Al Jolson
Recent NAACP identity events have triggered in my mind the Al Jolson memory.
Whether for profit or for psychic mystery masturbation, the communication, creation and packaging of racial identity has defined America.
We sing land of the free , home of the brave( scalps included) and yet the search for who we are as a nation continues to confuse us.
The melting pot, the cauldron, the US is becoming brown, red states, blue states, political mantras of returning America to whatever, makes you want to shake your head or dance away your cares to Paul Whiteman or Cab Calloway.
You can travel across America in a Winnebago, take a short hop in a Buick, and stop in Delaware and Connecticut unaware that these are Native names. (or dormant memory linguistic monuments to death and destruction.)
Whether you can make money on stage be pretending to be black and make buckets of money or find satisfaction in pretending to be black, let's be honest many darker people have tried and are trying to act like lighter people as well.
Whether Thomas Jefferson loved Sally or just found it convenient, laws against interracial marriage were still on the books just a few decades ago.
One drop was viewed as polluting the waters by some, but boy do we seem to be consistently in the storms these days.
Comments
I have never contemplated the option of "passing" or of being anything other than who I am. I have often expressed the old truism; "There are two things I can never change: paying taxes and being black." But there are those I have known who have chosen to "pass" and I bear no judgment toward them.
I still don't know how to wrap my head around the story of the NAACP chapter president who claims that she is black. I don't know what her motives have been, but by all accounts of those who know her, she has been a steadfast and passionate fighter for social justice and the cause of the NAACP. I think that if this woman had simply said, "I choose to identify myself as black and I choose to live my life as a black woman", I probably could accept and embrace that. It would be different, but it would be honest.
What causes discomfort for me is that attempted to create a false narrative, a false life story, denied her own parents and attempted to manufacture a new bio. No matter who we are or what choices we make, those choices need to be honest.