december 2004
Ewuare Osayande
"Black
Identity in 21st Century America"
The following is a
transcript of an address given by Ewuare Osayande at a
panel discussion "What's in a Name" given at
Temple University on November 10, 2004.
Who We Be: Defining Black Identity in 21st Century
America Copyright 2004 by Ewuare Osayande
There is an adage from the Xhosa people of South Africa
that says "I am because we are ." One aspect of
this multi-meaning truth is that one's identity is tied
to a body larger than the self. The wisdom in the saying
also clearly indicates that in order to understand the
self, to identify the self, the group from which one
emerges must have an identity as well. Herein lies the
dilemma of those of us who have been called and have
called ourselves by a variety of cultural nomenclatures
and derogatory epithets - Negro, nigger, Colored, Black,
African, American, Afro-American, African American,
African in America.
When our ancestors were stolen from Africa and brought to
the colonies, they were faced with this same dilemma. By
what name would they choose to define themselves? As they
began to create institutions they named them and by so
naming them, named themselves. In the South, our
ancestors enslaved named their first institution the
African Baptist Church. In the North, our ancestors freed
named their first institution the African Methodist
Church. From the outset of our experience here our
ancestors were clear as to whom they were - whether
enslaved or free, we were Africans!
In 1903, the dawn of the 20th Century W.E.B. DuBois
penned his now- classic text, The Souls of Black Folk.
This work serves as a marker for our people in a number
of ways. Namely, it serves as an indicator of the
self-perception of our ancestors and forebears of that
period. Once again, we witness the use of the term
African to define us. Also we witness the use of the word
Black as a defining term for our people as well as the
term Negro. These words in DuBois' deft mind were not
derogatory nor perjorative. Although Negro was not a term
that we created, when used by us, it was given a dignity
that surely was not the intent of the whites that called
us that. We exchanged these words liberally as we saw fit
til a later time when we realized that certain words did
not fit us as we grew into new and liberating notions of
ourselves.
In The Souls of Black Folk, DuBois addresses what would
become and still remains the fundamental dilemma of our
existence as a people.
". the Negro is sort of a seventh son, born with a
veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American
world, -- a world which yields him no true
self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through
the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar
sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of
always looking at one's self through the eyes of others,
of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks
in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,
-- an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts,
two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one
dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from
being torn asunder."
At many points throughout our journey here in the United
States of America, our dogged strength has been tested,
but maybe never as tested as it is being tested today. .
An individuals and a group's identity is not just
determined by the name given or taken by that group. It
is also determined by the meaning that group gives the
name as they exist and come to be known by themselves and
others. A people's identity is determined by the behavior
of that people as they wield their name in the real
world. In other words, to be African American is defined
by the behavior of the people who claim that name.
Today most Africans in America accept the nomenclature
"African American." But what does that mean?
What does it mean to be African American? For some it
means that we are Americans who happen to be descendents
of Africans. These African Americans want to emphasize
their Americanness. Some even see African as an
unnecessary prefix they would have removed so as to
simply be viewed as American.
During a debate with such an African American, Malcolm X
quipped, "If a cat has kittens in an oven, that
doesn't make them biscuits." On another occasion in
his speech "The Ballot or the Bullet," Malcolm
had this say about Black people being American:
"No, I'm not an American. I'm one of the 22 million
black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of
the 22 million black people who are the victims of
democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I'm not
standing here speaking to you as an American, or a
patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag- waver-no, not I.
I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. And I
see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see
any American dream; I see an American nightmare..."
More recently Tony Morrison addressed the issue
succinctly when has stated "In this country American
means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate"? As a
hyphenated people who recognize that our Americanness is
ever under question due to our political status as
marginalized peoples, we must be ever vigilant to keep
the tension taught between the meanings of both words -
African and American.
What does it mean to be African American? For me, to be
African American in an America that is the sole
superpower on the planet, the source for most of the
world's suffering right now means something so
significant. A significance that I firmly believe that we
have yet to truly appreciate. If you follow the trail of
blood from the bodies of most of the world's dead
(including our own), that trail will lead you to the
gates of the White House. What does it mean to exist in
the country wherein the White House resides?
At once we are faced with the DuBoisian
twoness/duality: Cannot be fully American, yet we
are still American in the eyes of those not from here.
Our ever-evolving self-awareness as a people must be
coupled with an ever-evolving awareness of the world
around us and which we are co-habitants therein.
It is not enough for us to glory in the grand
accomplishments of our ancestors when Africans ruled the
world. Part of what it means to be African means to be
engaged in the affairs of African people in the here and
now with all our problems, conflicts and contradictions.
