Wanna Be Black
"To try and experience what it's like to be another, is a hallmark of compassion."
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I’ll admit it, I’ve wanted to be Black for some time now. But there’s no way to talk and write about another culture/race/religion/political party/gender/species, without some amount of stereotyping, and that almost always offends some, but I feel it’s a necessary risk to try and understand and feel into what it’s like to be another. Indeed, the ability to take another’s perspective, is a signifyer of evolved consciousness and compassion, you feel me?
Like all oppressed people, in order to survive biologically, culturally, and spiritually, you have to create compensatory strategies, that’s what evolution is all about; adapting to ever changing environments and pressures, adaptability and willingness to embrace change can be seen as a sign of intelligence. Yet compensations always have some degree of insecurity folded into them and hence, they always have a down side as well as many positive aspects. Just like an abused child develops many coping mechanisms that serve them at one period of life and work against them at another, so too a race and culture have to continually track their history and feel into new ways of being if they are to thrive.
Can I Get An Amen?!
So what have been some of the ways Black culture has adapted and thrived? Let’s start with Christianity. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, Christianity began to spread across North Africa; this shift in religion began displacing traditional African spiritual practices. But just like Native Americans, Africans enfolded aspects of their tradition into their oppressors enforced religiosity, you can take the African out of Africa, but you can’t take Africa out of the African!
This is something Christianity has had to face over and over; whatever and wherever missionaries push their particular brand of Christianity, rest assured it’s going to be flavored heavily with the indigenous culture, often to the point that it’s unrecognizable to the missionaries.
This is something Black culture is ingenious with, whether it’s art, religion, music, sports, or fashion, Black culture is going to place their indelible stamp on it and make it their own.
Enslaved Africans brought a complex religious dynamic within their culture to America. The key word here is dynamic, for this is a signature of Black culture….it moves!
Blacks don’t sit stiff and still in silence in their church, they shout, stand up, faint, run around, dance, and talk back to the preacher.
The fusion of traditional African beliefs with Christianity created a hybrid form of spirituality that their white oppressors to this day have a hard time digesting.
Elaborate rituals and ceremonies were a significant part of African Americans' ancestral culture. Many West African societies traditionally believed that spirits dwelled in their surrounding nature. This relates to the dynamic energy I spoke of earlier, spiritual energy in nature is moving energy, so there is an awareness that everything is alive and moving and we should move with it. This speaks of African drumming, dance, song, and an oral tradition that is a constant narrative about the flow, cycles, and drama of life, nature, ancestors, and spirit.
Africans also generally believed that a spiritual life source existed after death, and that ancestors in this spiritual realm could then mediate between the supreme creator and the living. Honor and prayer were displayed to these "ancient ones," the spirit of those past. West Africans also believed in spiritual possession, just like Catholics, so there is a keen awareness of malevolence in the world as must have been a daily experience for a people that were enslaved.
The Blues
African-American music is rooted in the typically poly-rhythmic music of the ethnic groups of Africa, specifically those in the Western, Sahelean regions. Poly-rhythmic and polyphonic pretty much says it all about Black music, it is all inclusive, and builds on existing rhythmic structures and harmonies, never willing to accept the status quo.
Whereas European music is highly structured and exacting, Black music bends and breaks the rules creating cutting edge fusion. This is indicative of an oppressed culture which is the feeling; “Don’t tell us how to do it, we’ll show you!”
A good example of this is the Blues. The Blue notes are the flatted fifth, third, and seventh notes in the scale which is ‘against the rules’ in a regular pentatonic scale, but the rules are not something Black culture settles for, so here are those Blues notes in the bent notes of B-B King, and those melancholic, blown blues of Miles Davis.
African American composer W.C. Handy wrote in his autobiography of the experience of sleeping on a train traveling through (or stopping at the station of) Tutwiler, Mississippi around 1903, and being awakened by:
... a lean, loose-jointed Negro who had commenced plucking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. ... The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly... The singer repeated the line ("Going' where the Southern cross' the Dog") three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard.
African oral traditions morphed and mutated in slavery, in part because the white man outlawed education and use of their native language, so they kept their spirit alive by telling stories, talking, sharing, chanting, and singing.
