Identity: A true truth, or a puddle in the rain?

Whether blackness, the sadly estranging but existent racial profile, is a reality to be faced, and its ramifications borne with pride - or a red-herring to be eschewed and truth discovered from underneath it, is a dilemma I’ll admit constantly plagues the mind.

One cannot be faulted for imagining that the stark contrasts drawn within humankind along the lines of complexion are something that has existed since the inception of our species – for the concept of life today appears so predominantly hinged onto what tint of black, or shade of white one bears upon their skin.

It has been the noble intention of scholars within and without the continent to tackle the at once remotely abstract, at once deeply personal subject of racial profiling and race-relations as the world experiences them.

Two texts I read recently, one on the troubled spirit of a Caribbean immigrant to Britain trying to label themselves and fix their location in the fabric of British society; and the other of an Art-history scholar perplexed at the readiness with which the academic world has so indifferently accepted all that is white to represent a yard-stick against which all other variations form the ‘normal’ may be gauged.

The migrant’s discourse for me, raised a key question – why must it be necessary in the first place for a person to physically remove themselves from their home in pursuit of a better existence in a place where they are compelled to change (or at best validate) their perceived identity.

And related, I find that the core complaint of the second discourse on Art-history offered a meaningful response to the absurdity of the first treatise; why must colored people go out of their way to accept a definition referenced to an external standard? Why would black elites be prepared to flee in cowardice from the turmoil at home for a European destination, instead of embracing the honor of staying and fighting to build a better society for an indigenous posterity?

- Solomon Manzi,

Jan, 2015