Retaining my Culture

Happy Friday everyone!

This blog post is quite the interesting one because it is relevant to real life culture and events for myself. As an African-American, I have considered (seriously) leaving The United States because of the more overt forms of racisim, systematic oppression, and our our federal government is being represented and ran by our current administrators. I'm not the most liberal of liberals but I have a moral compass and everything from normalizing acts of sexual harassment to defending budgets that assisitng brown people of color to live decent lives is something I do not feel safe in.

What is interesting is that African-American culture is a concoction of internalised, normalized American culture and standards mixed with the history, traditions, and cultural practices of our enslaved ancestors that were able to pass down survival and traditional African practices down  generations. I really don't have anything concrete that accurately represents the African-American culture unless it refers back to slavery tonthe discussion mentions slavery as a catalyst tonwhy the memento is important and valuable.

If I had to pick three items that represented me and my culture to show the world in my new country, I would choose the urn of my son, a copy of the Willie  Lynch letter, and a photo of Barack Obama. These items are not.only significant to me but to my identity as an African-American woman. The most feared person in America is the Black male, let's just be honest. Stereotype and prejudice continue to perpetuate the stigma of danger, aggression, and hypermasculinity onto our Black males.

As the mother of a black son, regardless of him being here in flesh or spirit, I felt the fear of knowing how the workd would view him moments after he was born. His very existence was and remains a  threat in this country. I was nervous not to name him anything too "ethnic", I had already mapped out what programs to put him in after school when he barely was a day old. I even had lectures ready for when he came home and asked why he couldn't hang around certain people- even though they looked like us. I was mentally preparing myself to not only raise my son but keep him alive when every target points at his back.

My son was and remains a strong embodiment of a Black male, a true king. Having him, a photo of another Black male with commanding presence (and the first Black president of The United States) alongside a nasty piece of American history that helped draft the some of the worst laws in our history would be powerful as a chain of progression.

Even as an African-American woman, I find myself wanting to uplift the imagery and perception of our men. Our men are the driving forces and then protectors. With those few items, I am able to show the dark history of American racisim and yet how we have overcome and will continue to prosper.