There you stand, an entity that actually exists, worried about how the definition of a word affects you.
The student's question speaks to the larger issue of how to define blackness at a time when our gains in the United States are fragile. We are suspicious of interlopers reaping the fruits of a long history of labors in this country. But now we have to talk about new ways to be black. We have to talk about standards other than ancestry and slavery.
I'm not annoyed at the article. I just need to point out that you are not a word, and therefore not subject to being defined.
What Kind of Black Are We?
By Afi-Odelia E. Scruggs
Sunday, July 29, 2007; B02
CLEVELAND
A few weeks ago, I saw part of the Pan Africanist dream come true.
It was during the closing ceremony at an African dance conference. To a man -- and they were all men -- the drummers and teachers came from Africa. To a woman -- and we were all women -- the dancers were African American. Among the spectators sat a Trinidadian; her Senegalese husband and his twin led the class. As we circled, I realized that Africa's children had been reunited.
Then the circle broke, and the class ended. As we drifted away, I wondered: "What kind of black are we now?"
That used to be an easy question for Americans to answer.
African American identity was built on two criteria: African ancestry and an ancestral connection to chattel slavery. We looked at skin color, hair texture, and the size of noses and lips to determine whether a person met the first criterion. The second was assumed: If you were black in this country, somebody in your family had been enslaved.
In the past 30 years, however, 1 million people have come from Africa to the United States -- more than were brought during the transatlantic slave trade. According to the most recent census figures, 1.5 million blacks claim Caribbean ancestry. In fact, scholars say, the United States is the only place in the world where all of Africa's children -- native-born Africans, Afro Caribbeans, Afro Hispanics, Afro Europeans and African Americans -- are represented.
This development hasn't received much attention in a national debate that has made "Hispanic" synonymous with "immigrant." But the change has profound implications for the country's 35 million blacks. It sometimes leads to interracial tensions, which were on display during last week's CNN-YouTube Democratic presidential debate. A black college student asked Sen. Barack Obama -- whose mother is a white Kansan and whose father is Kenyan -- whether he is "authentically black enough."
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My major qualm with our immigrant brothers and sisters is that they are sometimes unwilling to acknowledge that any benefits they might get have been on the backs of us already here. The willingness of SOME to play the ' Magic Negro' part, always wanting to separate themselves from us American Black folk, unless it benefits them, and then, they're ' Black', well....it can grate on the nerves and foment ill will.
you are not a word and
That's only true in the abstract. That's like saying race is a social construct and therefore there is no such thing as race, when of course, there is such a thing, even if its basis is invalid. Here on the ground, words matter.
Why do words matter? That
Why do words matter?
That is not rhetorical.
Words can describe me, correctly or incorrectly. They can't define me because I am I before words come into play.
The medium doesn't exist
The medium doesn't exist independently of the message. Words shape perception, perception shapes choice, choice shapes reality
The medium doesn't exist
What is it when you know what to say but have not yet spoken?
Words aren't so much shapers of perception as they are containers into which you sort your perception. Words are not actve agents.
And you are not a word. You are not changed when the meaning of a word associated with you changes. You are not changed when someone uses a word you associate with yourself in a way different than you do. You are not changed until you change...at which point you are different whether or not you speak of it.
So the message exists independently of the medium.
What is it when you know
Consciousness
That's true as far as linguistic analysis is concerned, which takes as its object of study the logical relationships between words. But there is far more to words than their denotative meaning. Words are revealers of our inner state. They reflect our inner attitudes towards one another and toward our own selves. Words are more than mediators of information; they are mediators of relationships, and contain far more meaning than linguistic abstractions can ever capture.
You don't want to admit of any indeterminacy or connectedness. You're positing a purely mechanical consciousness which is not affected by the act of perception. That's not even true at the purely physical level. We know that the act of observation physically changes that which is observed, and therefore changes the observer as well. You can reject the meaning of a word associated with you as illegitimate, but you cannot remain unaffected by it. Let's say I decided to spread the rumor that such and such a person is a child molester. Even if there were no prospects of any legal action forthcoming from the lie, and it was clear that my statement was misinformation, the person who was tarred with such a slander would still be gravely distressed, and its likely that their relationships with others would be damaged as well,because of the doubt raised.
You don't want to admit of
That is not what I'm saying.
I am saying your physical nature...powers, abilities, limitations...is not changed by anything said of you.
The repercussions of a thing is determined by the nature of the thing. The nature of a person is not the nature of a word.
I don't think that's controversial.