I can pass, but I will always choose to out myself because blackness is power. The coolest thing about me is being black.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2016-12-12 00:12Z by Steven

I can pass, but I will always choose to out myself because blackness is power. The coolest thing about me is being black. When they assume otherwise, I do not get mad or accusatory; I understand the complexity of genes and phenotypes. I embraced the role of house slave when I resignated with Isaiah in Birth of a Nation because we have been cultured to compare each other’s pain. My insides are screaming: “I HURT TOO.” Yet, I know that feeling robbed of my heritage, spliced, and everything but whole does not compare to the aggressions darker folks face. I know that at the end of the day, I am privileged, I get to live.

Gabrielle Pilgrim, “More than a house slave,” Medium, November 20, 2016. https://medium.com/@gpilgrim/more-than-a-house-slave-2bfeb8ad6eac.

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More than a house slave

Posted in Articles, Communications/Media Studies, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2016-12-11 23:23Z by Steven

More than a house slave

Medium
2016-11-20

Gabrielle Pilgrim

“It’s my black girl who looks like a white girl with a tan and a bad hair day.”

I saw Birth of a Nation and I liked it, as much as one can like a movie that gruesomely shows her ancestors being tortured, raped, beaten, broken, and lynched. Today, I am not analyzing the film. I thought it was cinematically great: I left mad, but inspired. I was particularly drawn to the house slave Isaiah (played by Roger Guenveur Smith) as I am regularly fascinated with multiracial, racially ambiguous, and lightskin black folks.

I don’t know if nonblack people are aware of the “black enough” vs “not black enough” spectrum, but it is real — so real. Colorism is real. The fulfillment or lack of fulfillment of stereotypes is real. Middle to upper-middle class black folks may experience feeling like “not enough.” Childish Gambino voices his struggles with justifying his blackness: “Culture shock at barber shops cause I ain’t hood enough / We all look the same to the cops, ain’t that good enough?” Biracial/multiracial black folks may experience feeling like they are “not enough:”…

Read the entire article here.

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