Mis(sex)education Of The American Negro

     Ok a little background I’m African American.  I grew up in Chicago in a middle class neighborhood.  I remember celebrating Kwanzaa as a child and I had a idealized Africa in my head.  I thought there was a nation that was unscathed by racism, slavery, and colonialism.  I thought the people their were waiting on the shores with open arms for their brothers who had been stolen from the motherland.  Perhaps my parents and the others that I celebrated this holiday with were wrong for painting such a simplistic picture in our young heads.  Or maybe they were just simplifying things to make it easier for us to digest. 
   
      Anyhow the school I went to even though is was approximately half black did not teach us anything about Africa.  Let me explain, there is something in America called white flight meaning neighborhoods gentrify.  When blacks move in, whites move out.  Ten years before we moved in this area was all white.  By the time I was in kindergarten it was half black.  By the time I was in High school you could fit the number of white kids on 1 small round lunch table.  I think the gay table was bigger than the white table.  Our teachers however remained in large part white.  They could not relate to most of the children, and when they taught us about our culture they often misinformed us.  To this day rather it was intentional or unintentional, we are scarred because of it.  I remember having culture day where the class would walk from room to room, and in each room there would be a different country.  And a teacher would be their describing the customs in each country.  Their had to be 15 different classroom cultural setups at least.  Not one was of a black country.  No Nigeria, no Ghana, no Jamaica, no South Africa even.  There couldn’t have been more than 5 Oriental kids In the whole school and there were setups on Japan and Thailand.

     On another occasion I remember a teacher pointing out the different skin tones amongst the black children and telling us that we weren’t all really black.  Maybe she had good intentions but my parents raised their child to have better sense.  I’m light skinned and I love my color but I don’t pride myself in being light.  I realize the legacy that my skin comes from.  Black is black.  This was in 2nd grade mind you.  We don’t talk of race at all but when we do it’s to show the black kids how to separate themselves.

     In the 8th grade I remember arguing with my history teacher who was telling us slavery wasn’t that bad.  We’d talk about the American Civil war for about a month but they gave the subject of slavery considerably less attention.  I could go on and on but in the end I want to make two points.  One I’m 26 this wasn’t that long ago.  Two it really has not changed. 

     However most of the insults that were thrown around in grammer was how fat someones mother was or how black she was.  And these are both light and dark children slinging these insults.  Most of the TV shows if it was to show anything about Africa would show what seemed like very backwards and primitive people.  Cannibals, grass skirts, spear chucking black people.  Always naked.  To see breasts on tv as a child was rare unless you had HBO, or was watching the national geographic channel.  I always wonders why the breasts of the white woman was censored.  While the breast, the sexuality, the beauty of the black woman was written off as science.  As a child I did not see a lot of beautiful black women on TV until they started showing up in rap videos again scantily clad.  Then the women which we would show in our videos were considered beautiful because they had a few white features.  Big booty(ok that’s black), light or tan skin, keen nose, long straight hair.  So young black boys are left believing that whites are more beautiful.  Black beauty must not exist if the black African woman is not censored or guarded as the white woman is.  And if a black African American woman is  beautiful it is because she has some white blood in her.  And if I did find that national geographic show even remotely sexually arousing something is wrong with me. 
     Another point is the shows that show the starving black Ethiopians and Sudanese, and Kenyans so on and so on.  They do this without giving us any hope.  Without showing us anything positive about those nations.  This speaks to many things.  You begin to associate blackness with poverty.  Your also left believing that blacks cannot govern their own affairs.  We know this is not true, but automatically  you start thanking your lucky stars that you are in America and that you have white people to handle all the difficult affairs of running the country.
     As you all know black men like big butts.  In the 6th grade I finally threw off my colonial mentality that only white women where truly beautiful.  He name was Markiesha Perkins, and although she didn’t know it till much later I fell in love with her.  A little brown skin girl in gym class.  I was amazed by her features and her body, as were a lot of the other boys in class.
     I had a white friend.  As a matter a fact I still have this friend.  Around this time I’m over his house and he decides to show me a tape.  He takes me into his fathers media room where he opens up this amoir.  This closet is full of pornos.  He takes out one that has a vulgar cartoon on the front and pops it in.  It was a cartoon porno, depicting a tarzan character the white king of the jungle and a English explorer sir Livingston I presume, running through Africa and screwing big lip, big booty, big ti**y African women.  They were swinging through trees to catch them and screwing by the campfires.  My friend was both amused and excited as I was too I suppose.  That cartoon ended and It went on to the next cartoon which was of an arab sultan who couldn’t get his cock up.  But that one didn’t hit me as hard.  The Image of the Africans  scarred me though. 

Welcome to Nairaland first of all.

I like your post.

About the tarzan thing, i still don't get why white people would not admit that they are stuupid? TARZAN WAS WHITE for fxcks sake. He was not black. Tarzan has always been and would be white. Does that mean that white people talk to animals and act like animals?? I mean that's exactly what tarzan's image tells us. That white people run in bushes and screams!
What baffles me is why they refuse to see that. Instead they claim that it's the african people that jump arround in bushes.

You shouldnt let the image of Africa/africans scare you. You are African American... if you check history, You are from Africa.

welcome abroad, great post 


We definitely need to start with black people themselves. Scantily dressed black women shaking all their body parts in Rap and Rnb videos is not exactly the best way to portray our women. Black women referred to as "Hos" and "bitches" in black films does not give other races the impression we respect our women.

