It is like the story of my life
 

I have been questioned about my Blackness since I was small. Being "light, bright and damn near white" has been fair game for attack my whole life. People assume things about my family background, about my attitude about what I must think about them. My brother, who is more brown and I used to regularly get asked if one of us was adopted.

Then to compound matters, I have two professional Black parents, lived in a middle class neighborhood, went to a predominantly white prep school and can speak the King's English. It was very difficult when I was young. I looked "white". I talked "white". I had white friends, went to a white school. I was smart and acted "white". I was accused of trying to "pass" :eek: People are ri-damn-diculous.

I have never and never would deny my background or ancestry. I am a very outspoken, successful, proud BLACK woman. People come up with these ridiculous definitions of Blackness. They cannot see, as another poster put it, that they spew the same crap as the racists running around the country. They buy into the stereotypes and decide to wear bad habits, behavior, grammar, lack of education and home training as a badge of honor.

I have never and never would deny my background or ancestry. I am a very outspoken, successful, proud BLACK woman. People come up with these ridiculous definitions of Blackness. They cannot see, as another poster put it, that they spew the same crap as the racists running around the country. They buy into the stereotypes and decide to wear bad habits, behavior, grammar, lack of education and home training as a badge of honor. Not realizing they are giving the KKK and the rest EXACTLY what they want. In fact they are saving them the work of us oppressing us by convincing us to oppress ourselves

Defining "Blackness" is becoming increasingly more difficult because the range of our experiences as individuals have increases exponentially in a relatively short period. My friends and I have pondered how to best raise a child with a sense of "Blackness" when a great deal of their acculteration will be in white schools and white neighborhoods. How does one give a sense of something that cannot be defined.

It can't be defined because "Blackness" is innate. It is something that has to be lived and experienced. There were five Black students in my graduating class in high school, but when people ask me how many, I usually say "3" because the other two were racially "Black" but not culturally "Black". "What is that?" you say. I don't know. I just know that the other two never felt comfortable around us. Never spoke to us. Usually avoided us. Anything that would have been pertinent to a Black person never seemed to matter to them. It wasn't about speech patterns, complexion, or superficial things.

They didn't live in Black neighborhoods, have Black friends, go to Black churches, eat "Black foods" or otherwise live the "Black Experience", they didn't even associate with each other, yet racially, they were Black. They couldn't tell you what Kwanzaa was, nor did they care. Harlem Renaissance? Join school NAACP chapter? Sit with another Black person at lunch?

Is there a universal Black Experience or Culture anymore? Not with this second generation of intergration. Some people don't want to be Black and that's their perogative.

"Blackness" can't be defined, but you know it when you see it

Great response.

I have had a very similar experience. There were three black people in my graduating class, or four depending on how you count.

The problem is that more and more, people do not know it when they see it- in great part because of the increase in diversity within our community. This is widening the ever-increasing gap in the haves and have nots. One of the strengths of the black community that came out of past oppression was our lack of concrete economic boundaries.

In the past, because of segregation black neighborhoods were very different. You were just as likely to have the doctor and the town ditch-digger or maid in the same neighborhood because there wasn't anyplace for them to go. Now that they can, the black professionals have moved out and that has had a great effect on the black poor. They do NOT live the life or even have any inkling of the opportunities that can be open to the black middle class (in terms of schools, scholarships and employment opportunities). The economic divide in our communities is increasing greatly because of this - that is why you get this idea that black=ghetto, or that black=bougie or whatever a given concept is.

The only way we can defeat that is through community sercvice and a willingness to acknowledge a blck identity, something fewer black people do because frankly, fewer people have to. You can choose to ignore that you are black. IT is an act of pure blindness and COMPLETE abandoning of your community, but it can be done and more and more is done.

A wonderful article that appeared in the LA Weekly about four years ago touched on some of the points that my Soror makes. In particular, it mentioned that the departure of middle-class blacks from South and South-Central Los Angeles has taken out social infrastructure that can't be replaced.

I believe in open housing laws. But it's still not particularly cool when neighborhoods lose families with one or two employed, tax-paying adults.

It's also good to reiterate that the economic divide is a big portion of what causes these "blackness" arguments.

BLACKNESS BEING QUESTIONED
 

After my first year of college, I began to hang around people that showed me that they were trying to make a positive difference in their lives and for their community. It was a decision that they made that would better themselves and their future. There will always be someone that will look down on you for the things that you do or say (ie, flinging your hair or buying expensive items) Only you know your true self! Brush the haters off and move on. They are not worth thw worry or the satisfaction of getting to you. ;)

TTT/NY Times article
 

A discussion on CC, of all places, led me to post this article about young Black kids who attend prep schools having their blackness questioned.
January 4, 2004
A City Upbringing, Prep Schools, and Students Now in Between
By SETH KUGEL

Not long after 14-year-old Chris Oyathelemi of the Bronx arrived at the Brooks School in North Andover, Mass., in the early fall, a classmate turned him on to the Beatles. So a Beatles disc was spinning in his CD player when he went out to meet old friends — hip-hop fans — in Harlem during a break from the preparatory school.

