Report Blog Entry
The manner in which I communicate is an often-repeated complaint some people lodge against me. "I don't sound black," they say. Well, does Neil deGrasse Tyson "sound black"? Does Ben Carson "sound black"? How about Danny Glover? Barack Obama? Avery Brooks? James Earl Jones? Allen West? Morgan Freeman? So, what is "sounding black" supposed to mean? Is it to speak English in the broken and often deferential manner that was demanded of powerless blacks in the antebellum American South, and which became widespread when over six million freedmen, freedwomen, and their descendants later flooded North in the Great Migration? If so, then I'm happy to disappoint those who expect that of me. It's bad enough that our society leverages race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and religion as the lenses through which every human being is wrongly assessed. I won't assist in the continuation of that unfair practice by allowing others to use a single aspect of my being to define the entirety of my existence. Yes, I am black. I am black and have a clean police record. I am black and have a college degree. I am black and have decades within the IT field in positions that include management. I am black and have no devotion to any particular political party or religion. I am black and had both my mother and my father in my life. I am black and have a solid, middle-class family background. I am black and have sufficient command of the English language to avoid the common pitfalls of its usage. Should it somehow be strange to read that I grew up in a classic nuclear family and that we had a house, a yard, and a family car? Should it be disconcerting to know that I'm free of overt political and religious affiliation, that I had a good education and decent jobs, and I have no criminal history? Unfortunately, my possession of such typical American traits is absolutely troubling to those who see the downtrodden worlds of Good Times and Sanford and Son as better reflections of black American existence than the upbeat presentations of Grown-ish and The Neighborhood, and it was particularly bothersome to a female TV executive I encountered many years ago. Possessed of a rosy complexion and an athletic frame, she was certainly no older than 35 years of age, with straight black hair that cascaded about her toned shoulders, deep-set blue eyes, a rail-thin nose, and a mouth that was defined more by a thick application of pastel lipstick than the presence of her actual lips. After speaking to her for a few minutes at a business function and realizing that her conversation largely consisted of validating network polling results, I saw that she was truly shocked to learn that I neither viewed nor approved of the violent "urban fare" offered by her network. What followed next was eye-opening.
The executive rattled off a damning litany of stereotype-filled "urban" sitcoms and "urban" action shows, none of which I watched. As time went on and our discussion continued, she sank deeper and deeper into a sea of confusion as I further explained my background. Bewildered, she stated that networks didn't account for "my type of black person" and she wondered why I was "unlike the rest." I responded by telling her that the issue isn't with any individual, but with her perception of a monolithic black society and her corresponding expectation of results in keeping with an imagined racial uniformity. Her expectation of sameness is echoed by those who continue to wonder why I don't "sound black." If such persons fail to understand the above reasons why I reject substandard self-expression, then nothing will ever change them.
-TechRider
They Always Expect Someone Else
4 Kudos
Comments
Displaying 2 of 2 comments ( View all | Add Comment )
Jane Doe
I'm glad I decided to mosey on over here to your blog. I feel where you are coming from. I have never sounded "black enough" for others. The black characters and the images the music industry pushes of us is sad. I did not grow up in a household like yours. That does not mean I should speak a certain way so others know I'm "real". My taste in music, the fact I like to read, even my decision to go to therapy was all criticized in my small town in Texas.
Thank you for sharing and opening this space for others to relate.
Whaaaaat? You mean, you ain't a down n-word? You all bougie?
No, but you are who you are, possibly with a bit of a Texas twang. (LOL, I'm told that I have a thick NY accent...) As for therapy, your small Texas town needs an attitude adjustment. People need someone to talk to. Perhaps if more people sought therapy, we'd have a world where people are more self-aware, more conscious of the reason underlying their behavior, and more accepting of others who differ from them. Be YOU. That's a job only YOU can do and which only YOU can assess. They have NO say about YOU. Sorry, but I got pissed when you told me about your town of ignoramuses.
I state the following without asking you where you live: I was once in Texas for a training class. I stayed in a part called Addison, and I twice took the opportunity to drive through Dallas. I spotted the George Bush highway, and I could almost hear Hank Hill gushing about the Bush family in my head. While there, I was eating in a restaurant near my hotel (BEST. STEAK. EVER.) when I realized there was an older gentleman sitting nearby with a gun the size of a WWII howitzer strapped to his hip. I was stunned! The words, "feet, don't fail me now," immediately came to mind.
A middle-aged waitress with graying blonde hair saw my shocked face and said, "I can tell you're not from around here. From the sound of your voice, you come from New York, right?"
"Uh, yes," I said, never taking my eyes off the gun.
She tilted her head, motioning toward the apparent gunslinger and said, "Well don't worry, hon. Down here, we open carry."
"You mean that's legal here?!?!"
"As legal as that ribeye you've been lovin'!"
by TechRider (Mélange); ; Report
Möbus
That's so sad to see, and hear and read, I don't understand the matter with ethnics at all, if anything it's a brief little dot in the conjunction of dotted and dotes of someone's frame.
I often times got called out by my way of speech, it's odd but it happens way too often, to be confused to an Italian or an German depending on which surname strikes the most, then to be instantly called out when I start talking as an Argentinian. And even more shocked when they learn more and more about my person, as in the words of a secretary on the formation I attend "I never knew a Latino so... Educated" or worse, coming from a employer who we were repairing things for "I didn't thought you people could fix anything, why don't you all return and fix the economy instead of fleeing here?"
It's annoying to think that from something so intrinsic as the quality of talking people assume of you how you are or what your intentions are. An annoyance that sadly it's taught to learn how to receive and decompress.
After all I think it's far more annoying to talk to others who "Share" your background history, as the differences start to click instantly. To most of people who are Argentine I struck off as a weird offspring, by the way I formulate and how I annunciate my speeches, and how my I avoid the bad sounding words. Mostly by respect but also because of the stereotype, I've been growing in a street aside from a main highway which means, I pretty much interacted more with prostitutes and pimps and drug dealers than with "formal normal" people, yet that didn't reflect none of me as I would return home and read Latin old books that made no sense until you could decipher what it said by the use of a smaller book gifted, a dictionary. I could say I learned more Latin than Spanish for my first 8 years. And it shows.
I'm getting side tracked as usual, what I meant to say over all the cumbersome text is, I relate to it in the annoyance of being an outsider to my "own demographic" and I can't get a grasp on it either.
Thanks for reading the blog! From what you relayed, you're an outsider to both, much as I am. We've both faced false expectations from within and without our own communities, and it's just so stupid. We are who we are, but we're expected to fix in a box of social conformity. TO HECK WITH THAT!!! Be who you are, live your life as you see fit, and ignore those who disagree.
by TechRider (Mélange); ; Report