Black like Cogito

So, I’m watching Henry Louis Gates’ “Finding Your Roots”.  First of all, I’m surprised and a little disappointed that they never use the word “rapist”.  Seriously, let’s just call it like it is.  I don’t want to harp on it because this part of American history actually disgusts me.  Just thinking of someone being attacked and raped just because they have my skin tone is revolting.

Me and those women have shared a planet and a plane of existence and if it wasn’t for that amount of abuse and trauma, none of my family would never had made it to this point.  It sucks that so many people had to be beaten, sold, raped, and killed just so I can breathe on God’s beautiful earth.

I might complain about my life but I don’t doubt that it is a beautiful blessing which was hard earned by my mother, father and a myriad other people.  I also pay respect to all those Irish men and women that suffered through dealing with the English long enough to get chocolate fever across the pond.

What I’m getting at is that it is hard to get your hands on any kind of historical blackness.  If anything, blackness is something that is rooted in modernity.  Our history has been destroyed and a part of being black is to put an emphasis on being here now. 

I love hip-hop as a culture.  Part of that culture is being alive and loving it right here and right now.  I wonder if that is because I don’t have too much connection with Africa.

Hip-hop is an inherently American culture.  Sometimes it is more un-American, meaning that it is a contrast to the mainstream American way, but there is something in hip-hop that comes from the American dream.

Hip-hop is proof that those that have been denied their piece of America know that they have as much right to it as any white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.  I can really identify with the “what about us” element of hip-hop but there is also the part of me that says I don’t want to be a part of American history that murdered so many native Americans, enslaved so many Africans and African Americans and vaporized all those Japanese.

America has a history of violence and it’s hard to accept that I can live today as well as I do because of so much suffering.  I can only imagine the “white guilt” that white people get that realize the atrocities it took to lead to such opulence.

Somehow, I don’t believe that most white people go through this kind of understanding.  I really wish most of them would so that we would stop bounding down the same path.  Our “War on Terror” has those same imperialist undertones and our debates on immigration reform are nothing but thinly veiled attempts at resurrecting Jim Crow America targeted at lighter brown people.

I am an American.  Whatever is done in the name of America is done in my name and I have a big time problem with most of the shit that we Americans sign off on, particularly our disdain for history.  My Mom, grandma and great grandma got treated like shit so I can move forward in this country.  I have a problem with that.  I really think that anyone that calls themselves an American should too.