In heeding Marcus Garvey's call of Africa for the
Africans! We must be able to point out the traitors and
those that conspire against African people regardless of
their title, position or rank. Just as we are clear about
Colin Powell and Condeleeza Rice, so too should we be
clear about those African despots and dictators not so
named by the American government but so named by the
Africans who are suffering under the heel of their IMF
and World Bank funded boots. Our commitment must be with
those African who suffer for a lack of freedom,
self-determination and power. It must be with those
Africans suffering from an AIDS pandemic that is
ravishing the African continent.
And we should not call for American intervention to
intervene in African conflicts. Any time America has
intervened in the any nation, the results have been
deplorable. America only acts in its own self-interest
and as long as white men are in power here, that
self-interest will run counter to the interests of
African peoples wherever we find ourselves on the globe.
While we engage in theoretical debates on what should be
the role and status of women in African societies and
whether or not sexism exists in Africa, African women are
being raped, abused, tortured and killed throughout the
continent by men African as they are, yet blinded by
their male dominant thirst for power.
Our very notion of ourselves as Africans is steeped in
the understanding that we are tied to a greater unit that
is the reason why we exist at all. That understanding
compels us to place ourselves in a relationship of
accountability to Africans who exist without the material
privileges of being American. However horrible or
deplorable our condition is as Africans in America, they
are far better than the conditions of most Africans who
live outside the U.S. borders. That is not to make a case
for us to feel good about living here, I am not happy
about living here, but what I am is aware that by my
living here, I can make a world of difference for African
humanity world-wide by organizing and fighting to uproot
and dismantle the machinery of imperialism and white
supremacy that is found within this soil.
We are not using our power and influence we hold as
Africans in America creatively or with enough force. We
abdicate our responsibility on the world stage all too
often with our complaints given our own native condition.
But although our gripes are legit and need be voiced each
and every opportunity we have to make them known, we
should widen our mouths and the scope of our vision to
articulate a more thorough cause that takes into account
how our lives impact the lives of other Black people who
live throughout the world.
We African Americans are in a unique position. By being
the people who sit "at the bottom of the well,"
in the "belly of the beast," we know the b.s.
when it is being spewed by this nation. We can speak on
the foulness of the system's innards for we smell it
firsthand. We can use our second sight as DuBois called
it to see through the lies. When we use our "Malcolm
X-ray vision," we can see that we have more in
common with our African brothers and sisters throughout
the globe than any white Americans.
We must use this vantage to the advantage of our people's
struggle.
When we support the hedonism of hip hop culture with its
glamorization of commodities and materialism epitomized
by the catch- phrase bling-bling, we render ourselves as
African Americans complicit in the exploitation and
oppression of West and Central Africans who have their
lives or limbs severed by the internecine warfare raging
over the mining and smuggling of what are called blood or
conflict diamonds.
This hip hop honored lifestyle, the bling-bling, has
become the pursuit of many of our youth who are without
any sense of true self- consciousness and as result are
at the behest of those who manipulate media and define
their existence and reason for existing for them. All too
often and ever increasingly so, many of those faces that
sit at the control rooms of the nation's media forces
are our own.
Nigger now falls off the lips of our youth with ease. No
less venomous than when it was uttered from the poisoned
minds of slave masters and their descendents, the fact
that our youth can now spit that word is indication of
nothing less than the fact that they have been poisoned
by the venom housed within the word itself. And as a
result spit poisonous lyrics that kill the souls of
another generation of would-be African visionaries.
The DuBoisian dual role of Black existence in America is
still ours to take on. As he writes in The Souls of Black
Folk,
"The worlds within and without the Veil of Color are
changing, and changing rapidly, but not at the same rate,
not in the same way; and this must produce a peculiar
wrenching of the soul, a peculiar sense of doubt and
bewilderment. Such a double life, with double thoughts,
double duties, and double social classes, must give rise
to double words and double ideals, and tempt the mind to
pretense or revolt, to hypocrisy or to radicalism."
All of these issues are tied to our identity, how we have
been defined by a power structure that despises us, how
we have embraced those definitions as well as how we have
self-defined in ways that resist and defy our
dehumanization.
May we heed his words and not be overtaken by the
complexity of this double life. We must be ever vigilant
not to internalize the very Americanism that has
victimized us, thus rendering us a contradiction to our
very identity. Rather, may we work to live out a legacy
as Africans in America that lends itself to the
radicalism that DuBois called for and that our times
demand.
. New audio files at http://www.Osayande.org
For more information on Ewuare Osayande link to his
website:
http://www.osayande.org. While there check out his
latest audio files, the
poems "Must be the Shoes" and "Be the
Revolution (for those with ears to hear)".
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