Why I'd Rather Be Hispanic, Artificial Self Confidence, and a Root

Walking home from a training day for a job I may or may not have a thought occurred to me: I would rather be anything, but black, in today's America.

Sounds ridiculous right? The simple fact is it is still very uncomfortable being black in America. I mean, think about it, people haven't decided whether or not we can even be called black people or if we need to be called African Americans. At least with Latinos and Hispanic people it's not a choice between obviously politically delicate and offensive terms. Or maybe it is, since I've never been Hispanic or a Latino. Seriously though, every time you refer to a black person isn't there a little twinge in the back of your neck that makes you wonder if you're using the right word, or if you would look worse by using a term that throws racial consciousness in the reader's face, even if it's only for a moment?

Think about the stereotypes. If I were to make a mental list of pros and cons with respect to stereotypes, who would come out more favorably? Sure there are local pockets of better and worse viewpoints (border states, places with "little (insert south eastern country)s", and places with very visible very active gang cultures, but across the entire spectrum of America I feel like black people aren't necessarily losing ground, but aren't really improving either whereas other minorities are either receiving more than token attention or are at least viewed more favorably on the whole. I feel a lot like the very "interesting" back story of white America and black America has made the situation a lot like a landlord who needs a renter to pay on time and shut up about the property's needs and a renter who badly needs a place to rent and can't afford anything else. I guess when I think about the stereotypes, I can see positive ones for most other ethnicities that allow some type of positive integration with society beyond sports, music, sex, and street dance (you know, the things people have to do to support families and build generational wealth and own homes and cars and have stable year to year lives and retire) and absolutely none for the blacks in America.

And it's a little discouraging. It's like the problem of integration was never really solved beyond the physical interface and instead of a defacto solution, patches were administered. Patches were slapped on top of patches and policy plaster was slapped on top of the patched patches until people got tired of dealing with it. Or maybe until the job looked done enough from the standpoint of the people outside of it, but as someone who is a part of the structure of black America it's pretty obvious there are gaping holes in perception that continue to lead to gaping holes in... I dunno. I'm getting tired just thinking about it. It's not fixable. I'm not trying to be fatalist or anything like that, I just have to do my part with my kids to let them know that they do belong here.

That's it! I think I just stumbled on an answer. Black history. Being raised with such a heavy bent toward black history and it's burden on modern history and having to live every year with the idea that I'm permanently indebted to a project of acceptance that will be in progress from the day I'm born to the day I die was a mistake. Historical perspective is a good thing. Having historical perspective hammered into me with a distorted and disproportionate focus placed on the "right" and "wrong" expressions of stereotypes within that culture is what has left me with this feeling of malaise. Black history is important, but not more or less important than American history. It's not a separate story. Having the idea that I'm different and special and separated from America by black history has caused much more damage than confidence boosting good. The short term benefit of confidence has been far eclipsed by the long term effect of powerful feelings of isolation.

I guess the simplest branch, the main root of all of this is belonging may not boost individual confidence, but will ease future growth and development of identity. Telling someone they're special artificially boosts their self confidence. Someone learning they are special through time and experience and on their own allows them to build a lasting self confidence that will not be eroded as soon as the encouraging voices are taken away. Not constantly reinforcing a person's specialness and differentiating characteristics may hurt their self confidence in the short term, but will ease their interactions over time because they will have belongingness as the most basic premise of their relationship to the world around them.

If belongingness is the most basic premise of their relationship to the world around them, then they are free to pursue many more avenues of existence without having to consider questions of perception and practice, and while the questions may be there, they will not be central to the person's identity. If a person's most basic premise is that they are permanently different from the world around them they will, when (not if) self confidence fails to motivate action, be forced to constantly answer and ask and re-ask questions of perception and practice in a never ending cascade of attempts to join a world they can never really be a part of basic their most basic premise of existence is that they are permanently outside of and apart from the world at large.

So I guess the root of the problem with black America is really sourced from within every black American home and public classroom in the month of February. But, don't tell them that. They never seem to take criticism well even from "their own people". Trust me, I know. Responsibility is probably the second branch on the tree of stunted potential.

///Four Tet - "You Were There With Me" Just reminds me of thinking about the future sitting at the edge of an apple orchard and watching shafts of sunlight roll like lazy spotlights across empty fields and after the second hour noticing that the little things on the horizon aren't high tension transmission lines, but are the blades of still windmills.