The African Connection

    

During Black History month, Black people are encouraged to look at the contributions Black people have made to American History. We look at ourselves as Americans who made an impact on America and how many of those impacts go unheralded.

    One thing Black people in America do not do is have pride in their African heritage. Most do not even recognize their blackness as it relates to their ancestry in Africa. Slavery erased connections to our African and many feel they are only connected to their first ancestors to reach American shores. Ties to Africa were effectively severed. 

    As I have aged my hands have become darker with more lines and etchings of time. Not that I was ever a redbone, a cream coffee, or even a caramel color. I was just a lighter brown. But my color never seemed to be that of the Black people of Africa. They were black black.

    Does it bother me that my melanin seems to be going to the darker side of the spectrum with age? No. That is the least of my worries. I used to hear as a small child the blacker the berry the sweeter the juice. But all of the men ran after the 'high yellow' girls and the other black girls of the South tried to stay out of the sun so they would not become darker. So, I knew someone was lying with the darker the berry line. In America, the diluted Black person was seen as the prettier person.

Why am I bringing this all up you may wonder? Well, are you wondering? Good. My first goal met.

    I had the pleasure of meeting two well put together dark sisters one time. The first I shared a seat with on a shuttle and she somehow just began to tell me how offended she and her family were by the movie the "Help" because her grandmother and aunt were teachers in Mississippi during that time of the 1960's and her family were never maids. Black people not only distanced themselves from the darker Black people but also from those doing 'service' type work.

    Oh, I had met this type before. Ashamed. Angry. How dare you think my family ever cleaned for whites while that same lifestyle still exists for Mississippians in 2024. Black people hate movies that link them to slavery and even to their origin of being black black. They see no point in constantly visiting times in history when Black people were portrayed as less than. And dark Black people were viewed as less than.

 Me and another lady had been joking and talking for hours. We were friendlier strangers. Then I said, the one thing I've been waiting to do and will accomplish in 2012 is tracing my family line back to Africa using genetics. She looked at me and said "My family is 1, 2, 3, 4, generations removed from slavery. I will never trace my family back to Africa." She seemed snappish, upset, even ignorant in not wanting to know her families roots. My mother, nor grandmother, were slaves and I loved learning genealogy as I had explained and could not wait to know what tribe I belonged to or what area of Africa my maternal ancestors originated. 

                                                  
    Africans think Black Americans are not black enough and have sold out and Black Americans seem to not feel any connection accept denial of Africa. What is wrong? Do Black Americans have to embrace their African roots to be seen as proud Black Americans? Are we black enough while not knowing our roots in Africa?

    I wanted to label or title this blog Black Confusion or Black Hate because the lines have blurred. Every other ethnicity will go on and on telling you about their ancestral roots in Ireland, Italy, Russia, or Germany. Black Americans become offended when Africa is brought up saying they do not know anything about the country. Why does the Black community have no pride in belonging to Africa? 

    Are Black people still so broken until they have a battle with their darkness, lightness, origin, occupation, remembrance of lineage, or forgetfulness of their struggles for freedom? Do they just have a problem with their BLACKNESS? Does everything about their color and occupation remind them of pain?

    The answer is yes. Even in celebrating Black history, it is a reminder of the suffering of Black people. We can not rejoice in the successes of our people because they were accomplished through a struggle. For each win our people had, their was tremendous loss. We know surrounding our survival their was a large amount of death. Tracing our ancestry to Africa, unveils a trail of murder and death. The odds of us being alive to attempt to trace our bloodline, seen as equal to livestock, was based more on luck than a right to exist. In trying to reconnect to our origins in Africa is to acknowledge how we were ripped from it and the memory of the connection destroyed upon the threat of death for its remembrance.

    Our Black history is a tragic history. It is not a story filled with warm fuzzies. It is an exercise in not becoming angry and bitter. Many Black people feel they don't want to be reminded they belong to an ethnicity so hated by other races. The present struggle of acceptance is enough to navigate without reflecting on even worser times of the past. The darker the berry the more you are reminded of the pain of blackness. The lower the job, the reminder of enslavement nags at us. 

    Even though Black History tries to correct what America wrote off as something to dispise, it reminds the Black person of what was attempted to be destroyed through hate and even murder. Black History month should be a time of reflection in the Black community to ask ourselves have we healed enough to the point where we see ourselves as wonderful and beautiful. We try to do so by pointing to people who accomplished great things. But whether our people accomplished great things or not, shouldn't we see oursleves as great regardless?

    Will our people ever have pride in saying we originated in Africa from tribes with a long history on the earth? There are other ethnicities that had points in their history where there was hardship, not comparable to slavery, but periods that were challenging. Those ethnicities are not stuck in shame of their forefather's struggles. They embrace just being a part of that ethnicity. In denying our African roots, we are in essence beliitling the origin of all blackness. Our distance from Black people still echos there is something wrong with being Black. We see ourselves as a different Black. Black is Black is Black.

    

    The Black community is still having a problem relating to their Black identity. We don't want to be the Black of Africa. We don't want to be the Black of slavery. We don't want to be the Black of menial jobs. What Black do we want to be? 

    Has the definition been so harsh of the word 'black' until there is not a definition we can agree on what it means to be the RIGHT BLACK? Who is keeping score and what is the reward, because it is WE tearing each other down for not being a correct Black?

    I don't know. We say it is 'them' or 'they' who hate Black people. But I say 'we' are doing a pretty good job of it too.

    So, this is my black bone I have to pick with Black people. Do we love our blackness? Or do we love our own definition of what BLACK means to each of us?