(ThyBlackMan.com) Rachael Dolezal, the former head of the Spokane, Washington NAACP who was ‘outed’ passing for black has a book out. Her memoir is, “In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World”.
On a Today Show interview about the book, and her life, she said, “I don’t identify as African American, I identify as black.” She continued, “I stand really with the greater cause of challenging the myth of white supremacy… and black is really the closest race and culture category descriptive term that represents the essential essence of who I am.” In another interview, she was asked if she was like Caitlin (Bruce) Jenner, who as ‘transgender’, felt the need to change the outside to match the inside: or was she ‘transracial’?
It got me to wondering, what does it mean to be black now? And as I pondered this question, I thought back to the 1973 release by Tower of Power, “What is Hip?” (You can insert black in place of hip.)
“So you want to jump out your trick bag/And ease on into a hip bag/But you ain’t just exactly sure what’s hip/So you started to let your hair grow/Spend big bucks on your wardrobe/But somehow you know there’s much more to the trip.”
Is being black afros and dashikis, or kente cloth and kufis? Can you put it on and take if off like a Halloween costume or your Sunday best? Do clothes really make the man? Or is it like what Kahlil Gibran meant when he said in “The Prophet”, “He who wears his morality (or blackness) but as his best garment were better naked”.
“So you became part of the new breed/Been smokin’ only the best weed/Been hangin’ out on the so called hippest set/Being seen at all the right places/Being seen with just the right faces/You should be satisfied/Still it ain’t quite right.”
Are you black because you were at the Black Power Conference in Philly, or was at Afrikan Liberation Day in D.C.? Or do you have to attend Savior’s Day in Chicago to hear Farrakhan? Are you black because you’re out protesting with Black Lives Matter, and how many twitter followers do you have to have retweeting “#Iamblack!”?
“You done even went and found you a guru/In your effort to find you a new you/And maybe even managed to raise you conscious level/As you striving to find the right road/There’s one thing you should know/What’s hip today might become passé.”
Are you black because back in the day you were reading Frantz Fanon and listening to The Last Poets? Is being black meditating to a Coltrane sax riff, or is it grooving to Hendrix guitar licks? What about taking in a Dr. Ben lecture, does that make you black? Are the black characters in Jordan Peele’s hit movie “Get Out” still black after they have the “procedure”, and are walking around with transplanted white brains?
“If you was really hip/The passing years would show.”
Was Nat Turner who went out and slayed more black than Richard Allen who knelt down and prayed?
Was Booker T. Washington black when he said, “cast down your buckets where you are”, or was it W.E.B. Dubois when he advocated lifting up the “talented tenth”?
Was Malcolm black when he pushed for separation, or was it Martin when he marched for integration?
Is dark skinned Justice Clarence Thomas even blacker, although he condemns affirmation action, than ‘light bright damn near white’ Justice Thurgood Marshall who ended “separate but equal”? Is all this “black stuff” played out because we’ve ‘been to the mountaintop’ by electing the first black President?
Is black an adjective, how you look; verb, how you act; or noun, the essential essence of who you are?
In the end, the chorus said it best:
“Hipness is/What it is/And sometimes hipness is/What it ain’t.”
Staff Writer; Harry Sewell