My Black History
My earliest memories are of living in Fort Hood, Texas. I remember four things about that time. I remember playing wiffle ball in the small backyard of the house we rented, I remember refusing to go to preschool because the high school scared me, I remember learning what being Black was, and I remember wishing I was white. I don’t know how most Black kids learn that they are Black, or begin to understand race, but I’ve been aware of Blackness for as long as I can remember.
My dissonant racial identity built over the years; different influences forging my self image in the context of the world surrounding me. It began with physical image. I recall always wanting straight hair, white skin, and light eyes. This is what my family looked like, what all my friends looked like, what people at church looked like, what people on TV looked like, so I never expected anyone to like the way I looked. As a child I simply wanted to be like everyone else, but it evolved into an anxiety of never being seen as attractive or desirable. It’s only recently that I can put these statements in the past tense, and not all of them truly. It’s taken a lot of self reflection and positive affirmation for me to be okay with how I look and it’s still something that I’m working on.
Then I began to understand what success was, and everyone that was successful was white. All the smartest kids in my class were white, and I always felt like I had to prove that I could be smart too. All the leaders in church are white, all my teachers were white, politicians are white, people on the news are white, protagonists in movies and video games are white. Growing up, I never saw anyone that looked like me be something that I could aspire to or someone I could idolize; partly because I grew up too conservative to like Obama and partly because there are few other Black public figures. Feeling hope for success when you can’t see yourself in anyone that’s successful is a desperate task.
All of these things are true to this day, even as I’m beginning my final year of my graduate degree. I can’t really say that I have any Black role models that are close to me, that I connect to. It’s hard to find people that make me feel like I can be successful, especially in my chosen field of mathematics, where less than 1% of all doctorate degrees are awarded to African Americans every year.
This issue compounds when the acceptable forms of the Black role model are so restricted. The Black community is not allowed to create role models that exemplify Blackness. Instead, those Black public figures allowed to see the limelight must be uncharacteristic exemplars of whiteness. Black role models were those society deemed white enough to be idolized. So for me, Blackness was alienated from the ideal Black man. Therefore, I never understood what it meant to be a Black man, only what it meant to be a white man, or rather, how I ought to aspire to become a white man.
Lingering societal segregation also had its effect. I’m consistently the only Black person in my congregation and in all of my classes. The few times that I have had another Black person around me, it has truly been a blessing. Every couple semesters I might get someone in one of my classes that gets where I’m coming from, and I am emboldened to be myself. There’s a certain freedom in speaking from a Black perspective without reservation, and a certain oppressive feeling that comes from knowing that people will deny your perspective as valid.
It begins to be very lonely. You feel isolated. You feel like this country isn’t a place where you belong. Then I left America. I went to live in Madagascar for two years, sharing with people religion and spirituality as I had come to understand it. I was finally living in a place where everyone looked like me. Though I never truly felt at home in Africa, I did get a glimpse at what it might feel like to be white in America in a narrow way. Everyone I spoke to assumed that they would understand me when I spoke to them. No longer did I have to prove myself. When people looked at me, they saw themselves, and I realized that was something that never happened in my home country. The automatic recognition or acceptance or sympathy or whatever it was these people gave to me revealed something that I had been, and still do, lack in America. Here, I can feel that I am someone different to be understood instead of someone inherently understandable. I yearn for the day that last sentence is no longer true.
When I came home I felt a need to be okay with who I was, and how I looked. I wanted to understand my roots and live with the self-assurance that I supposed my white friends had. As I looked I revealed to myself what was happening in America. How a history of oppression created dissonance that compounded to form a world where I would feel like I don’t belong just because of my skin color.
Have you ever prayed to be transformed, to not appear as yourself, as you were born? Have you ever cursed God for making you appear the way you do? If the answer is no, then listen. I tell you my Black History now, but you may still disbelieve. You may say to yourself “he has no reason to think any of the things he talked about. How could he come to such conclusions, why would he victimize himself like this?” If you thought anything like this, you are probably white, and you need to listen to what I’ve been talking about this whole time. You need to learn Black History.
