leonceg

On 2/10/2018 at 6:17 AM, Troy said:

Zaji I understand what you are saying (I've have heard from Pioneer and others). 

 

There is no gene for race. Now if you do not believe this, all of the opinions you form will be flawed, and nothing I say will make sense to you.

 

Saying there are numerous physical characteristics is no better than saying rce is a function of skin color.  Humanity is so diverse you will always find people who are Black but would fail your more complex "brown bag" test.

 

Of course there are genes (and environmental causes), which explain the differences in the way people look.  But people are not cats, unless you want to talk about humanity in terms of different breeds. Lion are as different from tigers and cats as humans are from bonobos and chimps, because all "Black" people and "white" people are all Homo spaiens.

 

Now, if we want to continue to use the word race to describe phenotypic differences between people fine.  I do it in the course of informal conversation myself, but I also have no problem acknowledging someone who presents as "white" as a Black person, because because given the history of rape in this country "Black: people are all colors of the spectrum.

 

This is perhaps one reason why "Afro-American" is a better term than "Black" to describe the so called Black American, particular ones descendant from enslaved Africans. Leonce and Pioneer use this term as well; I think for similar reasons.

You've also got to understand the mind-bogglingly small variations that account for the various phenotypical differences. As stated in the book, "The Human Genome Project proved
that humans share 99.99% of their genes, regardless of
their so-called “race.” “And of that tiny 0.1% difference,
94 per cent of the variation is among individuals from the
same populations and only six percent between individuals
from different populations.” That means that only
6% of 0.1% represents variances between different populations
or so-called races."

Just because these differences are discernible does not  make them determinant.  That aside, define who, then, is black?  Is is 30% African blood?  Is it 51%.  Does the person with 49% African ancestry then qualify as white?  When we talk of race we're talking skin color. That's all we have to go by, and it is a piss poor indicator of genetic backgroud.  Take, for instance, Jordan Peele, the director of "Get Out" who is bi-racial, yet looks like many other black man.  Meghan Markle is biracial and looks white.  Go figure. 

Culture is the determinant factor here.  We have been so hung up on white folks' definition of and conceptions of race for so long that we have allowed ourselves to be blinded to our own historical and cultural treasure.  There is a difference between being sociologically 'white' and actively adopting a 'white' identity.  The former is neither here nor there. It's like someone saying they have two legs.  The latter is acceptance of a toxic identity steeped in oppression, dehumanization, and race hatred. 

Being "black" is just another biological incident. It's like having two legs. It simply IS.  Being born into or adopting Afro-American culture tells us the history with which you identify, and the culture borne of that history that influences how you live, think, etc.

It's culture, not color that defines us.

I believe the first step is to put our self-education into our own hands.  We are currently relying on public schools run by those who accept a culture that continues to discriminate against us, dehumanize us, and limit our opportunities.  The history we have built in this nation is ours.  No one should teach it to our young but us.  There is an old saw that "Black history IS American history."  I reject that.  Afro-American history is something utterly different from the history experienced, inherited, or adopted by Americans who can call themselves white.  It's that history -- and that difference - we have to codify and embrace.

On 2/5/2018 at 2:37 PM, Troy said:

Man I'm going to make sure Leonce sees these comments, they are just so thoughtful and profound. I may quote from these comments in my next letter.  It would be nice if others shared as well.

 

@Mel Hopkins, though we converged at Brooklyn Tech our paths there were entirely different.  I grew up in segregated East Harlem where you where either Black or Puerto Rican. I did not know any white people my age until I got to Tech.  Even then the only ones I really got to know were on the teams I competed on.  To this day NY City Public schools are very segregated by both "race" and class. 

 

@zaji, what you wrote is probably better articulates what @Pioneer1 has been trying to communicate regarding race.  Pioneer does what Zaji wrote reflect what you believe.

 

I "saw" race.., and that is largely my biggest problem.  I thought all Black people lived in the 'hood and were poor.  This is all I saw growing up and this was reinforced by the images I saw on TV. The Blaxploitation films were filmed in my neighborhood, The Projects the TV Show Good Times depicted could have very easily been the one I grew up in.

