Are You Black Enough?

Before you read this blog, scroll down to my music playlist and play "I Am Not My Hair" by India Arie (if you dont already know the song).

After I read an article by Barbara Howard entitled "Politics of Blackness part 1", I felt like someone had pulled my childhood insecurities and thoughts right out of my past and put them on paper. I believe there is something truly wrong with a person being penalized by his/her own race or community because they opted for success instead of choosing to become assimilated into the stereotypes of our culture.

Now, I can't speak on the experiences and specifics of others lives and stories, however whats completely unclear to me is what exactly defines someone as a "sell-out"? How does one get to call another such? I remember when I was coming up in the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles (prior to moving to the suburbs), I would get called all sorts of things with the same connotation as "sell-out" and I couldn't understand why? Especially when those nasty and hurtful things came from people who previously identified themselves as "friends", had the same color skin as I, and were supposedly trying to jump the same hurdles as I.

For all the intellects and social theorist out there (smile) I know I have not touched upon the socio-economic disparities that exists in our community, and if I don't acknowledge them (some of you will send me hate messages...lol) then I wouldn't be painting an accurate picture of the scenario. Those concerns and influences notwithstanding, I sometimes wonder when are we as a community going to move past them.

Its profound to me, as I people-watch around town and in the world that I hear people speak about freedom and "rights" as if they only belong to "certain" people (I will address the Black Community vs. The Government Conspiracy in a later post). Whether its sexual orientation, race, religion, or any other category that divides us, do we not have the right to express ourselves openly and freely with responsibility? If so, then how can someone truly be a "sell-out"? I think many people might have missed the memo (or maybe ignored it) that slavery is really over, well at least in the physical sense. Some of us, however, seem to still exist in the "slave mentality".