anotherlook

Watching the news these past couple of days, as the talk turned to Martin Luther King, Barrack Obama and “African Americans” in general, I became disturbingly aware that something was amiss in the eyes of some reporters. I am a black American.

I know that at one time the phraseology of the times dictated that blacks find a way to identify with a past beyond what they were given in the United States. There was even talk of going back to Africa or unifying in states, separate from white America, because during those times segregation was a way of life, yet you still had to live that life amongst the people who instituted segregation.

I lived through Martin Luther King, Huey Newton, Malcolm X, Cassius Clay who later became Muhammad Ali, I was young then. Yet, I recognized the feelings then and the feelings now.

I have never been to Africa; I am so far removed from the customs, the land, the people, the religion – that is not who I am. The only commonality I share with Africans is that we are all humans and our skin color and hair are the same.

I never related to “African American” even during the struggle because I was not born in Africa, my parents where not born in Africa, my grandparents where not born in Africa and I lived in America.

When I look in the newscaster’s eyes, as they are saying “African American”, as it truly relates to Obama and I hear black guests use the phase “black”, it makes me wonder if this is the exclusion of black American’s, still in our face.

Obama is a true African American, by way of his Dad and by his true and current connections to Kenya and I see this is the connection most reporters infer, with their insistence on referring to Obama as being African American even in the face of a “black” American referring to, black Americans.

Sometimes, I see too much when I look at people. I see intent by the glaze in their eye; I hear exclusion in the tone of their voice and the deliberateness with which they vocalize the phrase “African Americans”. I see the lines they draw and the pictures they paint and I am saddened with the knowledge that even though I know the flow because it has been flowing in the same direction always, the hope is harder to hold on to and so I attempt to ignore what I see and justify it another way creating little lies on the surface but deep down inside, I know.

This is the way I see some white Americans and to some degree most white Americans because of the long history of entitlement they have had, burned into the very essence of their being.

In their effort to prove a point after the “Martin Luther King” era, that they could be inclusive, they started choosing “blacks” that where more like them and they could overlook the fact that they were black. At one point, the phraseology was, “I don’t even look at Jones as black” or if they were really liberal they would say, “Some of my best friends are black”.

Consequently, they would choose a black man to represent “the black race”, that thought like they thought and they pushed that man forward as the “token” black of equality. When that was peeped by the people, they had to become a little more inclusive so they had to start letting more blacks work beside them, while at the same time clinging to the same basic concepts of segregation.

That started getting old to American blacks because there was outright racism and verbally disrespectful ways in which white people would talk to and about black Americans as though they were less than human or invisible. In the choosing of that black man they were still in the pious mode of choosing their “house negro” so what had really changed.

This has been a battle and I am getting exhausted just reliving it. Anyway, Martin Luther King, a thoughtful, soft spoken, reflective, religious man took a stand, not the first stand but a stand from a human, humbled perspective, that called attention to the movement that was based on the inclusiveness of every human being.

As a result, and through his spoken words, he was able to touch the consciousness of white Americans, and some laws where put on the books, around that time, regarding the unacceptability of certain words in a job situation and inclusiveness was mentioned on a percentage basis.

Inclusion was all a word game because reality was what happened and the reality was that, on most jobs, out of twenty to twenty five whites there was always that one black even in a city with many, giving acceptability to the word game, that was called inclusiveness.

Was the phrase “African American” invented by white Americans during a time of false intentions of inclusiveness and a time where blacks were searching for an identity in the midst of segregation?

Or did it materialize from the black voices, of that time, when the alienation from the nation, that had yoked us for so long, pushed us to identifying with a land we’d never known.

I am a black American. My ancestor’s blood, sweat and tears are forever part of the very soil of American.

While Barrack Obama may truly be an “African American” and in the eyes of some reporters, I see that, in this reality, there is difference, and for them the very difference that he is not a “black American” but a true “African American” and is therefore, more acceptable to sit at the table, a smack in the face for black American’s in the sly way that white Americans have been dealing with black Americans always.

While I am weighted down by this disparity and the vibrations I get from these reporters, in my heart, I know that Obama knows who he is, he understands the struggle. White Americans can pretend on any level, but it is what it is. When will inclusiveness truly begin and narrow mindedness end. Maybe in my sharing, a truer understanding can arise and even if it doesn’t, you at least know that I know what it is.

And that’s the way I see it!!

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