"Black" Americans are the only people who came to the United States without being en masse a distinct ethnic group. They were originally an aggregate of all the persons from West Africa who were brought to work in the U.S and were fused into a slave population.

[As a sociologist I am aware of exceptions: among others, people of West Indian or other background who have merged with the U.S. "black" group. For example, two notable African American leaders, Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey, were of West Indian origin.]

Since they were not only a combination of many disparate ethnicities but also a "repository" for persons with acknowledged West African ancestry, the linchpins of their collective psyche are different from the linchpins of other peoples who came to the U.S. as distinct ethnic groups. One of the linchpins has been rejection from outsiders. Let me be a little clearer: As I said to Kay Madson years ago ("Musings on Reconstruction"), I believe that "black" Americans would have become loyal Americans, intermarried and amalgamated with others (like every other immigrant group to the U.S.), if they had not been cordoned off with hypodescent and/or oppression. Why do I believe this? Because amalgamation of West Africans from the same localities happened in Mexico. ("Latinos and their Escape Hatches/African Ancestry in Latinos: Documentation").

The "black" group, born of slave oppression (by compressing disparate West African nationalities into one group suitable for slave labor) and nurtured by rejection (hypodescent and oppression), has created mores and folkways demanding a continuation of the very thing which created and nurtured them in the first place: One Drop thinking.

To cut off One Drop thinking for many of these "black" individuals may be tantamount to asking a Chicano to stop speaking Spanish or convert to Protestantism: it is a severe adjustment.

That being said, why do I write for Interracial Voice (in light of the fact that I have known the above things since adulthood).

Because, ultimately, One Drop thinking is bad for "blacks", just as male chauvinistic thinking and behavior (while certainly formative and "nurturing" for lots of men) are ultimately bad for men.

No matter how much the One Droppist "blacks" rail at the multiracial community, they might as well try to stop the Pacific with a McDonald's coffee cup. The societal conditions present today simply do not support the kinds of things which propelled the African American group into existence, or sustained it in the past.

There should come to light other, alternative ways of sustaining the African American nationality. I believe that African Americans have a right to claim themselves as an ethnic group and go from there. There is much richness in their past -- spirituals, blues, jazz, r&b, foods, folklore, patterns of expression, etc. -- to warrant their celebrating those things among themselves and anyone else who would wish to claim being African American. Where I differ from the One Droppers is this: I believe that membership in their group should be voluntary, culturally based and founded on positive uniting from within -- they may even at some point in the future wish to remove "race" from their plate entirely.

Recently, the movie industry has responded to this idea of positive African American ethnicity of which I am speaking. A series of films featuring predominately African American casts of young actors going through life's rituals and passages has appeared. The characters display little "hole in the donut" thinking, mention deprivations mainly in passing and focus on some of the things which, in happening to them, could have happened to people of any ethnic group. To be sure, they don't sugar-coat everything. One movie had a scene in which some of the characters were forced to participate in a robbery at a convenience store. At another time, some of the characters mentioned "mackin' ", a term of obvious meaning to many African Americans. Nevertheless, the movies come across as dealing with a group that is stigma-less and participants in the human comedy, like everybody else.

As we multiracials increasingly assert our right to exist, it is my sincere hope that African Americans assert their right to exist -- by positive unifying agents and as people who have a lot more in common with others than differences.

William Javier Nelson, Ph.D.

---

---

©2001 all rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part prohibited without
the express written consent of Interracial Voice.