black to Black

UNEDITED NOTES -  On my own understanding, and acceptance of becoming Black

I dont have the emotional toll to really edit this at the moment. But I want to share my thought process. As I go forward from the palpable racial oppression, coping with my own understanding of myself, and how my experiences of slights, belittlement, and false accusations, conjure a deep disturbing hurt psyche.  As I continue to “work hard” only to be met by a discount of my experience by others, a lack of compassion, and appreciation for my effort… and it continues.  

As he said “Look at this over achiever” ,  “you don’t have to work so hard - making us look bad”  making it a point to obscure my effort, and cast me as different, a try hard....  As if my “look” didn't already place me into a bucket of barnacles, no one wanted to touch…

Epilogue ( synopsis )

From black to Black… a Journey of self realization, self acceptance, and love for my skin, hair, and me. 

-ignoring my blackness

-recognizing my blackness

-black ( just a color ) an adjective ( Black a thing, accepted as a person, a noun, more than just an addon. 

-Black editorial change. 

-African-American means.

- I am a person! 

I’m a black person, with the context of color wrapped in the racially stigmatized negative social construct that delegitimizes my existence, my experience, and my hope. This is the story about how I came to accept myself, my soul, and my newly found description representing my heritage, my journey, my ancestral severance, and my future, I am Black! 

Thank you for the time you have put in and we appreciate your contribution to our community, but i’m sorry we won’t be renewing your contract.  It takes a special person to work here, and you have so many talents! It takes a special person to be a teacher’s assistant… As I look around and think about all the people, the Special people, who aren’t me, talent less? Is this a compliment, how am I so great?  I wonder what they have that’s different or what’s different about me… Oh, yeah, im black.  That’s where the conversation ends. There’s no way to investigate these claims,  regardless of the answers… there will be no change, what’s the point in talking about it.   The blatant backhanded racist compliments that spew from the illegitimate leaders of the communities, and industries I live and work in… a constant damaging stab to my effort, and education… What did I do wrong? It can’t be because I’m black, maybe it is me? Maybe, because im black, I am quiet and shy.  Am I less than as a human, as a black person.  I want so much more, but how is it possible? How do I learn to be Black… When I still feel like I'm just black?  Working to become some kind of artist, i’m not an artist not even close, but I like drawing, need to work, but I know money won’t buy me everything. Work hard to be me at water polo, and sports, but still often hard work.  Discounted because I don’t know I don’t fit in with everyone else.  But, I’m nice! And people tell me I should never change!  What does that mean?  What knowledge? What talent? What skills? What potential?  

 To be Black in America is to be alive and dead at the same time. The Schrodinger's cat of American Society.   

Race HIERARCHY metaphor

• Under the tree of society, I’ve always been unidentified , cultural lacking mis represented as black, not white, but mixed, and confused, Ive been told that my white grandparents didn’t approve of the marriage between my mom and dad.  Most white people think i’m less than, I’m just not good enough. (or just   Black people hate my privilege, I can't be accepted through my family's heritage, but at the same time, my claimed history stops at a boat off the east coast. Im black, and this is my journey to understanding that this also means I am Black.  An undocumented new start to a societal, cultural, and ancestoral people, who are removed from the African Diaspora so far, that one must proclaim, I am a new people. Set me free. 

Something should go here talking about colorism and historical racial heirarchy as well.)

R.I.P. black people

NOTES

  ( ( Talk about my life, history, White washing, and white friends. As well as going to the family therapist during parents separation, and declaring I was white ) an unknowingly but obvious acknowledgment that I don’t like my own skin,  a reflection of societal persecution embodied within my own psyche. Expressed through an apathetic aperture that can not be applied to conscious recollection of actuating a choice. In other words, I didn’t know I had a choice, and what that choice ment, I only wanted to be great, and the blackness of my skin was subconsciously holding me back. )

A fight to obtain a new sense of place in America, in society, and the necessity to continue the fight for equality, as well as the understanding of what it means to be Black.  ( Experiences in my workplaces, how I felt about my own creativity, Education, economy, career? ( Feel ) ( What blackness meant for me then, and now in Water polo and sports in General ) Why is it so hard for me to believe that I can be Black, and not just black. The connotations of the color of my skin are so important to how I think and move through the world, that thinking that significance, is important, and valuable to my own understanding of self, drives me into a confused place of insignificance, but yet, unique and powerful, artistically, creatively, and strengthens my emotional understanding, and the openness and the ability to grapple with the complacency of so many, who just believe they are worthy. 

  A growth and continued examination of my own personal confidence and push back of the whitewashing of myself, and my understanding of what that means to be Black in America and from a community that has been broken, separated from its own history, now on my own to create and forge a new path, without tradition, without a heritage, and without a foundation.  ( Examine the purpose and procedural nature of the word Black means ( in-editorial ) validity, through the New York times, as well as the understanding, understatement of what African-American means.

UNEDITED NOTES 

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