The Black Agenda Report published an interesting article from Wise Intelligent's blog. [Later-P6: I will never link a MySpace page again...three spams, that damn fast] Though it was actually watching 2007 Harlem Book Fair: Politics of African American Identity online yesterday that wound me up, I would like to take a couple of sentences out of context and launch a topical tangent.
The deeper problem, I find when building with young black youth in America is IDENTITY! This lack of identity is a direct result of slavery and its institutionalized, systemic method of stripping black people of their heritage, language culture, families and God.
I would genuinely like to know what "identity" means to people. I assume "blackness" is an example of the more general idea of "identity"...I'm looking for that general idea, not "blackness" (I actually avoid discussions of "blackness" as much as possible).
The way I see "identity" and "blackness" used, my tentative understanding of what folks are looking for is an understanding of the past through to the present that can be used to reason forward through one's decisions. Which is less clear than it needs to be, but that's what I got right now.
What is not clear to me (and I probably shouldn't say this if I really want conversations) is how any such understanding can place constraints on one's sense of self. I know it does. I say the same machine processes me and my sense of self, but that's an assumption based on common form and chemistry. Like most humans with complaints, I don't actually see it in myself.
I'd rather work with identity than blackness here but I'll do the abstraction into the more general form if necessary.
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Identity is a conscious
Identity is a conscious awareness of the significance and purpose of your own existence. Many people don't have that awareness because they have no conscious relationship with their own selves, either because they lack an instrument for cultivating that relationship, or because their application of the instrument is badly flawed. They look no further than the externals of physical survival, or even worse, they substitute intellectual dogma for a true relationship with one's self. Either way, without self-knowledge people are reduced to slaves of circumstance, without any agency with which to bring about creative change.
I thought our problem was a
I thought our problem was a lack of resources, combined with a terrorist state, not that we didn't know ourselves. I must be wrong.
Every war needs warriors
And every warrior needs the resolve and discipline to do battle and win. All the resources and weapons in the world won't make up for lack of commitment. If you're not even committed to uplifting yourself, you certainly won't be committed to struggling on behalf of your people.
It seems this identity
It seems this identity thing is a prerequisite more than a requirement. Something that enables you to do the things you need to do.
I believe we know ourselves
I believe we know ourselves fine enough. It isn't that I don't think that identity is important, or nonexistent. But I'm still going to use one of his quotes for the book...in fact it's going in right after I hit "post". Thanks Earl.
I believe I know myself
I believe I know myself fine enough. Back to Wise Intelligent's list of concerns, I feel I've got enough mastery of the language and culture I'm in, my family is here and now, heritage is an environmental factor to me and I no longer need the deity hypothesis.
But if heritage, language, culture, families and God are the conditions to be dealt with, it's more than clear some folk will feel things are coming up short for whatever reason.
This is my Maslow fixation again...
You guys are discussing needs from different levels of the hierarchy.
But Spence:
What is it? That's where I started...
It seems this identity
That's exactly how I see it.