 

The Cosby Show which later might have changed my perspective, but I'm sure I would have assumed that is was far fetched; Doctors don't marry lawyers and live in big houses in NYC.  In fact the one of the first Brownstones, like the one the Huxtables lived in, that I'd ever been in, that was not cut up into apartments, was the one I owned. The life my kids was provided would have been completely alien to the one I lived even though they lived walking distance from where I was raised.

 

What what I was seeing was not race, but largely culture and often the two are confused.  Most people would see Zaji, Mel, and myself as just "Black" people largely indistinguishable from each other.  The reality is that culturally we are different.  One good thing about the artificial construct of race is that it has brought us together 

I talk in the book about the whole "not really black" thing surrounding Obama in 2008 was actually a misguided cultural conversation. What folks meant was that Obama was not raised in the culture of the descendants of African slaves.  He adopted that culture in young adulthood.  However, we didn't have the language to discuss it because all we had on-hand was "black" and "white."  And that's not enough.

ShackledToRace.com

5 hours ago, Pioneer1 said:

 

Troy

There's a lot to chew on in this thread.
Let me check it out a little more carefully when I have more time, but I will say this much.......

 

 

It's funny to see people of color sitting around attempting to decided whether or not they will accept a concept that not only THEY didn't even invent and was invented by White people and used to enslave and exploit them, but a concept that they can do little about removing whether they accept it or not.

It's like a bunch of prisoners sitting around in their cell having philosophy sessions about whether or not the concept of prisons, wardens, and inmates really exist.
They can sit around and ponder all day long but at the end of the day the the prison is real, they are in it, and they have little power to change this because they didn't invent the system and don't know how to get themselves out.

In other words........

 

IT DOESN'T MATTER   whether or not BLACK PEOPLE accept the existence of race or not....WHITE SUPREMACISTS DO.

THEY SEE different races.
THEY SEE themselves as "White" and superior and people of color as a different race and inferior.
And until YOU get more power than THEM....you would be wise to atleast familiarize yourself with the concept of different races whether you really accept it or not.
 

Agreed. That's the whole point of this book. On the one hand, we must know how the mainstream has been taught to regard themselves and us, then we must teach ourselves our own history and culture so we have the tools to battle their toxic indoctrination. No one is suggesting that we ignore race, just that we refuse to submit to it.  I think we need to teach ourselves to live in the often-racist society we have vs. pretending that we will, any day now, reach the colorblind shangri-la with which too many in the majority credit themselves.

I, too, was raised in a military family and spent time in Germany.  My parents were also strivers, but that was back in the early-mid 1960s.  I wrote this book because they struggled and fought all their lives to keep their children from succumbing to the image whites might have of us.  Their goal was admirable, but they didn't have the tools to go about it in a way that didn't do almost as much damage.  As DuBois said, if you constantly look at and measure yourself through the eyes of those who despise you, you are doomed.  My parents could not yet see Afro-Americans as a cultural force second-to-none.  They were still fighting for basic respect in the workplace and the right to shop and live where they wanted.  I believe we have an enormous amount to gain by shedding some of the mindset of our past. Some of that mindset has served us brilliantly, but it's time to move forward as opposed to constantly looking back.  We now have the cultural tools to teach ourselves who we are and stop looking at ourselves through others' eyes.  Political equality is all one can ask of politics. Cultural equality is a demotion.  We are have come farther and accomplished more than any other group of Americans. I think it's time we acknowledge that, and teach ourselves this brilliant history and culture we've created, instead of waiting for those who have spent a history despising us to fill that role.

I had been following this closely. I just released a novel based on the black/Creek Indian Rufus Buck, who formed a teenaged gang in 1895 to reclaim Indian lands and went on a 13 day rampage to accomplish his goal. Research showed a fascinating period in black history, little known and rarely discussed. The relationships between blacks and Indians varied from tribe to tribe, but to attempt to deny it is grotesque.

I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang

http://www.buckrampage.com