The in Between Worlds of Blacks: An Examination of the Authentic Self in the Modern World
Masking can be a survival mechanism for blacks to navigate the modern world. It can mean the difference between successfully integrating into a white American society or being trapped on the outer limits-sometimes both, but what are the costs? When we consider the place of African Americans in a modern western world, specifically how African Americans live and interact, a true representation of what “being black” or “blackness,” is not always authentic. Much how Gloria Anzaldua describes the twoness Chicana/o’s experience when communicating with each other, it “is like looking in the mirror. We are afraid of what we’ll see there” (10). African Americans too experience a conflict, on one hand there is the African self and on the other the American self, causing a need to choose between the two.
There are African Americans who navigate skillfully between two worlds allowing successful preservation of hybrid identities. Dr. Randall Pinkett suggests, African Americans have become adept to “playing the game.” This, nonetheless, can mean having to change masks often depending on when, where, and with whom they interact. For instance, having to interact with several people in several locations can mean changing or censoring the authentic self to an extent that their identities become unstable, leaving only fragments of their true self. These places of interaction and navigation are often between work and home. What they are doing essentially is compromising who they are to achieve an advantage, both socially and economically. This results in individuals functioning, responding, and living in a self-effacing fashion in order to progress. In many cases, this projected identity is prescribed to them, and although it may not agree, with their authentic self, they adopt it as a means of survival.
Survival can mean making concessions that jeopardize your self-respect. For instance, conforming to fit the mold, no matter how uncomfortable; not speaking up for fear of being labeled malcontent, aggressive and a threat in the work place. According to Ellis Cose, “Racial discussions tend to be conducted at one of two levels-either in shouts or in whispers. The shouters tend to be so twisted by pain and ignorance that the spectators tune them out” (9). At this stage however, frustration and anger has taken over.
Frustrations arise after too many accommodations have been made, when an individual is exhausted from trying to fit a mold that they do not fit. Moreover, a mold that continuously rejects them. Racial distress will forever exist, especially if it is forever ignored despite the amount of wealth and success, any African American has attained. Floyd Hayes put it neatly when he argued, “The subordination of the African American masses-remain, and are indeed expanding as we begin the twenty-first century” (7).
Hayes’s point is prevalent now more than ever and so is the act of African Americans transforming themselves to be accepted and progress.
Interestingly enough part of existing in any modern space can mean an automatic transformation of self as people naturally evolve in a modern world. However, the act of changing identities frequently makes it difficult to fit comfortably into any specific space with any specific group of people. Therefore, there is a consequence, one being that the act of constant navigation catapults the navigator into a perpetual limbo. In essence, they are alienated from their roots, and “alien” in the dominant culture they wish to integrate.
The African American presence in media and corporate America illuminates an empirical point of racial masking for advantage, this phenomenon occurs often in both the film and music industry. The problem lies not only in stereotyping, but also in the acceptance of negative stereotypes. Although contemporary culture allows blacks in American film to take on new dimensions, the old stereotypes still emerge when blacks are typecast as the Jezebel, sexual deviant, modern day mammy or criminal. These signifiers constantly project certain stereotypes. These are the hidden indirect messages implanted in a text, whether it is a book, film or photograph. It is what assists us in making distinctions about a race, culture or religion. It is the shape of eyes and the texture of hair combined with physical attributes that perpetuate “racial traits.”
Gates tells us in his article “The Blackness of Blackness: A Critique on the Sign and the Signifying Monkey,” that the signifying (amongst Blacks) is the same as testifying. It is as Gates explains a device we use to upset the power of ‘the oppressor.” Not an embedded device we cannot turn off, but one we intentionally use as satire. The reality is that this idea gets lost in translation because people take this at face value and often miss the hidden agenda or the conflict it causes to the dominant culture that labels African Americans unjustly. The negative identifiers in text, film and media in general are still largely reinforced. The dilemma for most African American actors, however, is the choice between working and not working.
This doubt spills over into their home life too, as black middle class Americans are cultivating their own communities in a continuous effort to escape the destructive gaze of the dominant culture. The dominant culture being the gatekeepers to progression forces African Americans in an effort to conform, to create space and distance between their desired identity and characteristics associated with urban communities. Randall Robinson admits to once stigmatizing former street basketball player Pee Wee Kirkland. Kirkland who is associated with East New York Brooklyn, is also an ex drug dealer who redeemed himself by becoming a college graduate and motivational speaker to urban youth across the country. Randall, when told by Kirkland at a social event that he was a college graduate believed it to be a lie. How could this man be successful and at the same time be an ex convict. This is exactly what successful blacks wish to distance themselves from- the preconceived views whites have about blacks as a whole, but still we do it to each other. For example, teen pregnancy, broken homes, obesity, crime etc. all play an intricate part in the way blacks are labeled and perceived by modern culture as a whole. Karyn R. Lacy, in her book, Blue-Chip Black Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class, elaborates on this notion of middle class blacks traveling from the black to the white world, rather than existing exclusively in one racial distinct environment in what she describes as “Strategic assimilation,” this selective pattern of assimilation. From Lacy’s perspective is an occurrence that is more about how blacks interact with and treat people they meet rather than how they are treated by people.
For instance, the black middle class, the ones who “make it” have to live on a self-created playing field, which leaves them at the border between race and class with “racial discrimination and poverty as the back-drop.” On the one hand, the black middle class who live in suburban communities share little to no connection with blacks that live in more urban neighborhoods. It is the weakened intercultural relationships’, which were stated earlier that is birthed from the inner struggle African Americans have with self-perception, except the idea is that they are they are really viewing themselves through the lenses of the dominant culture in which they exist. Similar to what W.E.B. Dubois has termed “double conciseness” which is blacks viewing themselves individually and as a group, through the eyes of the society, they live in; hence, the victims absorb signifiers too.
