Afro Denial and the Dance of Acceptance

What really interested me about Carter's piece "'Black' Cultural Capital and the Conflicts of Schooling" is the emphasis she places on "acting." She argues that the "whiteness" or "blackness" each of the students in her study exhibits is really part of an elaborate performance--a dance of cultures. As white culture represents the dominant culture of power, many of the students interviewed felt that they needed to learn the steps to successfully mimic this dance of power if ever they should be called up on stage. Yet they never really forgot that this was just a recital, that they were not in fact the "white swan." Loretta Lincoln addresses this awareness in her interview saying "But there is, it is going to be times in your life where you are going to have to put on a little act, or a little show to get the extra budge of whatever, you know"(60).

For the cultural straddlers like Loretta, this performance was far from one sided. Like the backup dancer/understudy trying break into the spotlight, these straddlers must prefect more than one role at a time. Both Loretta and Moesha discuss how they felt more comfortable, more themselves, when using black vernacular. While they "accepted the idea that to be socioeconomically mobile, [they] needed to speak Standard English. At the same time, [they] valued the speech codes that [they] shared with Black friends and family, which for [them] fostered community and group cohesion" (60).

Yet that "cohesion" can be threatened when one decides to stay in "character" too long. Bettina eludes to this when she admits that her friends teased her and "said that she 'talked white'" because "she seldom used her 'black' speech codes" (61). Bettina's friends assumed that she was confusing her "real" self with the role that she was required to play outside of their community. Carter argues that for Bettina "the benefits of dominate cultural capital outweighed the rewards of her peers' full acceptance as an authentic Black person" (61).

After reading about Bettina, I couldn't help but think of a former student named Kevin. Kevin was a white kid who really loved hip-hop culture and embraced everything from its music to its clothes to its slang. Like Jamie, the Puerto Rican boy, Carter discusses early on in his work, Kevin "used his taste for music as a means to fit in" (55). But unlike in Jamie's case, it wasn't Kevin's Black or Latino friends who called attention to his "acting" but rather his white peers who gave him the nickname "Casper" and teased him for trying to "act black." These students had already defined who Kevin was suppose to be based on his race (how he was suppose to speak, what he was suppose to listen to, who he was suppose to associate with, etc.) and because he failed to meet their criteria, he was seen as "inauthentic." As a freshman this scrutiny from his white peers was something Kevin struggled with immensely. It caused him to get into several fights, most of them verbal, but a few of them physical, as he tried to defend himself as an authentic person--not white or black--just a person (this is who I am; this is what I like).

This idea of authenticity was at the root of a fight between Eric Michael Dyson, an author and professor of sociology at Georgetown, and Bill Cosby over what it means to be "black" in today's society. If you are unfamiliar with this controversy, Bill Cosby gave a speech (now referred to as the Pound Cake speech) at an NAACP gala in 2004 commemorating Brown vs. the Board of Education which admonished the black community for essentially not doing more to help black children gain entrance into the culture of power. Dyson took exception to Cosby's characterization of the black community and eventually wrote a book called Is Bill Cosby Right?. Dyson's interview with NPR entitled "Is Bill Cosby Right or Is the Black Middle Class Out of Touch?" discusses his views on Cosby, poverty, and black culture in the 21st century. It is really interesting and speaks to a number of issues that have been brought up in class so far. But more directly, it illustrates the battle over who gets to define "blackness" and the implications of those definitions.

Overall I think the underlying issues presented in Carter's article all speak to the issue of acceptance. And while those of us who belong to the culture of power will probably never have to validate our "whiteness," we have all at some point in our lives had to defend our individual identities from the insidious pressures of conformity. This dance of acceptance goes on all the time. Our students come to us dancers of varying ability and experience levels who have just started to develop their own unique dance style. Still unsure of themselves, they look to their peers for validation. Any move too far removed from the carefully choreographed routine crafted by our various cultural groups brings about criticism. And thus the challenge becomes figuring out how to fit in without giving up too much of ourselves in the process.

I'll wrap this up with a comic strip from Aaron McGruber's Boondocks: Right to Be Hostile. This is excerpt from a longer narrative thread (which can be viewed in its entirety on the blog Nappturology 101) about an upper middle-class, bi-racial, fifth grader named Jazmine who is having difficulty accepting that she has an afro. She longs to fit in with the other girls at her primarily white elementary school and feels that her hair sets her apart. Here, in a community where Jazmine is one of the few students of color, any cultural capital that she may earn by accepting her "blackness" is far outweighed by the cultural capital offered to her by denying her "blackness" in order to better fit in with her white friends. Below her friend Huey is attempting to coax her out of this denial:

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H: Here… Take my pick. Really. Think of it as a gift.

J: I don’t want your stupid pick Huey… I don’t care what you say. I DON’T. I DON’T. I DON’T!!!

H: (Sigh) So sad.

J: What?!

H:You’re suffering from “Afro-Denial.” Textbook case.

J: Afro Denial?

H: This looks serious. I better start planning the intervention.