What strikes me most about John McWhorter's latest essay on blackness is that he spells out his name. It's a deeply personal thing that resonates with me, and with my father as well. The long and short of it is that John would appreciate it if we never call him 'African American' again. I agree with him, fundamentally. But when he says we should use Black with a capital 'B', I become enthusiastic.
I don't know how many times I've written about African American vs Black. It's pointless to search this site for a citation. (But this is interesting, especially given my evolving appreciation of JM) The basic way I've been using the terms since Jesse encouraged the use of African American is this: African American is demographic & ethnic. Black is cultural and political. Black is a self-definition, it is an intellectual construction of mental liberation from the chains of an identity defined by white supremacy.
In order to substitute Black for African American, as McWhorter suggests, leaves us in a bit of a quandary. You see, in order to accept Frederick Douglass as Black, one has to do a bit of anachronistic fudging. Is it reasonable to say that Douglass' problem was very much like my problem? Do we have the same problem with the Fourth of July? No, not exactly. Douglass predated the Black Consciousness Movement. But if you broaden the principle, you could say that Douglass' solution was a Black solution. In fact, in order to call Sojourner Truth or Mary Bethune the same Black as Medgar Evers or Stokely Carmichael you'd have to do some awfully clever trickery. But let's assume that were possible. The great advantage is that you could place the best of all historical African American (demographic) political philosophy, into one big Black bucket, and then have all African Americans feed from the same trough.
I hear scholars screaming 'Ahistorical'. OK, true. But not quite as ahistorical as Africa's effects on us blackfolks as any good linguist will tell you. I will leave it to the scholars to work out the kinks in such a program. However, I will enthusiastically endorse the existentials of capital B Blackness, because I know where this fifth generation McWhorter is not taking it. He is not taking it to the hiphop streets.
I've been using the term 'blackfolks' and 'whitefolks' here. So let me remind you what exactly I mean by that. Blackfolks would be average African Americans who have an average amount of Black Consciousness and apply it to themselves. Whitefolks would be the average European Americans with and average amount of White Consciousness applied to themselves. You're black if you understand what it means to be black in America and you have some sense of the lessons of Black Consciousness. Simple. Consequently, as Boohab, I have demanded that whitefolks ask themselves why they continue obliviously to act white. Because everybody knows what that means.
But a new capital B Black would force a renewed evaluation of whether blackfolks are indeed acting Black. Considering the fact that he's claiming it positively I do not doubt that the inevitable conclusion is that there is something of value he sees in it. In other words, there must be a false 'black' which stands in distinction from the true 'Black'. Otherwise why would he care to claim 'Black' instead of the falsity of 'African American'? It has to do with pride, and that must be the pride of accomplishment. In other words to be Black you have to claim the right accomplishment, you have to be proud of the right things.
This is not the end, but the beginning of a new Blackness.
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