Maybe it’s everything about me! By stereotypical standards, I look nothing like a typical black guy. I ask my white friends, why do you call me black? The usual answer is this: “your skin color is black and I can’t tell you from a distance from any other black person except maybe by the way you dress.” Obviously, the next statement that comes out of my mouth is “hmm… I wonder why that is.”
To get more color on this (please forgive the pun), I pick up my phone, call my black friends and pose the same question: “would you consider me black?” And to my surprise, they all utter emphatic NOs!! Then I ask why do you say so? And the response is, “well, you don’t dress like the typical black guy, you speak very proper, you wear shirts that fit your body, and you like to read and study.
Whoa! Did I just get accused of abandoning the race by which I’m classified simply because of the way I look, act, and dress? What does that say about the stereotype of a black person? Are we pant-sagging, baggy clothes-wearing, slang-speaking, and education-hating black folks? And is that really what Martin Luther King Jr. sacrificed his life for? Is that what the Civil Rights leaders who sweated on pulpits of Alabama, the brave Rosa Parks who sat up front for freedom, the black brothers and sisters who endured lynching, dehumanization, and segregation aimed to accomplish? Like my black friends, I dare utter emphatic NOs!
Today, America is proudly led by one of the brightest minds in the world who just happens to be a well educated and well mannered black man named Barack Obama. He was that “Oreo” that was proud to spend his free time reading books rather than playing football contrary to what the stereotype paints. He was proud to understand the universe much like Galileo and Einstein did. He was proud to walk in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Frederick Douglas. He was proud to reach for the sky without the bounce of Air Jordan shoes, but with the bounce of his white and gray matter. He was proud to define his own destiny rather than allow the stereotype to mire him down. He was proud to be a “different” black man!
The media bombards us with unflattering images that helps form the American public’s schemata of the black man. Images such as “angry” black men who allegedly murder their white wives, rappers proudly serving jail time for felonies, football players carrying loaded guns in clubs or killing dogs for fun all lend tacit support to these schemata. And what picture of a black man do you think is being painted? Maybe it looks like this: a black man is an uneducated sub-human who defers to anger and violence in their day-to-day degradation of society’s morale and should be eternally housed within the four walls of penitentiary systems that are being privatized for the financial benefits of already wealthy bastards. Yes, I know this is a very harsh statement, but I think many Americans would admit (albeit in private) that this is their “picture” of a black man.
In reality, the fact of the matter is that a black person does not need the media to determine what he/she should look like, dress like, talk like, or even the kinds of people they should befriend or have sex with. Further, there is no law in any book (from fiction to non-fiction, Bible to the Quran, or any other interesting read) that limits quality education and individualistic civility and freedom to only white people. It is only coincidence that the Americans who are able to afford strong educations, who have deep-rooted family and support networks, and who also maintain the vision and drive to propel each subsequent generation forward are the upper/upper middle class made up of the white majority.
We as black people need to see ourselves for who we are. We are not animals whose only method of communication is anger and violence. We are not just consumers of rap music. We are not wearers of graffiti-scribbled baggy clothes sagged down to our ankles because we like to imitate the thugs we see in music videos. Neither are we even just all football and basketball enthusiasts. We also are Barack Obamas, Oprah Winfreys, Will Smiths, and Maya Angelous.
Just like any race or ethnicity, black people fall within different social classes. Unfortunately, media portrayals would suggest that all blacks fall into one social class—the lower class— consisting of poor, helpless, and ignorant people. But we are more than the media! We are more than color! We are individuals with deep cultures and traditions! Nonetheless, because many of us do not know what our cultures and traditions are, we are somewhat encouraged to conform to the nasty stereotypes created in our absence and without our permission.
In the end, no matter what society says, you have a choice to say YES or NO to societal stereotypes. Where do you stand? I choose to be an “Oreo” as they call it… much like Barack Obama in his youthful years…much like Fortune 500 CEOs in their library-hibernation years…much like our future prolific authors who dared read a book than pick up a basketball…and much like our future leaders who will be accused of acting white today.
I want to leave you with one message: DEFINE YOUR DESTINY BY CREATING IT!!!
Michael Sampson-Akpuru
