Prior to my experiences in the US over the past year, I had never given much thought to my positionality within the Black identity space. I was an avid movie watcher growing up, and I’ve always felt a connection to or alliance with the Black characters in the western films and books I’ve watched and read respectively. But after the events of the past year, I’ve come to understand that being black does not make me Black.
Blackness in western culture and theories often erroneously accounts for only the identity of African Americans. I’ve also come to learn that African Americans do not consider Africans to be deserving of inclusion in their identity circle. Hence, an African who had had a prior misconception of Blackness gets an awakening when they have these encounters with their so-called kin. This dilemma is well captured by Browdy and Milu (2022). Therefore, when Banks writes of the codification of past, present, and future Black culture (p. 16), I cannot help but wonder if my Blackness is accounted for in that rhetorical call to action.(180) [TO-08]
[Banks, 2011; Browdy & Milu, 2022]