... the other Black experience
who is black?
i have my own opinions on this subject & have tried to use famous people to illustrate my point. my opinion that blackness is both in the eye of the beholder AND innate - originate with the "one drop" law in this country (one drop of black blood & you're black) and end with the fact that i'm tri-racial. i'm curious about what YOU think, AP. how many generations do you have to go back to be black in america in 2010. are mixed people black even if they don't claim their blackness like THAT (ie tiger woods)? what about latinos/west indians with one black grandparent (ie rosario dawson, sean paul)? are dominicans that look black, but don't necessarily claim blackness first - black (ie zoe saldana)? what about REAL dark east indians or mixed east indian/afro-caribbean people (ie chili from tlc/supercat) or native/afro-caribbean for that matter? how much does SKIN COLOR play in blackness? are there DEGREES of blackness or is it an ALL or NOTHING thing? do you have to CLAIM blackness or is it just what you ARE? let the discussion begin...
Tags: afro-caribbean, black, blackness, east, hispanic, indian, latino, mixed, native, race, More…
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Fashionfreak on -
this is just my OPINION, but if you have to reach generations back to find someone that isn't black in your family i don't think it really counts. as for me all along i thought my father's mom was a black latino turns out she is native -_- lol but again i don't think it counts....technically i guess you can say my dad is bi-racial since his dad is black but my mom is black so imo that one grandparent doesn't make much of a difference to me. i consider myself black and so do my sisters.
skin color and features do play a role....cuz let's be real if no one knew obama was half white i don't think anyone would know, he looks straight up black. but obviously he isn't so assumptions aren't always correct.
as for tiger woods mannn if he doesn't want to claim black that's his business. he is only half but it counts for something...so it should be acknowledged just as much as his asian side. look at kimora lee simmons she considers herself bi-racial...and her kids are also considered bi-racial but uhh i don't know what to say about that one since russell is black. i consider them black children to be honest....
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Permalink Reply by kifaru on -
If you're a person of recent African descent and you claim it you're black in America. Black people who have claimed the term who not Africans but accept it as a group identity like black fellas in Australia, or Dalits in India then they are black too but just a different kinf of black. If you are a person with no African blood in you but you act black or you live with blacks or adopt black culture you are not black. You are not black if you are Half white European half Japanese. Not all arabs are black so just being part arab does make a person black.
You know I think black people have a problem with wanting to claim too many non black people as black.
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Permalink Reply by LesYpersound on -
biracial and black aren't mutually exclusive.
people who aren't of african descent are also black (negritos of asia, aboriginal folk of australia, melanesians).
black is a social construct, like white, and like any other race. so if you're a part of a group that gets called NIGGER as a derogatory term and are treated as niggers by the larger bigoted societies i have no problem calling them black if they want to claim it because they fit in with a larger common LIVED experience of "black" people globally.
being black is as much a political experience as well as a lived experience...it's more of political and social entity and than the artificial grouping of one of the most diverse peoples as a "race".
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Permalink Reply by kifaru on
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I assume you're talking to me. Yes? No? Maybe? What I meant was if a person has a white european biological parent and a biological japanese parent they are not black in my opinion. I thought that was understood from my initial statement
"If you're a person of recent African descent...."
Recent African descent in my opinion is during the time scale after the current haplogroups evolved and resolved into the current "races".
Likewise, I included "black fellas from australia "... "dalits from India" as examples of others I consider as black but the list is not exhaustive so I agree that a melanesian is black if they consider themselves black just "...different kind of black."
All that is to say I agree with you. See?
As far as lived experience and being called nigger validating one's right to appropriate the designation "black" I must disagree. My reasons are numerous but for example back when Irish were not white and considered a different race form whites in America (British and Germans), they were called "white niggers" in the continental United states and just "nigger" in the carribean. There are two books you should check out "White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America" and "How the Irish Became White" that will shed some light on this.
Just like I do not believe the Jewish experience of ethnic cleansing to be "the holocaust", I know that the depopulation, enslavement, and transportation of subsaharan blacks from western africa to the Americas is not unique in human history. The experience we have lived is very similiar to the experiences of peoples who in this day and time would be considered as white. What makes black peoples expereince different in my opinion is that generations later we are still identified and identifiable as "other". There is still a stigma associated with our heritage.
LesYpersound said:biracial and black aren't mutually exclusive.
people who aren't of african descent are also black (negritos of asia, aboriginal folk of australia, melanesians).
black is a social construct, like white, and like any other race. so if you're a part of a group that gets called NIGGER as a derogatory term and are treated as niggers by the larger bigoted societies i have no problem calling them black if they want to claim it because they fit in with a larger common LIVED experience of "black" people globally.
being black is as much a political experience as well as a lived experience...it's more of political and social entity and than the artificial grouping of one of the most diverse peoples as a "race".
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Permalink Reply by LesYpersound on
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actually it was directed at the OP and juicy more so than you. but thanks for the thoughtful reply.
