Call Me Anything But Black

On July 7th, using a white Wilson Factor limited edition tennis racket, Venus Williams won her fourth Wimbledon Title beating Marion Bartoli in two straight sets. Twenty third ranked Ms. Williams beat the second seed Maria Sharapova, the fifth seed Svetlana Kuznetsova, and the sixth seed Ana Ivonavic, and a number of other players to win the title. A number of people had written Ms. Williams off as a has been, but the twenty seven year old from Lynwood, California made a lot of people chomp on their gloomy forecast of her career and her skills.

I was reading about Ms. Williams’ achievement in a story on the internet’s Yahoo! News. The story included a brief interview with Ms. Williams’ boyfriend, pro golfer Hank Kuehne, who was very supportive and proud of his woman. I can’t remember what he said exactly. But, once I read Ms. Williams had a boyfriend, I suddenly had the urge to look up who this guy was. That’s not quite true and I should confess that I suddenly had the urge to look the man up to see what race he was. I had suspected that the man was white. I don’t follow golf but if there was a black golfer, especially one dating Venus Williams, I would like to think that I would have heard about him by now. But my suspicions were confirmed when I found his picture.

A number of high profile young black celebrities do little to hide and a lot to promote their preference for an interracial relationship. This phenomenon should be no surprise considering how many black celebrities do their best to distance themselves from the blackness. These days, to call someone with an obvious elevated melatonin count as black could result in a civil suit for slander or libel for defamation of character.

Ask an obviously black celebrity a question like, what kind of impact do you feel your example makes on the black community? A typical response may go something like, Well my mother was only ninety two percent black. My mother’s grandmother’s father was half white so that makes me three percent Caucasian. I’d like to ignore the fact that his other half was Mexican. My father was black but he was adopted by a Japanese woman and an Irish man when his mother, their maid, passed. So technically, by association, the fourteen years he spent in their household was good for a six percent association a piece so if you divide their input by two and correlate the remainder against the obvious, but yet to be proven, black majority of heritage and you’ll see I have a great deal of marketability to a number of different races. If those black children see me as a role model I really must say that I don’t want to be considered a, quote unquote, “black” (raise hands to make sure you visually add quotations to the speech) celebrity. Also, I must add that my mother was propositioned by a man from the Philippines once who looked like he was from Tibet. So to summarize, I think I have appeal to virtually every race on the planet. I like to think of my self as a Causianblajapirishtibetian.

Some people look at black celebrities who are able to shed the stigma of being obviously black and commend them for their success at adopting a more generic persona that has appeal for people of all races, not just, quote unquote, “black” people. However, this is more of the subtle negative programming that goes into being a black person in America. Black people have been programmed to believe in order to be truly successful one must reject the black neighborhood, the black community, the black history, the black condition, and now the blackness we see in the mirror. I understand how people may want to do whatever they can to keep their marketability as high as possible to earn as much as financially possible. But a number of black people have been able to do very well for themselves and keep their overall public appeal without doing anything to reject or minimize their African ancestry. History is chock full of black actors, singers, athletes, business people, and others who managed to keep their obvious racial integrity intact without succumbing to the need to deny who they are and where they come from. And very few white celebrities come out and say things like, Well my daddy’s mother’s father was one third black so technically I have appeal to everybody. White celebrities automatically have their mass appeal without doing their genealogy speech.

And whether or not these obviously black celebrities realize it or not they are teaching impressionable people and children in the black community to dump that African baggage at their earliest opportunity. A lot of people watch and learn from their example on how to deny their ancestry. And a lot of black people who suffer from the condition of not liking or appreciating their blackness are more than happy to follow their playbook and assimilate into the generic American culture while rejecting their African culture. They may choose only to date other races or they may choose to minimize or even deny their heritage. Some may go so far as to call themselves mutts or a Cablinasian. More than likely they would welcome the chance to be an Anythingbutblackian.