Black Like Me

I don’t watch a whole lot of television. I’m a sporadic viewer, mostly because I don’t have the time, but also because I don’t have the attention span. When I tally up my hours in front of a screen at the end of the week and they approach double digits, I feel as if that is time wasted. I watch at most, four hours a week.If I'm tuned in, it’s usually regulars like Law & Order, Cold Case, Girlfriends and maybe half of Half & Half, and America’s Next Top Model.

Last night’s episode if ANTM struck a chord with me that’s been a-singing for years. It’s what I think I’ll call Black America’s Box. There were four remaining candidates in the race for ANTM, two of whom are Black: Keenyah and Naima. Keenyah is the color of maple syrup, with an obtrusive jaw and a selfish disposition. Naima is a fair skinned, racially ambiguous ballerina with probably the only cool mohawk I’ve ever seen.

The model-wannabes have been in South Africa for the past few weeks, and on last night’s show they drove through the township of Soweto and to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was held prisoner from 1962 to 1984. Well Keenyah was being extra obnoxious for the entire trip, overspeaking about how profoundly affected she is by being in South Africa “because I’m Black.”

After the sixth time hearing this, I was sick of Keenyah. It seemed more to me like she was trying to convince herself that being in Africa should affect her because she is Black, but not necessarily that she believed it. It also seemed like she felt some exclusive entitlement to her pain at seeing people who live in tin roofed huts shoulder to shoulder on a stretch of dusty land—as if that poverty is not a human issue and is simply a Black people's problem.

As if her annoying drivel weren’t grating enough on my nerves, I was fuming when she allowed the words “I don’t really see Naima as Black” fall out of her mouth. Who elected you as Race Judge? Why do a few shades of brown make a difference in Naima’s race, such that her ethnic makeup is completely discarded in your eyes?

This was evident in Keenyah’s absolute disgust when Naima got to use the key that opened Nelson Mandela’s cell. Then (cue spoon to tonsils) she made an overt display of emotion in the cell, as if she “as a Black person” was so impacted by this experience. Give me a break chick. She doesn’t even know whether Nelson Mandela is still alive, and probably doesn’t care. I’m confident that Brittany, Kahlen and Naima knew more about him than Keenyah did.

I still hear Keenyah telling Naima she isn’t Black to her. I still hear her saying “I don’t really see Naima as Black” in the confessional. And the sad thing is, I know there are a few thousand people across America who concur with this drivel.

Because Black America is so obsessed with “Blackness,” we are blinded to its impedimentary effect on the race’s solidarity. We don’t see how silly it is, and how stooopid we sound when we say things like, “so-and-so didn’t sound Black” on the phone. When we assume that a person with fair skin and not so nappy hair must be white, when we expect certain behaviors or political beliefs from people as a measure of their Blackness, we are wasting time. We are wasting energy. We have too much work to do to waste time on inconsequential pseudo-ideologies.

For example, look at the way we associate the Black race with unproductive characteristics. Suddenly being “ghetto” or “hood” means being Black. A Black kid with a skateboard is not meant to happen. Everybody else can date interracially, except Black people—for shame of being a “waste of Black.” Oh, and my favorite, when I used to tell people I danced, and they automatically assumed I meant I danced hip-hop, jazz or tap. Never ballet.

And to think, for so many years we had to hear these things from our oppressors, that we have hammered the nails around our own box by believing them. Will we ever dock and unboard this slave ship?

UPDATE 5/18: And we have a winner... Naima takes the tiara as America's Next Top Model!