My therapist questioned my black authenticity simply because of the color of my skin. I tried to explain postmodern polymorphic identity.. and that race has to do with “ethnic identity” and I therefor could be black if I wanted to be black!
I first discovered my blackness from while C-Span. I don’t know what the show was.. some kinda black politics thing.. lots of Cornel West goodness…
See, what I noticed was that every one of these “black issues” were issues I had suffered from!
You look at cycles of abuse.. how abused becomes abuser.. getting passed on through the generations.. And then you got a whole group of people who lived through all the evils of slavery.. of people thinking taking pictures of your self next to a dead man hanging from a tree is a great thing to share with the whole family… I mean what exactly do you think is supposed to come of that?
And what I saw was people rising up from that yoke.. transfiguring that pain.. I saw people wrestling with the shadow side of the American soul. I saw people I could look up to.
I’m a victim of abuse, on some level we probably all are, and so I just identified with it.. I mean I understood that the social toxin’s that were behind racism where the same toxins I was suffering from… It’s just a whole lot of canary in the coal mine..
and I think what separates us, in our own individual identifies.. is illusionary..
So.. to rhyme with Odysseus who said to a certain cyclops “I am the no man who is every man” I say.. why yes, I’m black. And anyways..
That and I wanted to get my hands on that there antibiotic West and the boys were cooking up for the toxins.