Black in America

Today, I taught my child how to color inside the lines. I instructed him to make sure he used his crayon just inside the shapes of the objects and to make sure everything was clean and neat. While he was coloring a crane with the precision intent only a toddler can master, I pointed out that the body of the machine and the window should be different colors. But when I did this, it hit me, that coloring inside the lines never lent itself to creativity or individuality. Shouldn’t I be teaching him to color both inside and out, choose his own colors, make his picture whatever his heart desired? I mean, the frame of the crane doesn’t have to be the standard construction machine yellow. The background of the picture can match the objects if that’s what he wanted. Or, I wondered, is it against the principles of discipline to teach him to color outside of the lines? At some point in his life he will have to conform to something. Where coloring in the lines will be necessary. And even as a black man, life saving. So then, how do I teach him when it is appropriate and safe to figuratively draw the line at convention and live outside the lines?

The thing is I don’t have the answers, but I do have my own life’s experiences. For example, I always wanted to write. When I was 9, I wrote my first book. It was about a Native American boy battling a monster on the other side of a forbidden hill. I did illustrations and all. But as time went on, writing fell by the wayside so that I could concentrate on checking the mandatory boxes of attending school and participating in the standard extracurricular activities. Even though when I got to college I majored in English/Creative Writing, writing wasn’t fun for me. It wasn’t the free flowing movement of putting thought to paper, but instead it was the coloring inside the lines of what the professors wanted me to do. There was not room for individuality, for my own personal growth. I was told to write a certain way, or that my writing was wrong. I was even told not to apply to an MFA program, because my professor believed he didn’t see any talent in me. So I listened and didn’t apply. I stuck to the safe route and went to a graduate program studying policy. I worked for a while, made a living, paid some bills, but still unfulfilled and still not writing, I went back to school hoping to start a career in a respected profession. Basic and conventional, I know. So it was no wonder that still coloring in the lines didn’t work. In law school, a law firm partner laughed at me during an interview because I had listed on my resume that I had won poetry awards in our law school creative writing publication (awards that my college professor told me I would never win). She laughed at me because she said she never had time to write in law school and that in her opinion writing for fun was such a frivolous thing. Needless to say, as I colored inside of the lines, I saw I faced rebuke when I dared to step out. So I continued to stay in the proverbial assigned lines for years until the calling to break free of the constraints got too loud and I had to answer. You see, I learned that coloring inside the lines with what you want to do with your life is too confining and definitely too safe. We are all put on Earth to live and as God says, to live abundantly. For me, denying what I wanted to do, what made me happy, what soothed my soul meant staying in the lines someone else had constructed. It meant not living life abundantly. But I know I was put here to live boldly and freely. Not caring what others think or say. Not needing encouragement to stay basic or approval for doing such from anyone. I’ve learned I was put here to just live my life doing what I was called to do. Living outside of the lines and full of color. And I guess, that is a starting point to teach my child.

My white black dad.

I’m black. I live in America, so that makes me African-American. However, I say I’m black, because I also contend that Charlize Theron is African-American because she’s from Africa but she’s white and well that makes my head spin and question the African-American label. Further, the label African-American overlooks the country of origin of black people as Africa is a continent, not a country. I mean does anyone run around saying, I’m a South American-American, instead of I’m Brazilian-American? And I understand that the African-American label gives a nod to the fact that most blacks in America don’t know their countries of origin because of slavery, but still. Anyway, I digress.

As a black person from America, that means most likely I am a combination of ethnicities thanks to the evil design of slavery. However, growing up with a father who looked very much like a white man and a mother with roots from the Bahamas, I often wondered what exactly that ethnic mix would turn out to be. Also, because I watch a lot of PBS these days (see being in my thirties with a family), I secretly wish Dr. Henry Louis Gates would do one of the big, black book of family trees for me like he does for the celebrities on his show Finding Your Roots. But without access to Dr. Gates, I did the next best thing and opted to do genetic testing. Since my father was considered black, but looked white, I set out to start with his genetic make-up first. Since my father has been dead for awhile, I turned to one of his brothers, my favorite uncle and used his saliva. (This does presuppose that my grandmother wasn’t running around and that they have the same mother and father. But they look alike, so I’ll go with she was faithful.) When I got back the test results, I found out that my father and his siblings are almost 70% white, with the remainder being African, Southeast Asian and Indian. With that my father went from being a light-skinned black person to a dark-skinned white person. Upon learning their genetic make-up, my uncles and aunts brushed it off and said that they will always be black. But really, are they? My mom’s genetic make-up was less of a surprise with her being 90% African and the rest Portuguese, what seemed like a direct result of a slave ship from Africa sailing to an island in the Bahamas.

So, with that, I wondered what did it make me? I’m not delusional enough to believe that in America I will not be accepted as 100% black even if my genetic make-up doesn’t reflect that. Just look at Meghan Markle or Tiger Woods, for example. They both try their hardest to give a nod to their non-black side perhaps even more than their black side, but no matter what they do they still are categorized as black by both black and non-back communities. I argue if they weren’t categorized as black, they wouldn’t have gotten as much press as they have. Being thought of as 100% black is what makes people take interest in them because they are operating in what have been traditionally white environments. Not because they are thought of as 50% black. Again, I’m digressing; back to me. If my father was mostly white and my mother is mostly black, that makes me a mixed race person, no? And if it does, am I entitled to say that I am mixed race like someone with a 100% white parent and a 100% black parent? And if it does entitle me to say that I am mixed race, is there some percentage cut-off point where a person could no longer say they are mixed race? Say if someone ended-up being 15% white and 85% black, does that still count? My point is, that being labeled black in America doesn’t really care about the hue of your skin color on the black spectrum or your genetic make-up. Being black really is based on your identifying cultural upbringing and experiences. Again, my father didn’t look black at all so he wasn’t openly discriminated against in some situations like my mom was, however once certain people learned that he was black their attitudes toward him changed. And so, being black is about having the one drop of black in you that makes you a descendant from someone in Africa and a recipient of some form of acknowledgment that you aren’t white in America. It’s about a communal acknowledgment of being a descendant of people who were mistreated in slavery and its aftermath, not ever given equal standing or footing and still attempting to make a patchwork quilt of the American dream with jagged scrapes from the throwaway pile. It is about overcoming an attempt to erase your native tongues and histories and mass extermination to building business, social and political forces. It’s about being made to think that you were less than something in America to acknowledging that there is no America or American wealth without the head start of free labor given to many white Americans off of the backs of blacks. Being black is simply about knowing how it feels to grow up as an underdog and learning how not to just survive, but to live. I’m not sure if blacks in America will ever live as freely as whites in America, but I do know that blacks in America are a beautiful product of many ethnicities, struggles, achievements and experiences that make us vibrantly unique.

So, regardless of the fact that neither I nor most blacks in America are 100% black, we’ll always be considered black and that label should acknowledge our varied ethnic mixes. It also should acknowledge that the construct of racial discrimination specifically against blacks is ignorance at its finest and relies on a lack of imagination and disregard of history from its proponents. Being black is more than just one thing. It isn’t a label that should be rejected or shunned. It’s a result of cultural descent and shared communal experiences. No matter how black you are, or aren’t, on the outside or the blackness of your genetic make-up on the inside, as any financial expert will tell you, being in the black is the best thing to be.

Category: Black in America

Coloring