A Black Bone To Pick With You

As I have aged my hands have become darker with more lines and etchings of time. Not that I was ever a redbone or a cream coffee or even carmel; I was just a lighhter brown.

Does it bother me that my melatin seems to be going to the darker side of the spectrum with age? No. That is the least of my worries. I use to hear as a small child the darker the berry the sweeter the juice as all of the men ran after the 'high yellow' girls and the other black girls of the south tried to stay out of the sun so they would not become darker. So I knew some one was lying with the darker the berry line.

Why am I bringing this all up you may wonder. Well, are you wondering? Good. My first goal met.

I had the pleasure of meeting two well put together dark sisters last week. The first I shared a seat with on a shuttle and she somehow just began to tell me how offended she and her family were by the movie the "Help" because her grandmother and aunt were teachers in Mississippi during that time of the 1960's and her family were never maids.

Oh, I had met this type before. Ashamed. Angry. How dare you think my family ever cleaned for whites while that same lifestyle exists for Mississipians in 2012. Self important, yet irrelevant in the scope of the world, the movie was not about your family. It was about a point in time in which many people lived and suffered. Wonder than since her family were 'learned' did they help the Freedom Riders so they could vote? But, I don't get into scuffels with those who become angry when blacks are portrayed as slaves or less than human.

My next lady, well we had been joking and talking for hours. We were friendlier strangers. Then I said, The one thing I've been waiting to do and will accomplish in 2012 is tracing my family line back to Africa using genetics. She looked at me and said "My family is 1, 2, 3, 9, generations removed from slavery. I will never trace back to Africa." She seemed snappish, upset, ignorant because my mother, nor grandmother, were slaves and I loved learning genealogy as I had explained and could not wait to know what tribe I belonged to or what area of Africa my maternal ancestors originated.
                                                  
Africans think black Americans are not black enough and have sold out and black Americans seem to not feel any connection accept denial of Africa. What is wrong?

I wanted to label or title this blog Black Confusion or Hate because the lines have blurred.

Are black people so broken until we have a battle with the darkness, lightness, origin, occupation, remembramce of our liineage, or forgetfulness of our struggles for freedom? Do we just have a problem with BLACKNESS?
                                                          
Has the definition been so harsh of the word 'black' until there is not a definition we can agree on what it means to be the RIGHT BLACK? Who is keeping score and what is the reward, because it is WE tearing each other down for not being a correct black.

I don't know. We say it is 'them' or 'they' who hate black people. But, I say 'we' are doing a pretty good job of it too.

So, this is my black bone I have to pick with black people. Do we love our blackness? Or do we love our own definition of what BLACK means to each of us?