black-space
What is it like growing up as an African American in Milwaukee?
Well… one of the first things I learned as a Black Person was that my identity and personhood would inevitably be attributed to the Dark Continent, Africa.
“African American,” and linked to my “shithole” motherland, a place where you find yourself want of clean water, education, healthcare, or safety for your children. An inhumane “land of promise.” But which land am I tethered to? Africa? Or America?
Would that even change anything?
In the beginning was my life.
I grew up blissfully unaware that I came from “somewhere different.” My neighborhood was not “rough,” it was home. I was not “well spoken,” I just spoke.
It wasn’t until school that I learned that I was “different.” It was a private school, outside the hood and under the watching eyes of God. I know that my parents meant only the best, but this became the backdrop to my education.
I learned that I came from some “other” place, and as I returned home my shy, awkward life ended; now it was my weird, black life.
As I learned more about my skin, I learned how my ancestors were stolen and how that curse trickled down to me. I wasn’t just Black, I was African America; expected to give my time, my body, and my life to make my oppressors rich.
As much as some may want to believe, many of us aren’t living in a post-Racial world yet. Racism has just taken a different form: Separate but Equal.
We can have our own spaces, our own businesses, and our own schools. We can pour our blood into the dirt as those with power and money fight for justice while turning a blind eye.
The West has long used darkness as a metaphor for the unknown. Dark Ages, Dark Webs, Dark Matter, and Dark Magics: all of these things can’t be (or maybe just won’t be) observed from afar.
Knowing that, it’s no surprise that Dark Skin is invisible too. It becomes the Black Hole in society, where black bodies no longer matter.
In these spaces, the melanin in our skin transmutes reality into something “Other”. But if Race is an illusion, what does it illuminate about us?
To find out, let’s journey beyond that veil, to see how people live close to the heart of darkness, in Black Space.