How Do I Black?

    Hi, hey, how are ya?  I’m an Army brat so I moved around a lot:  Germany, USA, Italy, and Panama just to give you a sense of where I have been movin’ and shakin’.  I lived in multiple different countries before the age of 14 and it really shaped my world view.  Panama especially, because it was where I started puberty I guess?  Not just that, but it was also where I had a sea of friends who were everything that we never even bothered to ask, we just sort of experienced each others lifestyles through the friendships.  Some black but with more Jamaican heritage, Puerto Rican, Panamanian, Mexican, Filipino, Italian, White…all friends at some point and all there.  Panama means the world to me and a few of us who were in school together still chat, or the equivalent of in a digital age.  Race to some extent wasn’t a factor that I noticed because I had child responsibilities, emotions, and limited information.  It wasn’t until moving to Texas that I actually truly noticed how often me being black came up.  

    I went to a predominantly white school and saw how little color was there.  I sat alone, like most new kids, my first few months there because of the usual new kid social anxiety.  “Keep your head down and don’t draw attention to yourself, no need to be picked on here too.”  It wasn’t until summer school my first year there that I met people who were interested in talking to me at length.  A few white kids, but I would always speak with this black dude Otis because we rode the bus together when the next year started up and we talked before, in between, and after classes.  Then he got a car and was REALLY feelin’ himself.  Dude always had a big poofy afro, leaned all the way back, listening to chopped n screwed music on his way to school. Bass boomin’, windows rattlin’.  I thought he was hilariously dope and in a sea of white I noticed unapologetically black.  He was 2 years ahead of me, so when around the time he was graduating I met another black dude, Shawn.  Shawn was black Louisiana and Texas, bald with glasses.  After the first time I met his Mom he said “I bet you thought she was white, but she’s actually Creole”.  Shawn was/is a huge metal fan and in meeting him was when I was “introduced” properly to the 90s-00s rock music scene.  So I went from a No Limit, Death Row, Bad Boy and R&B listening kid to a Korn (SHUT UP), Incubus, Mudvayne, Kittie, Glassjaw listening teen.

    In my head I was like “shit, how I go from black to ‘white people’ music”.  Please don’t hold that ridiculous thinking against me, we were all ignorant of many things as kids.  Either way, without knowing Shawn I wouldn’t have been introduced to a world I assumed I didn’t belong into.  During my next school year I had a lot more friends due to being in some classes with familiar faces, having people introduce me as ‘Tim Meadows’ from SNL which was a huge compliment to me (Love SNL), but most of the thing that came up a lot was being considered cool because they didn’t know many people “like me” that liked “cool music” which just meant “Your a black dude that listens to rock” which is always seen as a novelty.  I’ve gone to many concerts over the years to hardcore shows, punk, emo, garage… I notice those same faces of shock still.  My environment went from diverse and unknowing to predominantly white, and I was integrating into it without knowing.  I was trying to be “one of the good ones” while also having my skin as a punchline.  “It’s too dark, Chris where are you?”,  “I don’t speak ebonics”, “Hey, Can I ask you a question about…?”  After a while you start noticing or you think it’s just classic friend ribbing.  At some point for me it became exhausting, but I had no idea how to talk about it or anyone to talk about it to.  To live in an area where you feel unseen or unheard and no one to feel would not understand is incredibly frustrating, and I don’t feel this is lost on any minority in a predominantly white area.  You either integrate or you become a problem.  What I mean by problem is you bring up your issue and you’re met with so much defensiveness, “Can’t take a joke” or “Always making it about race”.  So at 19 I joined the military so the culture shock of my first duty station in Maryland was so welcome.

    Blackness.  Blackness everywhere.  That was one of the first things I mentioned to my Mom when I got there.  “There are so many black people here”.  It was a sight to see.  I worked with the majority of the people there being black as well and I felt…uncomfortable, out of place.  In Texas it was difficult to where I was at to find black people that I was “black enough” for and that anxiety followed me to Maryland.  Did I look good enough, were my clothes okay, do I sound like I should be here?  You know who helped me my first year to get comfortable?  That’s right, black women.  Always.  It’s always them.  I guess I was too shy to where they needed me to get that shit together.  They seemed to not judge ME, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t get made fun of like all relationships and it was all done with love.  Comment and comeback, always a back and forth with the culture.  It’s like a dance of “Oh, so we cool then”.  A hug without the contact.  Two of my mentors helped me find my voice. Mrs. Wells, a black woman, pushed me because she felt I had potential, that I was ready to lead.  I went to her with most of my frustrations and complaints, but she talked to me as if she already knew who I was going to be and already knew what I wanted to say.  She cultivated me into being okay with me, even when I clearly wasn’t doing things she didn’t agree with she never told me to get my shit together, she asked if I was sure I knew what I was doing.  After that she trusted me to to make my mistakes and learn from them.  She is a giver of knowledge.  Stace was a black dude from Philly who talks with an air of knowing and forethought, he is a philosopher in every aspect. He would talk to you for a while but end some of his long sentences with an ‘ah?’, similar to ‘you feel me?’.  He improved my philosophical thought, and my patience.  What was I trying to understand and why did I need to?  What was the benefit?  Am I looking only through one angle?

