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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
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