They encouraged the use of music to pass on history, teach lessons, ease suffering, and relay messages. The African pedigree of African-American music is evident in some common elements:call and response, syncopation, percussion, improvisation, swung notes, blue notes, the use of falsetto, melisma, and complex multi-part harmony. This is pretty much anything cool in music!
Improvisation Of Soul
African American’s can certainly claim the origination of the most original music the world has ever known, namely jazz. A key aspect of jazz, which is also distinctly Black, is improvisation. For isn’t that what you must do if you are oppressed and enslaved, namely improvise? You have to make shit up as you go along, but it’s not just any ‘ol thang thrown together, jazz improvisation is the highest, most sophisticated musical expression that I know of, it is being in the moment and tapping into the divine realm of beauty.
In sports, the contribution of a Michael Jordan, a Tiger Woods, or a Jackie Robinson are also examples of improvisation and beauty. They brought to their respective games a level of quality and a unique mark of excellence that changed the very nature of the sports they played. And they created signature approaches, whether it was being air born from the free-throw line, to impeccable focus on a long putt, to stealing home when the pitcher looks away, to stealing the gold from hitler, stellar Black athletes are game changers.
This is a signature Black phenomenon, namely once Black culture is involved (often after years of fighting for admission), whatever they become involved in is a game changer. Whether its music, sports, theater, dance, politics, science, or religion, the Black voice and influence changes the very nature of the game.
Rebels With A Cause
I have always been rebellious and radical in my thinking and lifestyle, I’ve never accepted the status quo, and feel the ‘establishment’, has established all the wrong things! I know I was influenced as a child seeing the plight of African American’s and the long fight and movement that was/is civil rights.
I’ll never forget many things about my early childhood that was formative in my world view. We used to drive back to the South as I was growing up in California, and I remember seeing ‘Colored/white’ bathrooms, drinking fountains, swimming pools and restaurants. I didn’t really know anything about why these signs and attitude of bigotry existed, but I knew deep in my soul that something was really wrong, it was the kind of knowing that only a child can have, it’s not something you can explain, you just know it.
I remember Martin Luther King’s assignation, seeing Blacks on T.V. getting hosed with fire hoses and attacked by police dogs, Angela Davis, and seeing the 1968 Olympics with these guys raising their hands in protest, even though they were receiving medals standing on the winner’s platform.
All this made a big impression on me. I wrote a satirical essay when I was in 7th grade about George Wallace (then governor of Alabama) becoming president, he reminds me of a current presidential contender!
Black culture has risen higher and higher in their stand against oppression. The recent movement Black Lives Matter is the most current expression. Like Jewish culture, Blacks will never forget, because they have co-opted music, sports, large segments of religion and politics, and many other areas of modern culture, they are here to contribute and continue to speak up, sing out, stand up, and march to their own unique African rhythms.
Soul
Soul can be viewed as a quality of deep, essential essence, as in ‘the soul of the matter.’ Soul is a quality of grace, beauty, justice, and meaning that makes life more than merely surviving. The Black stamp is a stamp of Soul, it is a stamp of keepin’ it real, walking and talking with style, putting some spin on the ball, stealing home, rappin’ about it, shuckin’, jivin’ and jukin’, bending the rules, and moving up to the front of the bus!
We have had our first Black president, and the country had some difficulty handling this fact. This is representative of the evolution of our country’s soul. But the good news is that he was elected (twice), and like every Black person of excellence, he has left his mark and changed the game.
Self-Hatred
Like all oppressed cultures, Black culture must guard itself against the tendency to internalize their oppression. If you are exposed to enough abuse and stigma, eventually you will start to believe and internalize some of it.
In the 60’s, there was a movement to go against any self-degrading thinking or feeling for African Americans, this became known as the “Black is Beautiful” movement.
This movement began in an effort to counteract the prevailing idea in American culture that features typical of "Blacks" were less attractive or desirable than those of "Whites". Research indicates that the idea of "blackness" being ugly is highly damaging to the psyche of African Americans, manifesting itself as internalized racism. This idea made its way into black communities themselves and led to practices such as paper bag parties: social events which discriminated against dark-skinned African-Americans by only admitting lighter-skinned individuals.
So continue to rise up my Black brothers and sisters, your march continues and it is supported, prayed for, envisioned, and imagined by all that believe the human family is All One!
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