with what I suspect to be countless other black women, would like to thank her. Not that I condone violence against anyone, but for far too many years black men — particularly successful, high-profile ones — have pointed to the unpredictable temperament of black women as one of the many reasons they so frequently choose to marry outside the race. A couple of weeks ago Elin Nordegren Woods showed them that the rage of a woman scorned knows no color.

Oooh. Allison Samuels went there in her Newsweek piece Hell Hath No Fury Like a Swedish Ex-Model.

Also see: Cecily’s Tiger By The Tail: The Un-Making of the Model Black Man

Verdicts about high-pitched movies from black viewers and public figures are usually swift and decisive — “Do the Right Thing,” “The Color Purple,” and the recent Robert Downey Jr. performance in “Tropic Thunder” come to mind. But that’s not what happened this time out. That’s partly because the embrace of “Precious” by the white film establishment has been a bit disorienting for black folk, even off-putting. But it’s also because the tough stuff in “Precious,” whether you like the movie or not, is striking chords of recognition for many black people that are making them not angry or enthusiastic, but uncertain. That’s new territory.

Black folks want to see more representations of “us” on screen. The question is, which “us” gets to be most visible? Also from the piece:

Nonetheless, Wright decries the movie for its lack of what he calls “achiever values.” And here we get into the thorny issue of class. For black people that means not solely money and education, but a concern about how we are being represented in public. How blacks are represented in movies always galvanizes such concern, and “Precious” is no exception.

[Via Faboomama's Friendfeed]

Also see: To Blacks, Precious Is ‘Demeaned’ or ‘Angelic’ from the New York Times (log-in may be required)