Who Am I?
IT IS the 21st century where Brown and Chocolate people still lack identity in Amerika. I was born and, probably, will die a foreigner. We refuse the title Black because Black is merely a color. A thing that is not a vibrant, expressive color in a 24 pack of crayons, but a highlighter almost, a color meant to erase. (Black also describes the nothingness of space.) Black, defined, neither adorns nor compliments our heritage. If any color were to represent us, it would be every color, tone, and shade for our presence within the world is ubiquitous. Black people are not just a color in the American fabric. They are the thread that holds it all together. We refuse Negro, because Negro was used to describe Brown and Chocolate people in a period where Amerika’s apathy devoured our humanity. Negro has a connotation of injustice and prejudice and hate. We run from this title only to be boomeranged back into confusion.
Then we lazily applaud our African-Amerikan title. How great a travesty is this? Are not the Brown and Chocolate people in Amerika not good enough to be Amerikans? Is it not common sense that Amerikans born in Amerika are not African? This title merely points to the ignorance of a nation that claims supreme intelligence. This title is doubly ignorant, and a defamation of my people. For why should we be labeled African or Black or Negro as opposed to just Amerikans? It’s sad that today, after all of the technological advances and knowledge that we have access to, I still don’t know who am I. W.E.B Dubois once said, “I wish to neither Africanize Amerika, nor bleach my Negro blood”. Therefore, I still ask, who am I?
“Blacks are too easily deceived by a few smiles and friendly gestures, by the passing of a few liberal-sounding laws which are left on the books to rot unenforced, and by the mushy speech of a President who is a master of talking out of the thousands of sides of his mouth. Such poetry does not guarantee the safe future for Black people in America. The Black people must have a guarantee, they must be certain, they must be sure beyond all doubt that the reign of terror is ended and not just suspended, and that the future of their people is secure.”