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Permalink Reply by Q.A.Bradford on -
I think "biracial" is very much a misnomer. All latinos are "biracial" but they claim nationalities or various genetic mixes of people like west african, spanish, japanese, portugese... I think americans get lazy with black and white constructs, misinterpret those words as specific "ethnic" groups (misnomers in themselves) and once the two are mixed say "'I'm biracial". Using the term in the ethnic sense, everyone is. A whitey is french, german, english and maybe some injun. a blackie is some yoruba, hausa, fante and gon and maybe some injun too. dont get lazy people. just use a broader geographical construction, protest on forms and fill in both sections for African-American and European-American. Its not like anyone is asking you which country(ies)... none of us americans can answer that anyway.
Anyhow, race for the most part has been constructed to create a power vaccum that funnels into eurasia. if youre honorable, youll fight the power for distribution and more equal human genetic cross-pollination.
(there are no citations i.e., [so and so 18], so duh, its my opinion.)
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Permalink Reply by dj ceiba on
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case in point...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8498534.stm
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most latinos and some hispanics (assuming that most people that identify as "latino" come from somewhere in the caribbean basin vs south america) are TRI-racial (Black/Native/White).
if you really check it, most black people in this country are tri-racial, too (who's got a cherokee/blackfoot grandmother or irish great grandfather?). and if you don't - SOMEBODY in your family did. the PHYSICAL difference is in the percentage distribution of ibo to cherokee to irish blood, or congolese to taino to spanish blood, etc. - the 3 bloodlines that make 1 (and the fact that most of us end up in the same tax bracket), to me, are the BIGGEST common denominator between two cultures that are supposed to be so different and, at times, opposed.
same/similar bloodlines should unify our two GREAT peoples.
A. Matsimela said:I think "biracial" is very much a misnomer. All latinos are "biracial" but they claim nationalities or various genetic mixes of people like west african, spanish, japanese, portugese... I think americans get lazy with black and white constructs, misinterpret those words as specific "ethnic" groups (misnomers in themselves) and once the two are mixed say "'I'm biracial". Using the term in the ethnic sense, everyone is. A whitey is french, german, english and maybe some injun. a blackie is some yoruba, hausa, fante and gon and maybe some injun too. dont get lazy people. just use a broader geographical construction, protest on forms and fill in both sections for African-American and European-American. Its not like anyone is asking you which country(ies)... none of us americans can answer that anyway.
Anyhow, race for the most part has been constructed to create a power vaccum that funnels into eurasia. if youre honorable, youll fight the power for distribution and more equal human genetic cross-pollination.
(there are no citations i.e., [so and so 18], so duh, its my opinion.)
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Permalink Reply by Q.A.Bradford on
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Great article. A person of such high ethnic and cultural human value who may have been egregiously overlooked by the world--especially because of black negative racism.
dj ceiba said:case in point...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8498534.stm
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Permalink Reply by Q.A.Bradford on
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I agree. But people rather let race and nationality overplay bloodline and ancestral origin...
dj ceiba said:most latinos and some hispanics (assuming that most people that identify as "latino" come from somewhere in the caribbean basin vs south america) are TRI-racial (Black/Native/White).
if you really check it, most black people in this country are tri-racial, too (who's got a cherokee/blackfoot grandmother or irish great grandfather?). and if you don't - SOMEBODY in your family did. the PHYSICAL difference is in the percentage distribution of ibo to cherokee to irish blood, or congolese to taino to spanish blood, etc. - the 3 bloodlines that make 1 (and the fact that most of us end up in the same tax bracket), to me, are the BIGGEST common denominator between two cultures that are supposed to be so different and, at times, opposed.
same/similar bloodlines should unify our two GREAT peoples.
A. Matsimela said:I think "biracial" is very much a misnomer. All latinos are "biracial" but they claim nationalities or various genetic mixes of people like west african, spanish, japanese, portugese... I think americans get lazy with black and white constructs, misinterpret those words as specific "ethnic" groups (misnomers in themselves) and once the two are mixed say "'I'm biracial". Using the term in the ethnic sense, everyone is. A whitey is french, german, english and maybe some injun. a blackie is some yoruba, hausa, fante and gon and maybe some injun too. dont get lazy people. just use a broader geographical construction, protest on forms and fill in both sections for African-American and European-American. Its not like anyone is asking you which country(ies)... none of us americans can answer that anyway.
Anyhow, race for the most part has been constructed to create a power vaccum that funnels into eurasia. if youre honorable, youll fight the power for distribution and more equal human genetic cross-pollination.
(there are no citations i.e., [so and so 18], so duh, its my opinion.)
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Permalink Reply by kifaru on
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That statement is not true of most black people. There is no evidence of that. Some and I would bet few black people have native American heritage.
dj ceiba said:
if you really check it, most black people in this country are tri-racial, too (who's got a cherokee/blackfoot grandmother or irish great grandfather?). and if you don't - SOMEBODY in your family did.
/div>
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Permalink Reply by Fashionfreak on
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i saw a documentary and it proved that most african americans are NOT mixed with native american. i think it was two years ago...i don't get why americans always claim native american heritage that's weird. there are some but not a lot.
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