Acting Your Color

So, I haven't posted in the "I'm Mad as Hell and I'm Not Gonna Take It Anymore" section of my blog in a long time. That means that I've been pretty content with things or the Black Panther-esque militancy part of my temperament has been suppressed into my sub-conscious for far too long. Well, it's back again. But my indignation doesn't have remnants of the Black Panthers. Why? Because my dissidence and anger is not being directed towards White people, but rather Black people, specifically Black people who use the word bourgie to slight other Black people. That's exactly why I have a picture of the Cosby family here. Black pundits and thespians have argued that the Cosby family was/is the quintessential bourgie Black family and that they did/do not accurately represent the generic sub-cultures of African American culture. First, it's pretty sad that the pundits believe that the masses of Black people cannot identify with the Cosby family because they live in a Brownstone, have an income higher than 100,000$ and tend to behave as if their members of the affluent socio-economic class. Are there that many poor socio-economic African Americans in this country? Well, if they aren't accurate representations of the Black family, why can't they be a model Black family? Is it wrong to aspire to have a family that expects all of its children to succeed academically and go to college, or to have a dual-earning home with lucrative incomes or to simply have a nuclear family which is the antithesis of what the generic African American family has now, which is having 76% of our homes void of a parent. That's ridiculous. This is not one that you can blame the system on. "The man" is not holding anyone back from being a parent to their children and so often is the case that parents are leading lifestyles that prevent them from being able to be with their families or are making conscious decisions not to be in their children's lives. That's unacceptable. Period. Now on to this word, "bourgie".

It upsets me that just because the masses of Black people who were not born in this country with the privilege of enjoying specific parts of the American culture, such as learning the English language and living in healthy socio-economic areas, that now in modern times the people of color who articulate themselves considerably well, live in suburbia and listen to classical music while having a sweater's arms tied around their neck or the white people who prefer to listen to Rap over Rock and wear Sean John jeans and fitted hats are maligned by the rest of their respective communities who think they aren't "Black" or "White" enough and are selling out to be a member of another racial group. First and foremost, before we are male, female, or born of any race, we are human beings. And aside from the cultures that are generally associated with gender and race, there is another kind of culture: the specific culture that each and every human being chooses to exorcise for themselves. I may be black, but there is a culture that is unique to Kuamel because of the mere fact that I am a human being that can think and reason. "Kuamel" is a culture all to its own. When I was conceived, I wasn't black or male before I was human. I was human first. And so as a human being who is identified as Kuamel, there is a singular culture that is appropriated by the humanity and identification of Kuamel. So before I choose to adopt sub-cultures of race-specific cultures, or geographic specific-cultures, there are intrinsic attributes of my personality and preferences that are going to lead me to want to try certain things and behave in certain ways. And those things have absolutely nothing to do with race and holistically to do with innate qualities. There is a strong chance that I'm going to adopt certain race specific sub-cultures (Black) because of my socio-economic pedigree. But, I will definitely adopt sub-cultures of different societal institutions that are a product of visceral interest. So I guess in this case, I'm siding with nature against nurture.

However, I'm not going to argue that there aren't people who adopt certain generic behaviors and interest of other cultures because they want to be accepted into that culture's group like, White people who try to "act Black", vice versa and so on and so forth. But, I think that it's wrong and extremely presumptuous to think that a Black person who has many White friends, or who's individual dialect is always utilized with proper grammatical English, and enjoys certain cultural things that are not generically or holistically associated with or representative of African American culture is, "selling out". Maybe there's a possibility that they're actually being themselves, which unfortunately in our society, not all of us do. And it's even more unfortunate that someone who is possibly being themselves are being stratified into a "bourgie" demographic. So calling some African Americans bourgie or some White/Asian Americans, "White/Yellow Chocolate" is not cool in my book.

And that's my hiatus for today.

Parting Thoughts:

1. Why am I always blogging when I have some important academic assignment to do?

2. Some lady just had octuplets. Now, it was explained to me that it's been scientifically proven that an egg cannot naturally split 8 times as the most it can split naturally is three times. This lady accessed a sperm bank and had her egg split 8 times to purposely have eight children, in addition to the six she already has. These 8 children will be raised without a father. The mother currently lives in her parents' home and their considerably old. How is she going to be able to afford taking care of 14 children, not to mention the actual mental and emotional raising of the children that she has to do. It's going to be hell for her and I think she made a complete irresponsible decision. Those children aren't going to be afforded the kind of the attention they deserved that will lead them into becoming good people and successful in life. Some of them are going to fall short somewhere whether it be mentally, socially, emotionally, academically, or physically.

3. I will be going to New Orleans for Spring break. Yes! I'm hyped to see the Jazz scene there since Jazz is my favorite genre of music. Shout out to Bob James. His music is pretty good.

4. I always find passing by people while walking around campus a funny experience. It's interesting to see some people who see you about 10 feet away and they don't want to look at you so they look at something else so they don't have to notice you. Even more eerie sometimes, is when you see an ex-classmate and they probably wouldn't associate with you outside of class and when you see them walking with their friends they either ignore you all together while passing by or give you the most sullen salutation ever.

5. Psychology exam tomorrow. Yay. =/



Oh yeah,
Better Get Hit In Yo' Soul by Charles Mingus.
Familiarize yourself with it. Forreal.