Who Am I? by Haki Madhubuti

If the question, “Who am I?” is answered within a historical, political, economic, social and cultural context by Black people or people of African ancestry, a.k.a. African Americans, early and often, there would be less confusion about Black identity, purpose, potential and ones’ place in a highly nationalistic and multicultural world. As I have studied this question over the last three decades, we, the people the color of night, deep oak, coal, rich earth and the many colors in-between, have been taught and forced to define ourselves from the condition of the negative or simply the opposite of white.

Blackness or ones’ Africaness when interpreted by persons without a serious cultural education is generally limited to ones’ personal struggles for day-to-day survival and tends to be the anti of what one is struggling against.  Therefore, to be Black too often in the West is to be a victim and is to be one who is always responding to anti-Black racism, i.e., white supremacy.  A person’s Blackness or color is very seldom a positive determinate of or affirmation of a whole self.  In America it is mostly limited to the generalities of Black peoples’ popular culture: food (soul), religion (God centered), clothes (fly), dance (street), music (rhythm & blues, rap & progressive jazz), politics (reactive), life style (current hit “Black” television shows, mainly comedy), hair (in all of its various configurations), speech (as wide reaching as “standard” English, slang and rap), economics (often limited to poverty and welfare culture), education (relegated to test scores and debates over school choice), business (beauty and barber shops, bars and liquor stores, fast food and gas stations and a thriving underground economy) and finally the most likely assertion of, “I know what being Black is; I have been Black all of my life.”

The problem with the popular culture approach to clarity is that there may be partial truth here, but it often dismisses the absolute necessity for serious and in-depth study of Black-African origins and culture. I think that we must first understand the gravity of the question, and view it as one that at some point all people, regardless of ethnicity or culture ask themselves.  Their answers help them to position themselves and to go sub-surface in regards to self-knowledge and self-empowerment in all life’s areas.  As individuals of other cultures in America confront the question, their answers may come easier due to their cultures being more stable and institutionalized.  As the WASP, Irish, Italians, Polish, Jewish, Chinese, and German Americans solidified their political and economic place in the United States, they created and built institutions that spoke directly to the cultural strengths, needs and desires of their people; their institutions were/are both sacred and secular.  Another point that must not be minimized is that most of the people of these other cultures are descendants of planned migrations.  That is, for the most part, the WASP, Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, Chinese and Germans willingly migrated to this country from their respected homeland, looking for a better life.

Black folks, people of African ancestry up until the late 20th Century were/are the descendants of people who had been enslaved by Europeans and European Americans and forced into a new existence, acculturated and seasoned into a slave and Euro-American reality and ultimately redefined by slave traders and slave owners.

African Americans are in the Americas because of race and economics. Over the last three centuries, our socialization has been based upon race.  To state anything less is a lie and borders on intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy. Not to go too deeply into the history of our many journeys, but it must be made absolutely clear that for the last 350 years or so, most Black folks have been reacting to the people, culture and condition of whiteness and Europe.  Therefore, anything Black and most certainly the people with Black skins must, according to the popular dialectics, be the direct opposite of white, which is as defined by Euro-American culture almost to a syllable as negative, evil, lowdown, soiled, dismal, hostile, not hopeful, disastrous, wicked, ugly, untrustworthy, ignorant, slow—as in intelligence and physical movement and much more.

The culture and systems of white supremacy have rendered most Black people politically and economically powerless and often not creditable even in something as fundamental as self-definition.  This speaks loudly to why the most recognizable and accepted authorities on Black people are non-Blacks.  However, to be white is validated and celebrated each day in thousands of ways.  The great poet Gwendolyn Brooks insightfully writes clearly about whiteness in her essay Requiem Before Revival:

I give whites big credit.  They have never tried to be anything but what they are.  They have been and will be everlastingly proud proud proud to be white.  It has never occurred to them that there has been or ever will be ANYthing better than, nor one zillionth as good as, being white.  They have an overwhelming belief in their validity.  Not in their “virtue,” for they are shrewdly capable of a very cold view of that.  But their validity they salute with an amazing innocence—yes, a genuine innocence, the brass of which befuddles most of the rest of us in the world because we have allowed ourselves to be hypnotized by its shine.

Therefore, a part of our answering the question of “Who am I?” must come from the thoughtful study of the history, politics, sociology, psychology, literature, economics and culture of Black people.  However, unlike the Irish, Polish, Italians and other white ethnics, people of African ancestry for the most part cannot point to a specific nation on the vast continent of Africa and state unequivocally that they/we are from Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, etc. This is part of our dilemma and has driven many Black folks to “make-up stuff” as they confronted questions of identity.  And for some, they have adopted certain nations in Africa that they believe are progressive and receptive to African Americans.  Another group of African Americans have just claimed all of Africa south of the Sahara and have tried to incorporate into their lives the best of all of the hundreds of different and distinct ethnic and national groups, refusing to join in the many African ethnic wars.  Therefore, the connection to Africa and Africans for those persons avoids tribalism; they claim all of Black Africa.  They define themselves in the affirmative by incorporating into their lives the “best” of African cultures as they understand and interpret them.  Of course this is a difficult test and requires deep study and travel throughout Africa. Most of these Black people are clearly American patriots.  That is, as African Americans they understand as W.E.B. DuBois articulated close to 100 years ago that we are people of a dual consciousness in a dark body, both African and American fighting for meaning and acceptance.  As American patriots our people have always been in the forefront for the fight for freedom, democracy and inclusion into the mainstream of American life.

