Undoing Stereotypes and Celebrating Our Unique Identities
When I met my husband, we bonded over our shared passion for music. Tino and I jammed to Afrobeats, old EDM hits and hip hop, but beyond those specific genres, our taste in music diverged. Whenever I played ‘90s alternative rock, my European husband would declare, ‘Not that sad American high school music!’ and swiftly switch to 90s R&B. The recognition of our personal preferences in music further demonstrated what I instinctively knew, that hobbies and interests should not be defined as “white” or ‘Black”. However, for several centuries, certain activities and modes of behavior have been ascribed to either a Black or white category; with “acting white” always being in opposition to “being Black”.
As a rite of passage, adolescents often try out different identities until they eventually settle into a mature version of themselves. Unfortunately for Black teenagers throughout the United States, there is the added pressure of self-discovery within predetermined racial categories of behavior. Growing up in Brooklyn, in the early 2000s, I stuck out like a sore thumb among my peers. I had a huge Afro, and I wore clothing from Abercrombie and Fitch (since their jeans fit my 5’10” svelte body). Years of attending summer camps with kids from Long Island and Pennsylvania, fostered my appreciation for the music of Queen and The Beatles. Then when I returned to my peers in Brooklyn, some of my associates would quip that I “acted like a white girl’ and that wasn’t a compliment. Despite my experiences with colorism as a dark skinned Black girl and being terribly gawky, I never aspired to be a white girl. I loved my Blackness, and I was just being the truest version of my quirky 15 year-old self.
Years later, I would still encounter the narrative of what society deemed to be ‘Black’ experiences and what were ‘white’. As a 21-year-old I flew to New York from Atlanta for a medical school interview. Since it wasn’t my first interview, I felt pretty prepared for the standard questions. The interviewer, a white male, questioned me about my education and academic pursuits, which I answered with ease. However, early into the interview, there was a discernible shift. He wanted to know how it was growing up with a single mother in Brooklyn. I was taken aback, as my mind started to swirl. I didn’t know how to answer his question. As shocking as it may appear, never in my 21 years of life had it occurred to me that I was a product of a ‘single parent home’. To me, that label connoted deprivation and disadvantages that I never experienced. I struggled to superimpose this stereotype of a Black childhood on my own life. I knew that I hadn’t grown up with two parents, but they had been married when I was born. I had access to healthcare; I ate organic food; had traveled abroad; wore nice clothing and lived in a safe neighborhood in an apartment my mother owned.
So, my response to that interviewer was, “it was fine”. However, that answer didn’t sate his appetite. He was persistent in his desire to know of the difficulties I had experienced in that environment. Finally it dawned on me that this man had composed a narrative of my life prior to meeting me. Based on my race, he was angling for a story of woe and poverty porn. He needed a way to make sense of me and how I had arrived before him as a medical school candidate. For him, I was not an applicant with good grades and adequate test scores; as a woman of African ancestry, my lived experiences had to be peculiarly “Black”. Reflecting on these incidents and others I have experienced over the years, I believe the much maligned critical race theory (CRT) can be used to disrupt some of the negative tendencies that align Blackness with negativity and whiteness with all things positive.
For starters:
1)Understand that race is a social construct
Contrary to the accepted belief of many, possessing fair skin does not make an individual innately more intelligent or more cultured. Racial roles are limiting, and can prevent people from being their authentic individual selves. As outlined in a Boston Globe article, when persons of color participate in wellness activities, like yoga it isn’t ‘acting white”; neither is growing one’s own food; going to a cafe; listening to rock music; or enjoying camping and hiking.
2) Remove “whiteness” or white people from a pedestal
Due to structural racism, the actions of one Black person is typically assigned to the entire race (like the Will Smith/Chris Rock incident). However, if a white person commits a crime or does something stupid, he/she is regarded as an individual and not representative of the group.
The impermeable nature of whiteness, allows white individuals to be just that, individuals prone to error, faux pas and mess ups. On the other hand, some people of color walk around on eggshells, hoping not to appear “too Black”, finding comfort in being the “token Black”, and demonstrating that they are not like “other Black people”. The need to constantly self-check and self-censure, stems from holding whiteness and white people to a higher standard. People of color must come to see that all people are flawed, and no one group has cornered the market on negative or positive behaviors regardless of its race or ethnicity. Black people should not live their lives worrying about the white gaze or being defined by it.
This past weekend, we attended the wedding of two friends, also an interracial and intercultural pair. Over the course of two days, the couple proudly represented their respective culture with all of its nuances, while equally embracing their partner’s cultural traditions. There was a traditional Yoruba engagement ceremony and the next day an ethnically Spanish ceremony with a reception that catered to both continents. In both settings the husband and wife were given space to be their authentic selves: a Spanish woman whining to Afrobeats and a Nigerian American man fist pumping to EDM. And for that moment in time, lines blurred. That entire weekend, friends and families mingled seamlessly. Their intention was clear: to cheer on two individuals embarking on a life together, without preconceived notions of love and racial identity.
