Saturday, February 26, 2011
Do You Only Love the Idea of It?
In Thursday’s class we discussed negritude and its essentialist views. Black people are emotional, creative, and intuitive. These qualities were for Aime Cesaire the essence of the black race. This also connected us to similar ideas that are still held today and are manifested on reality television shows like the Bad Girls Club and College Hill. These shows usually do include black females who are aggressive, antagonistic, loud, and proud. Usually they will also be overly sexualized. The black males also may be praised based on their sexual prowess, cool demeanor, or aggressive behavior. Such distinctions concerning the African American character manage to reach the majority of black people today. I feel that these depictions manage to convince our young people that this is how they should act if they are African American or that this is acceptable behavior. I did encounter such behavior often at my high school. It is as if adolescents are especially susceptible to the idea that they, as black people, should display the “essential” qualities of their character at every given opportunity by “being black” and proud of their African American heritage. This tendency for such high school students to desire to “display their blackness” in their heritage is usually accompanied by a nearly complete lack of knowledge or interest in their African American background and history. This is very much of interest of me when considering that the types of behavior perpetuated by this idea usually accompanies a sense of pride and confidence in themselves due to their African American heritage. There were also various jokes falling in line with the essentialist idea concerning the inherent qualities of the black or white soul. For example, a younger black student may have encountered a social situation where, during a conversation with other African American students, they may not have known about a particular fact, person, or situation, that it was considered common knowledge for them to know about within the black community. For instance he or she may not have heard a particular song that had been heavily in circulation for a while so they would then “jokingly” threaten to take away the individual’s “black card” thus putting forth the idea that being African American involves a membership package that apparently includes a card, accompanying characteristics, and a knowledge of all things “black” in pop culture. It seems that some African Americans treasure the idea of being black instead of the actual heritage and history that accompanies the sense of pride in indentifying with that group. I feel that such knowledge and awareness should accompany a person’s link to any cultural group.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree with you. I think that being black for youth surrounds what is popular on television and knowing the rap songs and watching shows on BET. But very few young blacks know anything about black history month and rarely celebrate it. I'm not saying that blacks have to celebrate all 28 days of the month, but there needs to be education about the advancements and accomplishments of black history. There is lack of understanding about the black race and I feel like even in my generation there is not enough effort put in to learning about that history. Being black is so much more that what society portrays it to be and there needs to be more focus on the positive, instead of the negative.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting post, Anne. It led me to view the racial essentialism of Negritude as a "double edged sword."
ReplyDeleteAs you point out, Senghor and Cesaire define the African Personality as being emotional, creative, and intuitive. This was clearly an idea meant to foster racial pride in blacks around the world, but your post highlights its negatives: namely, that it creates a stereotype which blacks feel pressured to fulfill. Regardless of good intentions, racial essentialism will always do what the term suggests: artificially construct and oversimplify a group.
well I so lovvvee this topic !!! What does it men to black ? Black in America? Black in Memphis? Black at rhodes? All three of those places all entail different answers. i THINK THE SOCIAL CONTEXT GREATLY SHAPES black culture and how it is percieved and performed.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think black culture in the eyes of the majority is always magnified and scrutinized for minor flaws that white people possess. Its funny that it is 2011 and we are still striving for respectability, in a country that we are a foundation for. But the politics of respectability is a very controversial topic in the black community because some black people do not agree that we should have to be so cautious about what we do and how we act because it is always attributed to our collective identity when white people are able to do whatever they wont and act it out. I do understand this point but I also think its an issue of "taking one for the team". Some of these public gestures and behaviors are the only representations of black people that some people get. Therefore... WE DO NOT HAVE ROOM TO BE FULL OF FLAWS. We will be reduced to our racial group if we display any lack of anything and not only will we be reduced but every black person whomever is watching sees from that point on
ReplyDelete@ Colin , I do agree that some black people do agree that they must fulfill these characteristics. For example, a majority of blacks in memphis have adopted hip hop culture as their definition of blackness. With that being said, they think that living a life revolved around sex, fast money, women and other materialistic things deems success in some black people eyes. This has always been a dilemma with me being black because I think it is extremely ignorant to adopt such a degrading image and not consider the historical struggles that ancestors endured for equalities.
ReplyDeleteFascinating post! My first thought upon reading it was that this negritude and the "double-edged" sword as Colin appropriately terms it, can be carried over into my experiences as a male. this might be controversial, but I believe that male's also have a sort of binding history and culture which is essentially Western history and cultural influence. It must be realized that modern history, post the women's rights movement, is not the foundation of the history we are taught in school. Looking to American history alone, we see male presidents, the founding fathers, important male leaders in Jamestown and early settlements, Cortez, male military leaders, Einstein along with other male scientists, and a slew of other important individuals that were all male. Yes, there have been influential women, such as Florence Nightingale or John Adam's wife, but these ladies are regarded as either being someone who took on a man's role, was married to of influential on a male, or as simply being a woman, which is the exception itself, not necessarily what she did.
ReplyDeleteSo males have expectations based on a history of male leadership, chivalry, scientific discovery, strength, bravery, etc. With this, we have expectations by our male peers to act a certain way and exhibit certain characteristics. The 'man-card' exists for us as the 'black card' exists for blacks. If we are too timid to go hit on a girl at a bar, we lose a man-card. If we watch Glee, another man-card gone. If we act anything but macho masculine, or don't get drunk with the guys, or stay in a study on the weekends, we lose a man-card. These expectations, when you look at them, are ludicrous, but they have somehow evolved from a masculine expectation of the media, society, history, and culture.