Denmark Vesey On "What Is Black?"

Although quite often I don't see QUITE where Denmark Vesey is coming from, today he wrote a really good one.

If nothing else, I'm hoping it will help straighten out The Dean.

Of course when I re-print stuff like this and try to wear Malcolm X ties, Mrs. Axinar starts on her, "Don't act like you down ..."

But here goes (with just a few Axinarian adaptations for style :) ):

There is no such thing as race.

The moment you play that game, you fall into psychological quicksand. The harder you struggle, the faster you drown. So, your brotha is going to drop a rope down and give you a chance to pull yourself out.

Black is not a color.

Black is crossover, baseline and clap boards.

Black is Denzel's walk.

Black is Bob Marley dancing to Get Up Stand UP.

Black is Claude McKay: "If we must die, let us die like men."

Black is your grandmother humming "Mary Don't You Weep" while rubbing Vicks on your chest when you are 6 years old and sick.

Black is "I'm going to kill this motherfucker if he puts his hands on me."

Black crossed the Atlantic in the bottom of slave ships and 300 years later pimped so hard, it dragged it's mink on the floor.

Black is why 100 million mesmerized people, watch 10 brothas defy gravity on a court for 48 minutes, night after night.

Black is the audacity to build tombs in the shape of pyramids perfectly aligned with celestial objects, that last 5,000 years.

Black has the middle name "Hussein" and still moon-walks into a post 9/11 White House.

Aint no "system" Supreme to black.

There's some men who look like Leon Spinks ain't a bit more black than Conan O'Brien.

There's some men look like Marlon Brando, blacker than James Brown.

And I'm STILL the blackest man in America.

Cuz I say so.

Does "Black" Have Anything To Do With Skin Color?

Denmark Vesey is also running a piece mentioning the "ethnic confusion" of some of his readers over what qualifies someone as "Black".

People -

From a "Photoshop" standpoint, all humans are shades of red.

Don't believe me? Head down to the morgue.

"White" people turn an almost chalk-like color when they assume room temperature, and "Black" people turn a shade of gray.

All living humans reflect a shade of their own blood - which is why someone VERY fair some people think of as "pink".

However, you have to be a student of other kinds of ethnicity in order to even begin to get a handle on this issue.

For instance, in the eastern parts of Africa you have people who look almost identical to one another who will hack each other to death for being the wrong ethnicity.

The quality of being Jewish of course is one that for many Americans takes some thought. At first blush one thinks being Jewish is something along the lines of being Presbyterian or being Pentacostal - it's something that you can simply choose to do. And sometimes that is exactly correct - you can be a Jew by choice.

However, there are many, many Jewish people who are not religious at all. There are many Jewish people who are card-carrying atheists.

According to halakha (Orthodox Jewish law), if you were born of a Jewish mother, even if you were adopted and baptized by devote Catholics from birth, you are still a Jew.

Also according to halakha if you were born of gentile parents, adopted by Jews, brised, bar mitzvahed, and got three degrees from Brandeis you're still a gentile.

Obviously in practice it's more complicated than that.

Now there's this "visual component" SO strongly associated with the ethnic status of being "Black" or "African-American" - mainly because I'm guessing not once in human history did such large numbers of two more physically dissimilar ethnic groups ever come together and simultaneously start belting out kids together by the millions AND start hating each other's guts so intensely.

But, near as I can tell, the current state of affairs on this issue was set by Halle Berry's mother. I can't remember her exact words, but I can remember in an interview years ago she said something to the effect that she never told Halle anything other than she was Black. I'm not sure in the scope of the interview she explained her reasoning about that, but I'm guessing for many people having an individual ethnic identity can make a person feel more "solid" than trying to do it any other way.

I can testify to a little of this because, although I would generally be considered a "garden variety White guy", I do have this matter of my Armenian great-grandfather, plus the fact that I grew up in a neighborhood with a large Appalachian population and then I went to a high school that was 60% Black.

I don't know WHAT I am at this point.

Stacey Dash is Black.

And Cute.

What's wrong with that?