When he told them what he was listening to, they started laughing. " `Oh, you're a white boy,' they said, `you listen to rock,' " said Chris, whose father is Nigerian and mother African-American.

Janelle Fouché, a 13-year-old freshman at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Conn., tried goat cheese for the first time while making pizza at her English teacher's house this fall. Then she made the mistake of defending it at a Christmas gathering at her mother's Brooklyn apartment. Her older brother Daniel, a student at Bishop Loughlin High School, was disgusted. But Janelle stood her ground. "Goat cheese is mad good," she told him.

The tiny percentage of ninth graders from poor and working-class New York families who head off each fall to boarding schools face some predictable challenges: academic stress, insomnia induced by chirping crickets, total strangers waving hello with abandon. But the travails of coming home for their first Christmas vacation, which for most ends this weekend, can also be trying.

For many, it is the beginning of an identity-shaping process in which they decide, consciously or subconsciously, which aspects of their New York City upbringing to hold on to, and which to shed.

High on the list of endangered tastes: urban fashion. In December, Xenia Zayas, 14, came home from Choate to her Dominican family in Corona, Queens, with far too many school-approved outfits in her suitcase and not nearly enough casual wear. Xenia likes the dress code at school, but her pink collared shirt with khakis elicited heckling from her city friends.

So did her formal enunciation of English words, and her tendency to want to translate English and Spanish into French, which she studied for the first time this fall.

And though she got used to the crickets chirpping at night outside her dorm window, Xenia has been having problems falling asleep in her family's home. The culprit: late-night Dominican guitar music on the stereo. "I'm like, What are they doing in my house?" she said. "It's not time for bachata."

Of course, public school students from poor neighborhoods who win scholarships to some of the best schools in the country are somewhat different from their peers to begin with. Those who make it into schools like Phillips Academy or Choate have nearly all gone through programs to prepare them for the world outside the New York City Department of Education.

Janelle and Xenia were admitted to a selective program run by the nonprofit group Prep for Prep, which offers a 14-month course for qualifying students starting the summer before eighth grade. Chris went through A Better Chance, another nonprofit preparatory program. And Bintou Ojomo, 14, who attends Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., went to KIPP Academy, a Bronx charter school whose students have won millions of dollars in private-school scholarships.

For some students returning home to New York during breaks, just a walk through familiar neighborhoods can spur introspection. Chris, the Brooks student, noticed the change while walking around Harlem.

"Not in the environment around me, the loud kids and fighting," Chris said, "but I noticed a difference in myself, the way I reacted. When I lived in Harlem, I used to watch fights, or girls yelling, and now when I see it, I just mind my business and keep walking. That's not important to me anymore."

[B]The toughest, most ubiquitous issues are those of race and class. Some of the students come from communities where they had few or no white classmates. That is not as big a deal to the prep school attendees themselves, who said that for the most part, they had been well prepared for the change and felt welcomed at school. But to their friends back home, prep school students are still more abstraction than reality, they say, and the comments can be blunt.

Chris, who said he was getting used to being called a white boy, had one friend ask: "So, you're eating rich food? You're eating caviar now?"

He brushes it off. "I guess it's because they haven't seen a lot of white kids," he said. "I don't say it out loud, I just think to myself, I'm looking for something better in my life instead of staying around the same old people. I'm leaving my old lifestyle behind and I'm sort of changing and maturing into the person I'm going to be."[B]

Janelle, the Choate student from Brooklyn, said that while still at school, she received a message on the computer from a city friend asking, in utter seriousness, "Did anybody buy you a car yet?" That kind of comment led her to avoid her friends from home when she got back. "I haven't seen a lot of them yet," she said after the first week of vacation, "because they're acting negative."

Leaving city life behind has its challenges, too. Bintou, who lives with her mother in the Bronx, said her adjustment to Phillips Academy — one of the nation's top schools — and to Andover was going well.

The mile-plus walk to the nearest fast food store (McDonald's) is an issue, as is the lack of public transportation and the pitch-black streets at night. (She keeps her computer screen saver on, a poor substitute for the lights of East 161st Street, but better than nothing, she said.) She has also faced the occasional questions from peers: "Have you ever been in a shootout?" or "Have you seen anybody get stabbed?" But the difficult times are the exceptions, she said, and she calls her dorm a family.

As they do with Chris and Janelle, some comments from friends back home surprise Bintou. One called and said: "I can't imagine what it would be like to go to school with white people. I'd be scared."

But for now, at least, these students' ties to their neighborhoods remain strong, even as they live most of the year in small New England towns. Being away from the Bronx, Bintou said, has made her appreciate it.

"In Wallingford, you can't go to the corner store to get chips," she said. "You can't hang outside with your friends until 10 p.m.; you can't go anywhere you want. You don't realize how good something is until you don't have it anymore."

This was and is still me. I still get comments on how I speak, how I talk, etc. My oldest friend is white, she and I have been friends since we were 11. We both like rock music. I cant TELL you how many times I was teased for liking Motley Crue in High School. *sigh* It was heartbreaking b/c the people doing the teasing were all black. So I only talked to White people b/c they were the ones NOT laughing at me. Funny, once I got tired of it, and told one of the girls laughing to Shut the F up and get out of my business, every one who was laughing at me, stopped. These same people are nowhere near my level of success now, and i just laugh when I see/ hear about them.

