In our society I have noticed that the black community has this firm conception of blackness or what it means to be black. It's as though we expect all black people to have similar experiences or likes and when someone does not, they are called out on it. This concept is touched on in the chapter on Marjorie in Homegoing. Marjorie touches on this idea of being the "wrong" kind of black. With Marjorie being African and not being African American, she was seen differently. People noticed her accent and said she sounded like a white girl. "Now, keeping her head down and fighting back tears as Tisha and her friends called her 'white girl,' Marjorie was made aware, yet again, that here 'white' could be the way a person talked; 'black', the music a person listened to" (269). With Marjorie's situation, it is apparent that black people enforce the stereotype that there is a specific way black people talk.
In This Ain't Chicago, Zandria Robinson also touches on this strict viewpoint of blackness or authentic blackness. An interview that she has with a women named Jayla touches on the identity of black people. "There are lots of ways to be black these days... But there's like this main way to be black: like you gotta be a Christian and go to church, you gotta live in a black neighborhood, you can't talk white but you can't have a foreign accent, and that's what you see on TV, too" (p. 83). This shows the firm conception of blackness that has been created by black people themselves. You must talk a certain way, live a certain way, listen to certain music. I can personally attest to this stereotype that black people have created for their own race, making it seem as though you are not black enough if you don't fit the stereotype. People have told me that I'm the "whitest black girl they know" or that I'm an Oreo, trying to say I'm black on the outside and white on the inside. I don't understand why there is this notion that all black people share this singular black experience. There are many different ways to live as a black man or woman in our society today and nobody is in charge of defining you other than yourself. Also, it is not just white people that create these stereotypes of the black race and I think that it is something that is not widely understood.
I completely agree with you. I think progress is extremely stifled when we can't even accept each other within our own community. There are already so few spaces to embrace blackness in our far from post-racial society, but to not even be able to embrace your identity with those of your own community who should be uplifting you is tragic. We can't further the revolution and truly be equal if we can't even be unified as a black community.
ReplyDeleteI certainly agree with you that even the black community makes generalization on what makes a person black. It is becoming a common thing for black people to stereotype each other, and this perpetuates the problem. Blackness comes in all different shapes and forms, and I believe it is time for society to realized that. I have even been at fault for making generalizations, and I believe the first step is correcting oneself.
ReplyDeleteYou are 100% correct. I honestly believe that it is some instances like the ones you mention that help give black people a "bad name". We are partially the problem in the stereotypes that others form or just constantly repeat about us, simply because we prove them right, in the ignorant way we treat each other. We've gone from sounding educated to sounding white, when did it become okay to openly be illiterate in everything we do?
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