The Wesley Snipes effect What does it mean to be black? Is the son of a Kenyan and a white woman from Kansas black? To some people it’s as obvious as the color of one’s skin. No one has ever argued against Wesley Snipes Negro heritage.
Eddie and Charlie Murphy were known as “Darkness,” in some Hollywood circles if you can believe the late Rick James. And Washington Washington Football Team cornerback Shawn Springs is nicknamed “Blue Foot,” because according to teammate Fred Smooth, “He’s so black, he’s blue.” On the other hand, however, you have brothers like Frederick Douglass.
Though born a slave, the Lion of Anacostia was born of the union of a black female and an unknown white male. And his features reflected that fact – but perhaps not what was in his heart. For any lack of ‘blackness’ his contemporaries might have chided him for based on his appearance, his soul was as dark as the Congo when it came for fighting for the rights of his brethren and all minorities held under the heel of slavery and racism by white men in the days before America finally found its way to a true democracy.
When people see me. They tell me I’m black. This is true, and by telling me this they are saying that they know me. But how can this be when they have not walked in my skin, nor known the thoughts in my head nor aspirations that feel my heart. To me, like so many things in life, the word black is useful as nothing more than a basic description – like the name of a road on a map. It has its purpose as an identifier but does not embody the whole of what it represents.
So, is Obama black? Yes. His experiences might not match yours or mine but he shares the common knowledge, too prevalent amongst peoples of color, of what it means to be discriminated against for the tint of one’s skin.
Like Douglas he accepts his other half and does not deride it, but embraces the challenges of living life as one marked by the more identifiable African genetic markers that people see when they see him – and rise above them. Something we: black, brown, white, yellow or red, must all learn to do, to become more than what our color, education, economic standing or even birth might have predestined us to be.
Stop being defined by labels. We need to rise above and come together, as a race, a people and a nation. Then one day far from now questions like, “What does it mean to be black?” will be as extinct as the racial prejudices that spawned them. – Mac
