Being black enough

T.D. Brown / Culpeper Star Exponent
Published: May 23, 2007

Everyone who knows me knows that I have some deep-rooted issues about being "black enough." I may look the part but I have never measured up to acting and sounding black, which, when you read between the lines, means an uncultured, ill-mannered individual.

Barack Obama, thus far the only black person in the run for the presidency, is another one in this boat. I will use the term black loosely because Obama is biracial and of course, that means he's not totally black.

It kills me when black people say another black person is "not black enough," as we have with Obama. To me, "not black enough" implies that a black person has to have some darker side to his nature in order to pass the "black" test. It implies that the only real black people are those who have had hard lives or have skeletons in their closets that would spell the end of them if let out. It kills me because if these same "not black enough" people passed the black test, no one would trust them!

If Obama were dark skinned, had a baby's mama and he came from Detroit instead of Hawaii would that make him more credible- If you say yes, then what does that say about your social standards for black males- It says that you believe the hype about the average black man and your mental picture of him does not include the words educated and successful.

People want to point fingers because Obama can't relate to us, but "us" is just as diverse as the next ethnicity. Sure, we have some blacks who struggle financially, but we have some who don't. We have some blacks who have children by more than one person, but there are certainly those who don't. And for every negative stereotype of black people, you can say the same for other races. You can't tell me that blacks are the only ones in poverty and you can't tell me that we're the only ones without college degrees.

What does being black mean- According to some one-hit-wonder rappers called Young Black Teenagers, being black is not a skin color, but a state of mind. That's really cute coming from a group with no black members, but you have to almost applaud them. The bottom line is sometimes to me being black, is just that: a skin color. Some things really don't make a difference to me one way or the other and only when I run into people who use terms like "black enough" do I wonder if being black is a mentality instead of reality.

T.D. Brown is a former Culpeper News intern. She is a VCU graduate and a member of the U.S. Army Reserves, where she is a public affairs NCO in the communications office.