A spoken-word poem argues that Black identity is a social construct imposed through slavery and Jim Crow, tracing how the label has been reinforced from the slave trade to today. The speaker catalogs six skin tones to show how arbitrary it is to link pigmentation to morality or competence, and critiques labeling everything from music to colleges as Black, calling instead for people to abandon racial categories entirely.
Chapters
If you identify as Black, what I'm going to say may make you mad. Even if you've ever referred to another person as Black, then you might feel some type of way, maybe even bad. But bottom line, Black people need to stop being Black. I said it and I own it. I won't take my words back. White, Black, what are we talking about here? It's shameful. It's the 21st century. What a fright that we still don't get that black and white is not right. It has never been, certainly not now, and the future perceptions are a blur. Black and white are the presence of all colors and the absence of color. They are not races to start, but regardless of that, they certainly shouldn't determine how we relate, communicate with, or define one another. Skin color as a race does not exist. It's time to kick that out of the door. People are humans, a species of the kingdom Animalia, aka metazoa. Nothing is ever black and white. This dichotomous association and debilitating obsession with melanin, or the lack thereof, is an archetypal example of how lacking our collective consciousness is evolved. In our minds, the delusional, dysfunctional, degenerative, disordered mentality of the times. Crap passed down, forced on us through time, but I refuse to make it mine. Race, the way people think of it, is not reality. It's not even listed as the primary definition in the dictionary. A race is a measure of the fastest pace to the finish line. Who makes haste? The waste of a triumphant taste that's like a vapor. Soon it's gone, which is what this black and white interception of humanistic community must be. That there is the overshadowed fact, which I repeat, is that Black people need to stop being Black. It is a social construct, not a biological fact. A person's skin complexion tells you nothing about a person except the person's complexion. Can you know a person by perceiving and assigning a socio-political demographic? It is impossible in a genuine sense, but people have and continue to try, and it makes me sick. There are 6 degrees of separation. Degree 1: Ivory skin. Degree 2: Fair and pale skin. Degree 3: Beige skin with golden undertones. Degree 4: Olive skin. Degree 5: Brown skin. Degree 6: Highly pigmented, darker shades of brown skin. This is one of the most abominating sins. Seeing black and white cannot tell you about a person's morality, values, integrity, ethics. The pigmented hue of a person's epidermis cannot tell you the person's trustworthiness, loyalty, honor, valor, generosity, essence, not even emotional intelligence. I'll say it again, this time at a slower pace. Black does not exist. Not as skin color, not as a race. So that only leaves black as a lifestyle, as a status symbol, as an excuse, as a personality. Should I continue the list, or can you begin to see the fallacy? Black people need to stop being black. The social paradigms of being black, in my opinion, are whack. My genealogy doesn't define me either. But just because my skin's hue is what some describe as caramel or, in summer months, pecan, it doesn't mean that I'm Black, especially if being so means denying all my Latino-loved ones and roots in Ireland. But tell me why cab drivers change the radio station from salsa to hip-hop music whenever I get in the car. If that's not taking this compartmentalized construct of Black too far. Then consider all the women who have clutched their purses tightly against their side or bosom as I walk by in broad daylight, and especially when the sky is lit up only by stars. I may not be black, but scenarios like these and a lifetime of several dozen more have all left self-identity scars. How did we get here to this black phenomenon? Etymology isn't so much the culprit as is a long history of explication. This homogenized term stems from nearly 3 centuries of American bondage and probably forever will be. After Africans sold fellow Africans to colonists as if a commodity, they were told there were niggers as the boats traveled across the sea. After being emancipated by the only brown beveled face on U.S. legal tender, they were then people of color still acting as reimagined slaves to capitalistic ideologies and earning taxable wages from their former masters. But now, instead of "Yes, master," they were obliged as merely "Yes, sir." Then, as Jim Crow laws swooped down and cracked court, Blacks still hadn't officially been universally accepted as the norm, even though Dr. King and Malcolm did see its peripheral preference as they appealed for inclusion and unity. It was being boxed in as colored that seemed to be the key to unlocking the blackness for the alleged land of the free. Later, it became necessary, with a latent tendency to ostracize among the oppressed and oppressors, to propagate the term African American. And since, it has remained black's formal dress. But as it stands, black has survived through time as the so-called relative best. I hope that this has all had some sense of diplomacy intact, but I still must insist that Black people need to stop being Black. A far more than the fair majority of people who identify as Black are impairing themselves by perpetuating unprogressive, stagnated ideas, stereotypes, and stigma. How people can't see this malignant societal dilemma remains unsettling enigma. Everything has to be Blackified and then dominated and patronized by Black people. There are Black music genres, Black singing styles, and Black ways of speaking. Black colleges, Black-owned businesses, Black people food, Black fashion. The porn industry even heard opportunity knock with the exploitation of Big Black. Let's not forget to mention how even Black Black lives matter in some way different than other people, even if others pray to similar idols and gods in a building with a similar steeple? Is the mourning of a Black mother who loses her child to some disease more significant than the pain of a white mother at her child's grave crying on her knees? Is a Black man who just lost his job and home more destitute than any other man who becomes homeless and must live off unemployment This divide creates a cultural danger zone. Ivory, alabaster, caramel, porcelain, tan, marshmallow, almond, or any other of the 33 flavors of skin color and undertones. There is no race, no black, no white. It is all a lie. Human beings all live, love, suffer, and die. There is no way around it, no exception, no hope. It doesn't matter how you look. It's about what you believe, who you are, how you act. So please hear me when I say it's time for Black people to stop being Black.