    Taking all those tests in school to see what I was good at and what I needed to work harder on, my reading comprehension was usually pretty good and my critical thinking was always high.  I wasn’t guided by those tests, I was just told I needed to do better in those other things.  Here were these 2 black mentors telling me “You’re fine, you got this”, at a higher regard.  For me.  For my benefit as a well-rounded individual.  What I am supposed to do with these things I’m not fully sure yet, but I know they are me.  I know that it’s who I am because looking back being patient and trying to understand things (things being everything) was something I needed.  “Because I said so” as a child wasn’t acceptable to me, but it was coming from authority so what could I do with such a small body and no information.  I had to trust.  What is the point of all this?  Why am I writing all this?  Because of something I saw Terry Crews write on Twitter.  Not the “Defeating White supremacy without White people creates Black supremacy.  Equality is the truth.” (said on 08 May 2020) nonsense, I’m talking about a comment he responded to speaking about “gatekeepers of Blackness”.  There are no gatekeepers, there never were, but there is a solidarity of what it means to support black people which can feel like you are being led to what is and isn’t “black”.  We have had this throughout history with those on the side of peaceful protest and burn it all to the ground, even Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, but I don’t believe for a second that they truly believed that one was of a higher percentage of negro than the other.  They were both sides of the same coin.

    The gatekeeper thing stuck with me because I have experienced that from both whites and blacks.  I have white “friends” who have stated that they were blacker than me when I know they meant I wasn’t putting on a good enough minstrel show for them, while I had black people call me a traitor simply for talking to white people which I know they believed I was shunning them and choosing whiteness over them.  It’s hard when you are empathic to not be hurt when people say things like this because you’re wondering “I don’t mean offense to speak to others before you” or “I don’t speak this way to fit in”, this is who I am.  The different upbringings and lifestyles have caused some to shun other black lives for not portraying their individual identity of black correctly, seeing one version displayed more than the other.  Black environments being used as memes for “fun” news broadcasts (i.e. “Leprechaun in Alabama”, “Ain’t nobody got time for that”) showing a portrayal of blacker skin as wild, ghetto and absurd.  Sure you may say you didn’t see it like that, but that’s a message being seen the same way that lighter black skin families are usually portrayed as successful and accessible.  All black isn’t accepted in the same way because all black carries stigma from all other blacks because of what we feel has been lacking in being seen by other blacks.  Even though there are some things you can point to, the visibility of these things aren’t the same for everyone.  Why? Because we all can’t view the same things all the time and we aren’t sharing these things with each other because it’s impossible.  How can I tell someone who has spent years in a different environment than me that had to live a certain way to survive to try checking out Toro Y Moi because that’s dope black indie and process how it all works?  Do you have any idea how hard it is to get someone who doesn’t really watch much TV to check out anime?!  Sorry, I mean, I’m a nerd and I feel like people are missing out on so much dope art in life that could change how they perceive themselves and how they can communicate themselves.

    Blackness is all around us and yet it’s often so hard to see.  I live in a small village in Germany and I’ve tried looking for black owned clothing stores in bigger cities, and it’s pretty difficult since I don’t have a good direction to go off of.  Germany web game is trash by my so efficiently high standards (←–this fuckin guy).  In America it’s becoming more of a message to show up, support, and shout-out black business.  At the same time, some people are still “What have you done for me lately?”  Black Lives Matter (the organization) marches are happening and people are complaining about it meaning “specific” black lives and not all, that it’s only during political seasons, and to be honest that’s the most bullshit thing I’ve ever heard.  The thing is, I can’t truly deny those voices because I don’t know if they have honestly and openly asked BLM about more black lifestyle representations.  I fully understand and know that when I say “Black Lives Matter” I mean:  strippers, hustlers, nerds, conservatives, LGBTQ+, upper middle and lower class.  Every goddamn one of them deserves to have the opportunity to have met some of the most magnificent people I have in my life and are people who should be treated with the same dignity and respect.  My blackness is passable, but it still comes with the fear that it may still not be enough to survive America.

    This is a such a fraction of the amount of love I have for my skin and my kin.  I felt it necessary to say with my words because I have not heard it in my words from someone else, but I have heard my spirit through them.  I write this to show a bit of my experience in being a black man, navigating in a world to find his blackness, what that means, and truly I’m still discovering more about it.  I code switch when I know that my white friends should catch up to who I am and not that I should allow them a comfortable black that they never even asked for.  I also know that I should elevate more black voices of all shades, shapes, sizes, and speech.  There are also internal moral and ethical discussions amongst Black people to be had that comes from some very deep wounds that never healed and have never been given the time to heal.  Being a minority is needlessly unfair and also the dopest fuckin thing ever.  We have the faces to say a whole ass sentence, the style that is constantly mimicked but never perfected, and the spirit to endure so much pain and wake up the next day.  Our culture is joy and pain (stop singing) intertwined.  We are the ‘Good Times’ with the Sugar Shack portrait.  To quote Deray’s constant Twitter saying “I love my blackness. And yours.”