I will not apologize for my speech, musical taste, nor anything else that makes me who I am. If you dont like it, turn around, KMA, and go on about your day.

Lets not even discuss family..:mad:

Ain't that the truth, my Triad Sistah! Have I been questioned about my blackness? If I had a dollar for everytime I was, I would be rolling in dough! :rolleyes:

And hell yeah it hurts when it is members of your own family. :( A damn shame!

The thing is, I know more about OUR history and OUR heritage than these sorry no account folx who have the NERVE to question me! :rolleyes:

The crabs in a basket BS mentality has got to go. It is attitudes like this that TRY to keep us down. Hell with attitudes like that, we don't have to worry about "the man" :rolleyes: keeping us down...we are doing a pretty good job on our own!

Great topic

While I have had people tell me that I "talk white" or act like a white girl because I didn't go to my neighborhood school or because I was the only black at my elementary school in the gifted program I choose to focus on those people who are secure in themselves and saw education and articulation as something to aspire to.

I made the decision to "rebel" in junior high and go to my neighborhood school (it was called Martin Luther King, you figure out the demographics! LOL) instead of the school that most of my elementary school classmates attended. I remember reading aloud one day and this guy in my class (who was in the same grade, but about 3 -4 years older) who was called "Ju-baby" (don't ask why) said "D@m! She shole can read good! How you learn to read like that? Read something again!" I was so scared I just started reading! LOL HE would even tell other girls to "leave that smart girl alone." I've always wondered what happened to him...

I have an aunt that when I started my first job out of college who would tell people about my "big office" (I had a cube) and how she didn't know what I did, but I was "in charge of a whole lotta white folks!" (I was only in charge of my self, and when I did become a supervisor I supervised 3 people--but they were all white!) LOL I have relatives to this day who will call me about legal matters, medical issues, etc. and assume that because I went to college I should know all of this stuff! Heaven forbid that I do know a little bit, they just beam and talk about how smart I am. My mother, who was the first in her family to go to college, is to everyone "the schoolteacher." As in "ask Virginia.. You know she's a school teacher."

I think that when somefolks say things like "you talk black" it is a mixure of regret (wishing they had the opportunities you did) and awe that is expressed in a negative way. Unfortunately we don't always know how to complement each other.

I also think part of the "black experience", if you will, is teasing. Look at the "Dozens" for example. If someone cracked on you about your taste in music, clothes, etc, you had to have a comeback to them whether their teasing was based on how "white" something is or just that it was plain ol' funny looking.

It's hard to define but I've always thought "blackness," sociologically, was really a mixture of cultural experience and expression, a cultural state-of-mind. Our experiences, good and bad, tend to galvanize us. Obviously, we’re diverse, with as many variations in our culture as any other -- geographically, professionally, etc., but if you’re between ages 24-40 there's a fair chance you've had someone follow you unnecessarily in a department store, or have to have dealt with, or hear about a relative/acquaintance deal with law enforcement or some other large entity, in a “less-than-desirable” manner. Experiences like these, and positive ones too IMO, contribute to this shared sense, or at least understanding, of “blackness.” And like other cultures we unite to varying degrees around historical, musical, entertainment, interests, etc…

I could quit my day job if I had a dollar for every "you sound white", or questions about the law, or question why I listen to talk radio [to find out what's going on in the world other than the "news" on MTV].

great topic!!!
 

i too have dealt with this issue and like someone else mentioned, it hurts more when you get it from your family.

for me, i think my out going spirit affords me the ability to deal with people on every level. i tend to socialize more now with people who are progressive academically and socially. it is just comfortable to me. i get annoyed with the haters who want to criticize/judge me or anyone because we speak the queen's english and have move past the 'ghetto' mentality. those folks i simply ignore because they are judgemental fools who don't have a clue.

it is a shame that we even still discuss this, but that is the reality.

i was watching c-span one night and a well-known author and washington insider (i forget her name) told a story. she mentioned that she was in a particular building in the south to do an interview and she overheard 2 maids talking. one maid said to the other "isn't that so and so?" the other maid replied with an attitude, "yeah, that's her. she thinks she something special!"

well ms. so and so approached the 2 women and said to the mean one, "excuse me, but i overheard you speaking about me and i just wanted to tell you know that you better hope that i am something special." she walked away an went on to her interview.

i think that is really how we should approach folks who want to be devisive in their comments. address it, brush them off and keep on stepping. eventually somebody will get the memo.

Although this is a serious topic, that was just hilarious. It seemed like something a runaway slave would say.

Anyway, I went to a private, majority white, elementary school and then to a mixed, public middle school. I can't even tell you how many times I have been called Brainiac for just being able to do simple multiplication in my head or for taking Algebra while others were still in remedial math courses.

In terms of unnecessary following, along with a relative being mistreated by law enforcement, I've experienced both. :mad: