(ThyBlackMan.com) How we treat each other is based on how we see each other. How we allow other races or ethnic groups to treat us is also based on how we see each other. But on an even more important note, our expectations of everyone else are based on how we see ourselves. If we say black lives matter but we show they don’t because we appear ambivalent, we show something different and actions speak louder than words. If we say black lives matter but fill our brains with weed, our hearts with coldness towards each other and our communities with black on black crime, we show the world that black lives do not really matter to us. If we avoid working together, refuse to build each other up and walk in denial instead of real solutions, we paint a picture that black lives do not really matter. If our young girls keep having children out of wedlock like rabbits, our young men fill up the prisons and abortion after abortion is a way of abdicating responsibility, we show the world that black lives mean nothing.
What if we are not black?
Rest assured I know my genealogy, my history and my heritage – and I am not ashamed of it. But my color is brown and yours is likely the same. I am aware the term “black” was used all over the world and before the slave trade in this country. But that has no bearing on why white racists applied the term to African American people. Our people simply adopted the terms, definitions and behaviors placed upon us by those who thought they were superior to us. Slavery was all over the world before the slave trade in this country too. But such slavery was based on subversion of conquered peoples and based on economic class – not based on the color “black” and a lie.
The African American community is not “black”.
Our shoes are black. Our car tires are black. But the color of our skin is brown, as matter of fact. When you were taught your colors, you were taught the color in the crayon box that most resembles your skin was brown – not black. But the slave trade reset and redefined us by a color we are not – and the expectation of acting as we had been redefined came right along with the color. Simply look at the first denotative definitions in the dictionary and you will find the truth. Sadly, our people have been so brainwashed that they have forgotten their color. Combine the color of dismal mischief with a lack of historical knowledge, a lack of identity, bombardment of negative black images in movies, TV and media, a lack of self respect and a lack of insight for the future and what do you have? You have the behavior that shows black lives do not matter. This is what the police, white supremacists, racists, conservatives and society is seeing. But instead of addressing the problem, most of our people deny it and blame everyone else.
LOOK AT THE DEFINITIONS OF “BLACK”:
The African American community is the only race or ethnic group on the planet that allows most or all of the following:
(a) ourselves to be defined by color,
(b) our people to be defined by what we are not,
(c) another group to define us,
(d) our people to fight to stay in dark denial by fighting to keep the lie in place
and
(e) behavior that matches the dictionary definition of “black”. Yes our people, as a whole, are fitting right into the mold provided by the dictionary: dismal, devoid of color, sad, gloomy, calamitous, grim, distorted, condemnation, thoroughly sinister, mourning, the end, evil, violence, force, mischief, the opposite of white. Thus they behave one way and we are expected to behave just as the color of black denotes. So apparently the phrase “acting black” has some validity. Now look up the definition of “white” and you will see a plan of shaping perceptions continue to unfold. Free from spot or blemish? Free from moral impurity? Not intended to cause harm? Are they kidding?
NOW LOOK AT THE DEFINITIONS OF “WHITE”:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white
Yes there are other definitions of “black” and “negroid”, but the meanings the slave masters, racists and white supremacists have equated with us are clear. And what do we do? We help them by defending our right to be called what they have labeled us. Then the expectation of “black” behavior comes right along with the worse definitions. And when we exhibit these behaviors, we show black lives do not matter. But what about African American lives? Did you know studies show that other ethnic groups perceive African Americans differently than they perceive “black people”? This has been proven sociologically and the different perception sets forth a different expectation.
I cannot change the facts, even if you don’t like them. I cannot change the research data, even if you do not agree with it. I cannot change brown to black, even if I wanted to. But I can call your attention to the truth, the lies, the reason they called us something we are not and the consequences of believing it. The Asian man does not allow himself to be called yellow man. The Hispanic man does not say “what’s up brown man”? The Indian man does not have red history month. The Haitian who is our color calls himself a Haitian, not black. The African identifies with his tribe and geographic location. And our people need to wake up. We will never have a true identity if we allow other groups to give us one, an inaccurate identity full of negative denotations.
Dispute the definitions, if you like, Dispute the research, if you want. Even dispute the colors in the crayon box, if you dare. But whatever you do, discuss this article with others and wake up! The mirror does not lie.
Staff Writer; Marque-Anthony
Are you a Democrat? Republican? I write on behalf of the Black Community. Feel free to contact me at; Marque@ThyBlackMan.com.
The “Sons of Men ” are the white men and women offsprings, and their offsprings( they are the rarification of God’s blackness spanning all the way from black skinned to white skinned from that aboriginal ( ab original, meaning from the original man ), original man ( Adam,and Eve, a black man and woman, with dominant genealogy , blood type O compatible with, and capable of becoming significant to other blood types ), and Eve ( a black woman with the same genetic qualities placed in both Adam and Eve by God himself ). The ” Sons of men ” are “mankind”meaning “a kind of man “, not “man ” himself. God’s mathematics( addition, subtraction,multiplication,division fractions etc.) are divine. The original man and woman are the black Adam and Eve. We are still becoming what we really are. Time will reveal our full divine qualities( i.e. by and by ) that God himself placed in every sinew of our bodies.Like a sturdy oak tree that began as a small acorn, we are destined to assume our high, priestly status in subordination to God almighty. #christian metaphysics
I felt that this article was the best I have read in a long time on the subject. I agree with it. To maintain hate you have to maintain difference to maintain difference you have to ignore facts. AND best if you dwell in the past making it someone else’s fault.
Far better to put away the personal perception of what happened and view with reality.
I am white until I put my hand on a white sheet of paper – then I am light brown. My ancestors were slaves if I focus on the right periods of history. In that history my ancestors fought each other and other nations of similar skin colour.
It would seem that we have found more similarity.
I am a human being living the life that I live with my perceptions being bent by others’ perceptions. Would I be wrong in assuming that you are the same?
Would it be unbearable to accept that we can remove the barriers that we (or our society) have built for the vision of people like Martin Luther King and Marque-Anthony?
Great article, it brought back memories from a college course I took in the early 90’s at UMass-Dartmouth called “Black Identity”. Most students in the class could identify their cultural heritage and live within that community. I on the other hand was seen as a U.S black born male of slavery decent. My southern lineage is of African, German, Indigenous and French and my parents hale from South Carolina and Alabama respectively. I felt some kind of way back then, I was born in the Bronx but spent most of my adolescence on the eastern shore of Maryland and Delaware and my teenage years in Illinois and Massachusetts. It wasn’t until I went to college that I realized that other people of color see us as black and not brown or of African descent.
BlackMan,
This is probably the most demeaning article I’ve read on black people in a minute! Your analysis of what constitutes “black” is as flawed as it is irrational. The terms black, white, yellow, and red are universal terms for a type of people. It is not based on skin tone. The fact that you’d encourage blacks in America to somehow see themselves as not being black is absolutely asinine. While the word black is not an African term, the term was/is indeed apropos for its people (and I’m sure you’ve seen some “African-American” who are definitely “black”, not brown, but black! So should Americans further separate themselves from these Americans (rhetorical). Please notice the use of the word Americans. I’ve travelled and lived in different countries and the only terminology used for Americans (of any decent) is actually “American”. Not African, Mexican, Euro, Italian, or any other description. Just American. So why would a black man need to undermine his status and rights as an American citizen by further disassociating himself by claiming the title of African-American (also rhetorical) vice American while knowing that they are black as a race of people?
In the end, my response is not to necessarily spark a debate on this (even though you may consider some of my commentary as inflammatory – and that’s acceptable by me), but rather to simply say to you that articles like this are what further confuses and divides black people in this country (yes, just this country). You can rationalize your identity on a number of fronts, but in the end, you only perpetuate the confusion of either yourself or the black race.
NOTE: Simple definition – “Black – a member of a dark-skinned people, especially one of African or Australian Aboriginal ancestry.” black – Google Search. Just because you’ve seen other definitions of black doesn’t mean it pertains to our people and (here’s a crazy suggestion) you don’t have to subscribe to those definitions.
Respectfully submitted
A Black Man