We need to respect ourselves if we expect respect from others

yo, gocity, welcome to Nairaland.

as per your talk, i believe it was richly told, so to speak. and who says black women don't have booty!!! . heh heh, just kidding.

like Kanye west once said," Racism is still alive, they concealing it."

:-|
Well even retards r entitled to have an opinion!
....so  little boys aint meant 2 be seen or heard

Lovely post gocity

No way is a thin, anemic, flat-buttoxed, knee-level-hipped, long-nosed, green-eyed blond white girl going to be more delectable than a full-bodied black woman.  The black woman is queen of the earth. How can anybody even compare say paris Hilton to say Beyonce Knowles or Alec Weck for that matter?

The media doesn't have any agenda against blacks.  They never do.  They are just trying to sell stuff.

There are whites in Nigeria, but Nigerian TV shows black models, black actors, black actresses, nollywood movies, more.  Is this because they are trying to send a message to the whites in our midst that black is more important?  That Nigeria is more important than Europe?  No!  They are just showing what they think most people will like to watch.  That's all.  Media has no message except that they want you to be addicted to them so they can make money.  Just like Nairaland.

If that's really so, then it leaves the market wide open for those media networks and advertisers who are willing to tailor their content to suit the blacks.  A business opportunity!

*dies confused*  The internet is not controlled by whites.

I like this post. First because I live in the UK, where the issue of racism is a live one and secondly because this is an issue that has to be dealt with a lot of sincerity.

I believe a lot of black kids especially in the UK have been “miseducated” seriously about their history and their place in the global society which we are in a way now existing in.

I see a lot of black youths who would readily argue with you that they are not of any African heritage because they are “Caribbean”  and/or British and do not belong to any African descent and they in a way do not have any reason to associate with Africa and whatever values are innately African.

Surprisingly, a lot of kids born in the UK, and in fact especially those of Caribbean heritage do not easily want to associate with those born or seriously attached to Africa. I find it bemusing, but that is the reality. Why though, we have to ask. If they did understand their history, they would realise that all black people have either directly or remotely originated from a source- Mother Africa.

I used to struggle a lot initially with this idea, but upon some research, have come to a conclusion that there has been a wide gap in the media dedicated solely to African values. There also have not been a lot of positive role models for black kids especially in black-dominated communities.

Some (and I include myself here) have argued that the role of the media, is largely a reason for the manner in which black people are perceived in their host societies. This is a reason why there have been initiatives by communities to develop their own media networks aimed at championing their causes (and they must be supported in these causes). An example of this is BEN TV in the UK, which is predominantly a Nigerian affair and showcases the talents, issues within communities and aims at projecting the black man in a positive light.

It is changing (at least in the UK) but at an alarmingly slow rate. Britain is being thought of, even surprisingly at official government quarters as a multicultural society. This is a good omen which also needs to be managed properly though as there are serious contentions on that fact alone.
The society is continuing to recognise the contributions of migrant black and other nationalities to the economy and development of modern Britain. You find black people sitting even in the hitherto exclusive House of Lords (there is a Nigerian there now as well – Victor Adebowale).

There are indigenous communities (at least there are vibrant Nigerian, Ghanaian and other communities) in the UK now, as such that there is mini-Lagos in London now (talk of Peckham) where people are not scared to flaunt their “Africanness”. This is good as kids are coming to really identify what makes them different from the rest. It is good to identify this at an earlier stage but care needs to be taken in positively letting the kids understand as well that being different does not offer any exclusivity from the larger societies in which black people have found themselves.
Racism can easily be a two way thing. I maybe be wary of a white man and he wary of my motives as well. This does not augur well for community relations but further destroys any improvements that have been made in integration over the years.


Having said this all, the tasks ahead are enormous but not insurmountable. We have to start to demand that we individually uphold those ideals that make Africans unique, the family system, the sense of community, respect for others etc. and we would be liberating the next generations from exactly what we have been made to face and hopefully destroyed. This I think will greatly improve the manners in which we are perceived by our host societies.

 America is an institution that was built on slavery/racism and that culture is imbibed in the youth from a young age. Even though america is getting better, they are still issues with people not being able to see beyond color and the stereotypes associated with color. You can never really make friends with a white american for some reason, that comfort level is just not there and in an unguarded moment, that friend may say something that will truly offend you. But anyway, I really enjoyed your point about how the white woman's breasts is blurred and the black woman's breasts is left to hang freely and visibly because this is something I struggle with as a black woman. It's hard to feel sexy, you just feel "different"  and not like a sexy woman because society has definitely conditioned black men and white men alike that sexy and seductive is a white woman and the variations on that (arab, asian, latino etc).   So many things all around send messages to black women on a constant basis that we're not as beautiful as the rest and sometimes, people just say it. What hurts the most is when a black man gains some kind of pleasure saying , "black women are ugly/white women are better"  because it's such an unfair statement that is like throwing salt in a wound. Not to talk of the fact that any successful black man must for sure marry a mixed black woman or a non-black woman.  It takes a lot of strength to be a black woman that's why  when I see some of these aneroxic white girls, I can't have sympathy for them because they don't even know.