For those who are wondering, blacker than black comes from the movie CB4 starring Chris Rock, from the scene where Dead Mike does his own thing. In the song he just kept repeating that he was Black and Blacker than Black because he was Black, while standing in front of a red, black and green African flag, dressed in an all black militant garb, and holding up black power fist! Funny scene in a funny movie, but just as most black comedies tend to do, there’s always a message behind the madness.
In this movie they attempted to cast a light on how fake these so called “real” rappers are. In this particular scene, the writer wanted to point out how Black men get over zealous in the whole Black struggle ideology and are way Blacker than need be. Thus he becomes Blacker than Black!
Over the past decade I’ve used the phrase Blacker than Black when describing Black people who are way too Afrocentric, as if being overly Afrocentric will solve all our modern day problems. These people tend to equate everything to reconnecting to our roots in Africa and everything will be alright after that. Most of the time they have no valid plan to move Black people forward, it’s always re-connect with Africa.
I’m cool with that but what about re-connecting to our roots will propel us into the 21st century as a better people? This is a serious question because the only thing I can utilize from the past is the fact that I know where my people have been, what they went through and that we should never go through that again, but that tells me nothing about how to catapult my people into a better space centuries to come.
I’ve done the Blacker than Black thing and realized that it gets you nowhere. It’s cool to have pride in ones ancestors, but to the point of neglecting now and the future to wallow in the past is detrimental to the future of our people.
I can find myriads of things right now that will propel our people forward. We own over 1.1 million business’, we control close to $1 trillion in this economy, one of the top astrophysicist in the world is Black, there are multitudes of doctors, lawyers, pilots, multi-millionaires, a couple billionaires, fashion designers, engineers, astronauts, bloggers, internet based business owners. We have people in every conceivable area of expertise building our future right now.
And the number 1 thing is President Barack Obama. He showed millions of Black kids the world over what an education and hard work can do for them. He shattered the glass ceiling gave rise to a new hope that just 5 years ago was the climax of a whimsical fantasy of African American children in their youth. The, I’m going to be the first Black president fantasy that arises in grade school and quickly is cast aside in high school when life’s harsh realities set in, type of mentality usually gives rise to the Blacker than Black thought pattern later in life.
Blacker than Black holds you for a while, but as you get older and start moving forward in life, you shed a little bit at a time until you’re just Black. A person that understands the reality that we live in and strives to become prosperous and happy despite the racism that they may encounter from time to time.
The only people who continue to hold on to the Blacker than Black ideology tend to be those who feel like society has left them stranded and they don’t know how to maneuver through the BS, so they go the opposite direction and dig themselves in for the long haul, all the while not realizing that the Blacker they become, the less likely they will see the future as promising. And the less likely you see the future as promising, the more likely you are to treat the past as the present, and long for the “good ole days” of Black greatness.
What they fail to see is that Black greatness has never stopped, even during slavery. Slavery gave rise to some of the greatest Black people in history. Inventors, writers, abolitionist, scholars, everything, and that’s during slavery. After slavery we’ve done even more, and are still doing more every single day. We are still shattering myths and shining through the darkness cast on us by a racist society and this will never end. The only thing that slows it down is not recognizing this truth and longing for an age where Blackness ruled the world from the African continent. But guess what, Black man rules the world from the seat of Power here in the USA. Why not aspire to Obama’s level, or other Black men that we can see right now doing the things that will make our future bright. Let’s stop trying to be Blacker than Black and just be Black. Being Black has proven that it can get us a long way, we don’t need to harking back to the days of Egypt to be great again, we are great NOW, so start acting like it!