The Black Arts Movement (BAM) of the 1960s and 1970s went on the offense and clearly accepted Africa as our starting point.  For the poets, writers, visual artists and musicians of BAM, Black and Africa are synonymous and for most of them to be Black meant more than just ones’ color, but also spoke to our culture, consciousness, potential and progressive tomorrows.  This is why most of the BAM artists capitalized the word Black when used in reference to African people.  Again to quote Ms. Brooks as she ponders this issue:

We still need the essential Black statement of defense and definition.  Of course, we are happiest when that statement is not dulled by assimilationist urges, secret or overt. However, there is in “the souls of Black Folk”—even when inarticulate and crippled—a yearning toward Black validation. To be Black is rich, is subtle, is nourishing and a nutrient in the universe.  What could be nourishing about aiming against your nature?

I continue my old optimism.  In spite of all the disappointment and disillusionment and befuddlement out there, I go on believing that the Weak among us will, finally, perceive the impressiveness of our numbers, perceive the quality and legitimacy of our essence, and take sufficient, indicated steps toward definition, clarification.

If our struggle of the 1960s and 1970s taught us anything, it stated in thundering voices and images the necessity of taking control of something as personal and fundamental as self-definition.  Our great historians and educators from Vincent Harding, Chancellor Williams, John Henrik Clarke, Lerone Bennett Jr., and Barbara A. Sizemore, to John Hope Franklin, Darlene Clark Hines and hundreds of others who devoted their lives to informing the world about the beauty and substance of Black folks make it clear that we must be pro-active when it comes to accurately defining ourselves.  And, to be careful not to buy into the feel good history of Black superiority and Black myth making, but be searchers for the unvarnished truth.

With the explosion of Black literature that has been published over the last 30 years, the national development of Black institutions from museums to book stores, from recording and film companies to banks and mega churches; the continued revolution in great Black music and the visual graphics of Black artists, photographers and film makers that are now common place, I would say we are on the right track.  The flowering of BAM ideas illuminated and empowered our culture to where we are no longer a non-entity. Who am I? Try this: The music of Louis Armstrong, James Brown, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin and Erykah Badu; the spiritual ideas of the Bible, Koran, Torah and other holy text; the literature of Toni Morrison, Melvin B. Tolson, Terry McMillan, Robert Hayden, Walter Mosley and Octavia Butler; We are the dance of Alvin Ailey, Dance Theatre of Harlem and Muntu Dance Theatre; the language and speech of Geneva Smitherman, Frank M. Reid III, Cornel West, Clarence Page, Julianne Malveaux and Johnetta B. Cole; our focus on education is that of Barbara A. Sizemore, Edgar Epps, Carol D. Lee, James Anderson, historically Black colleges and universities and much more; Black economics extend from the three billion sellout of BET, the family-owned Johnson Publishing Company to the tens of millions of working Black women, men and young people; Black politics are the Black Caucuses of the Congress, state legislators and urban centers and the ideas of Ronald Walters, Bell Hooks, Ron Daniels, Manning Marble, Frances Beale and Angela Davis; our food consists of southern cooking, fresh vegetables from home gardens to the fresh fruit and vegetable juices that we prepare each morning; and our sports include the Williams sisters, NBA, WNBA, and the cold reality that if given an equal playing field in all areas of life, we will excel.  We are truly America’s metaphor for the best citizens and the most misunderstood people in this great land.

However, in the year 2001, we can no longer accept ignorance as an excuse for a lack of cultural awareness. The who is in the I that all of us must answer each day and is all around us. It is the responsibility of each of us to do the necessary work of educating ourselves and informing our extended family about the great possibilities of life.  If we do anything less than love ourselves, make the right connections to each other, understand the complexities that we face and prepare for all possibilities we, by definition, will not graduate from victimhood to ownership of ourselves and the coming worlds that are before us.  Am I overly optimistic?  I doubt it.  If history is our guide, it is clear that we have survived the hurricanes and volcanoes that others have thrown against us. It is now our own fires that must be controlled, understood, organized and made ready to confront and conquer whatever awaits us.  And, the only certainty in this journey is that this will be our most difficult of struggles.  The doors have cracked and sliding in is not acceptable. Being confused about who we are only leads to more confusion, and that too in this new millennium is not acceptable.

Haki Madhubuti is an accomplished poet, educator, editor and publisher having published 22 books. He's the founder and publisher of Third World Press, a professor of English and director emeritus of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at Chicago State University.