Being Black in America

When Bill Clinton was elected to his first term as President of the United States, he was called by some America's "first black president". He was called this because he grew up poor with a single mother, played the saxophone, and liked McDonald's.

White males who wear "gangster" clothes, listen to rap, and "talk black" are derogatorily called wiggers; that is, a white person who seeks to emulate what he perceives to be African American culture, and by doing so, "becomes" black themselves.

This unfortunate conceptual framework of thinking is pervasive and fundamentally misunderstands what it means to be black in America. Being black isn't being poor, being a "gangster", listening to rap, being in jail, talking "black", growing up without a father, or living in the "ghetto". All of these are results of being black, not causes.

What it truly means to be black in America is something no white person can experience for themselves, no matter how hard they try or how willing they may be to understand. Being black in America means having dark skin in a white-skinned country. It means being discriminated against in a myriad of ways for something that is beyond your control, something which you never had a choice over.

In 1959, the journalist John Howard Griffin used medication to artificially darken his skin so as to appear African American. Overnight, he went from being white to being black. His book, Black Like Me, tells the story of his experiences traveling through the Deep South states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi at a time when segregation was the law of those lands. People he had befriended as a white man did not recognize him as a black man, and if he told them who he was, the difference in treatment was of a degree that astounded and frightened him. Griffin began to understand in a way that almost no white American could what it meant to be black: receiving the "hate stare" from white people who had no reason other than his skin color to hate him; having to travel far distances just to enjoy simple comforts like using the restroom, getting a bite to eat, or drinking some water; in Mississippi he was warned not to look at anything but the floor when a white woman was in the same room - the consequences could be deadly. When, as a black man, Griffin went to stay with some of his white friends, they had to do so with the utmost secrecy, lest someone were to see a "Negro" getting "uppity"; the scandal would have ruined his friend's reputation at best, and at worst resulted in violence.

Griffin, at several points, was unable to take it - the constant wariness, the desperate struggle merely to survive and avoid trouble from white authorities, the pervasive and all-encompassing hatred he received for nothing that he had done wrong. After nearly having a complete breakdown on a few occasions, Griffin was able to "rub the black out" of his skin and thereby pass a white person; he could return to the white world, whereas every other black person had to stay in their societal oppression.

The movie A Soldier's Story is about segregation in the U.S. Army in the Deep South during World War II. Different themes of racism are explored - including the self-inflicted wounds received and given by other black soldiers. Some of the African American soldiers are embarrassed when one of their fellow black soldiers does something to "set the race back" in the eyes of the whites. Others question "what kind of a colored person" a black officer is who lambasts other black soldiers for giving the whites reason to disrespect blacks. In the end, a black soldier yells "They still hate you!", meaning that no matter what they did or how they acted, blacks would remain oppressed because it wasn't about their actions but about their skin color.



The murder of unarmed African American 17-year old Trayvon Martin has left many Americans wondering if the person who fired the gun would have avoided arrest as well if he were black.

Being black in America is walking down the street and being wary that a police officer might decide you look threatening enough to check you out, and maybe mistake a wallet or a green card for a pistol. Being black is being the Other. Being black is having to work twice as hard to achieve the same result as a white person, to prove that you're "pretty good for a black girl" or for "being a testament to his race". Being black in America is being a representative of your race to others. It's having Black History Month instead of being included in "regular" American history. It's being accused of being lazy, ignorant, sexually lascivious and criminal - whether implicitly or explicitly.

Being black in America is having dark skin in a white-skinned country. All of those other things that are associated with African American culture - like crime, poverty, rap, hip-hop, being a gangster, being on welfare, growing up without a father - are results of the ingrained racism and superior advantages embedded in the societal structures of the United States that are afforded to whites and non-whites.