Defining Blackness :Who Gets to Write Our History?
Leading up to the 16 of June 2019 I challenged myself to get uncomfortable about all the parts of education, especially parts of my education that have come to define the way I choose to identify myself and my place in society. I have chosen to look deeply into how my education informed my understanding of Blackness, femininity, being a member of the LGBTQIA community and being part of a global community. In trying to understand these parts of my identity I have chosen to look at these experiences and to open myself up to challenging the truths that have instructed how I relate to these parts of myself. To begin this journey I'm first going to look into the question of Blackness and in a 4 part series , try to understand which ideas and thoughts have molded my views of what being Black means to me.
In his speech delivered in 1963 titled ' A Talk to Teachers' American writer and activist James Baldwin said, "The paradox of education is precisely this- that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated" . A truth that is reflected in many young Black learners challenging the norms and standards of their previously traditional and often Eurocentric learning spaces and daring the spaces to accommodate them, not only in number, but in institutional culture that acknowledges their experiences and allows room for their voices to be accepted and respected in those spaces. As a young teacher in a predominantly white affluent space, I was glaringly aware of how spaces of learning were often not open to the experiences of this who looked like me and often demanded that learners conformed to the so-called traditions without ever including them in conversations that would change the culture they were challenged to fit in in order for them to feel valid in their learning environment.
As a history teacher, I am also aware of who gets to define the traditions and norms and how these, often white, male, Christian and heterosexual people are, and have been for a while, placed in charge of telling the stories of all the groups they didn't represent nor respect. I am sadly conscious of how many of these tradition were formed to exclude those who look like me or to oppress and silence people who did not represent the ideals of heterosexual-Christian -White maleness. The stories we now use to identify these outcast groups are largely the narrative of the the above mentioned desirables who , in many cases cast Black people into positions of minors or animals who, in their immature or barbaric nature, are incapable of both deciding on their own norms and ways of life as well as telling their own history to their own offspring which would in turn creating a lasting legacy for generations.
Who gets to write our history? Who gets to archive our experiences for future generation and gets to decide which norms and traditions become part of the future of African History? So often Africans have, with great success, managed to preserve parts of our heritage in times of great dispossession and contempt but who gets to define the Black experience, if there is in fact one? Who gets to tell the whole story when all we are left with are fragments of who we used to be?
On young Black people lies the power to step back and finally look at the pieces that survived and we've been afforded , and perhaps also, the power to really question the truths we've accepted as truths about our black identity. With us lies the power to look back at the narrative that has come to define us in the spaces we occupy and the responsibility to start taking back control of the narrative. It remains with us to consciously take back the pen in the hand of the ones who by virtue of terror, war and disease had managed to silence the many stories of ourselves that had defined us before. We stand at a crossroad were change is inevitable but where generations crave a legacy of sorts that would help form the foundations for an intimidating evasive future. Following the above statement Baldwin continued with: "The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe , and then to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity."
In trying to find who I am in this moment, it becomes important for me to understand the stories, beliefs and experiences that preceded my being and put on trial the narratives I've accepted willing or with great reluctance about who I and my ancestors before me are. It becomes my will to hear the stories of my being that keeps the alive despite the previous disregard that have caused a fading in our minds. It lies with me to question the words I choose to string together to describe what blackness means to me as an individual and maybe deciding if the black experience exists as all...
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