Most middle and upper class African Americans look to separate themselves from the stigmas associated with lower class African Americans. Quite often, they subconsciously adopt the stereotypical view some white Americans have of blacks especially when this message is constant and ejected openly in public spaces. A great example of this view is Oklahoma House Rep Sally Kern’s recent disheartening comments about the lazy nature of African Americans. When people are brave enough to speak ignorantly into an open forum it can be shocking, but it is more dangerous when you have to exist in an environment where people share these views, but keep them secret. Or like Kern allow them to flow freely cloaked as concern or something different. To take it a step further, having to work in environments with such ignorance is evermore damaging especially when accommodations for individuals who share negative views of you and people who look like you. Du Bois states, it is "always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity" (299). In other words, they exist and operate on a level of uncertainty.
Equally, there is no connection between them and the white American middle class. Ideally, it is assumed that once a black person successfully assimilates into white America that they are accepted and equal. The reality, however, is that there is still a separation between black and white middle class Americans. Therefore, there is no relationship on either side, which results in what W.E.B Dubois calls a “two-ness”, - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two un-reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body" (299). Essentially this means an inner conflict that is hard to resolve leaving the African American with little or no agency of self.
Ultimately, as Dubois explains, “African Americans want to be both Negro and American” (300). The problem arises when they have to manipulate the two, trying to escape the “white gaze” that ultimately places them at a disadvantage because of race. Thus resulting in resentment between them and their desired “American-ness”
Works Cited
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands, La Frontera: the New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987. 10. Print. Anzaldua gives a focused perspective of the conflicting roles of the Chicano/a in the community, workplace and education. She examines the symbolic borders Mexicans are confronted with once they have crossed the “literal” borders between Mexico and the United States, describing the inequity and struggle Mexican/Chicanos face when trying to attain liberation through self-definition. Her approach to race relations as it pertains to separation and identity conflicts is easily applicable to African Americans as well.
Carter, Robert T. The Influence of Race and Racial Identity in Psychotherapy: toward a Racially Inclusive Model. 5th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Wiley, 1995. Print. Dr. Carter describes the damaging physiological affects that racism has young adults of color in shaping identity. Highlighting such elements such as political structure, environment, economics etc to illustrate how these dynamics can predefine identities and cause an inferiority complex.
Cose, Ellis. The Rage of a Privileged Class. New York: Harper Perennial, 1995. 9-10. Print. Cose discusses race-relations, especially in the corporate world. How it becomes a challenge for even the most successful African Americans to navigate the system and survive on merits alone while playing the game. Having to conform and fit a model in order to succeed and assimilate into a space that would reject them otherwise and in most cases rejects them anyway despite making concessions to fit into certain organizations.
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin, 1989. 299-300. Print. In this text, Dubois undertakes the challenge of presenting the internal conflict that African Americans deal with in a western dominated society. Furthermore, Dubois explains how the use of separation between race and class is continuous because of the constant reminder that they are “other.” This text examines the line that demarcates the white American and Black American creating a limbo for the African American who is trying to assimilate into a realm without the losing his authentic self.
Hayes, Floyd W. A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies. San Diego, CA: Collegiate, 2000. 7. Print. Windom provides an intricate view into the Black experience from the past to the present through culture, family, education, economics and western dominance. Examines common struggles Blacks encounter and how these experiences influence the spaces they consume in modern society.
Krehbiel, Randy. "State House sends affirmative action ban to voters." Oklahoma Latest & Breaking News, Sports, Weather, Entertainment, Business, Jobs, Homes, Cars, and Classified Ads OK | Tulsa World. 29 Apr. 2011. Web. 29 Apr. 2011. <http://www.tulsaworld.com/>. Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City comes under fire after she made statements that illustrate the paramount race issues that exist in America as Kerns statements came during a debate on the affirmative action bill. Among her many derogatory statements she states that African Americans typically refuse to work hard.
Lacy, Karyn R. Blue-chip Black Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class. Berkeley: University of California, 2007. 15-20. Print. This text explores the demographics of lower, middle, and upper class African Americans and the idea of “place,” specifically the cultivation of communities and social circles by middle and upper class Blacks that are inclusive of neither lower-class African Americans nor white Americans. Lacy describes the issue of acceptance, rejection, and identifiers that maintain a separation between race and inside races.
Pinkett, Randal, Jeffrey Robinson, and Philana Patterson. Black Faces in White Places: 10 Game-changing Strategies to Achieve Success and Find Greatness. New York: American Management Association, 2011. Print. Provides a strategic list of gems that can assist African Americans in succeeding in competitive environments where they are underrepresented e.g. college universities and corporate America. The strategies include building strong identities and purposes, broadening ones horizons via education, reading, places, people, learning and teaching ones history. The list comes as a tool to overcome the obstacles people of color may experience when trying to navigate modern spaces.
Gates, Henry Louis. “The Blackness of Blackness: A Critique on the Sign and the Signifying Monkey.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan. 992. 2000. Print. Gates explores the use of two types of literary signifiers, oppositional, which means motivated, or cooperative (unmotivated) and how they deliver messages via repetition, encoded images, language etc. in order to persuade. Gates details how some artists have reused negative images to counteract negative connotations, therefore, giving them new meaning.
Robinson, Randall. The Reckoning: What Blacks Owe to Each Other. New York: Plume, 2003. Print. Robinson provides insight to the interrelationships between blacks within and outside urban communities. Furthermore, the issue of absentee African American leaders; the need for such leaders to take action in addressing rather than only discussing the symbolic issues that exist amongst African Americans. Robinson also has embedded an essay where he speculates what the year 2076 might look like if such matters go unresolved.
