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Centuries of... [1]
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Date: 2025-04-05
One of my favorite sayings in Black culture is “Not all skin folks are kin folks”. One of the hazards of being a light skin Black woman, is that people automatically assume you’re not Black Black, as in you’re just not that attached to your ethnicity and history because well… you’re not that Black right? Or even you’re not really Black are you?
Combine this with the fact that most non-Black folks have no clue as to what we mean by Black Culture and you’ve got a recipe for misunderstanding that would win the Nobel prize for confusion.
If asked most people would say that “culture” is about arts and traditions, but stating something and understanding what you’ve said are two very different things. And that’s because white Americans have forgone culture, they have failed to cultivate and grow a real culture when they departed from the shores of their own oppressors. The reason they make heroes out of their monsters is because the only tradition they seem to want to keep whole is that of being oppressors and conquerors and as there are no countries to really conquer anymore they reverted to conquering and oppressing those who are different in their own lands.
To get back to culture, it is not about how dark or light your skin color is. It is about living and experiencing life from your culture’s point of view. Living while Black in America is almost its own culture. For any Black person living in the US will be subjected to the same racism that Black Americans face daily, it’s practically the only thing they are willing to do without asking us for our papers.
Culture is not only about what you do but how you do it. It’s about traditions (keeping them alive), it’s about religion (how you live it), it’s about art (how you express it), it’s about food (how you season it), it’s about dance (how you move it), it’s about life (how you fulfill it), it’s about speech (how you word it), it's about music (the rhythm of it), it’s also about family and community (how you come together).
White and Black American cultures have a dynamic in certain aspects; White America loves to claim ownership of things created by other cultures, Black America has learned to evolve because of that, they steal that beat, we create another, they steal that look, we create another. In this modern era of everything being recorded though it’s getting harder for White America to appropriate that which it did not create. Let us not make that stop us from innovating though fam.
We’ve strengthened our bonds in our community, we call each other, fam, aunties, uncles, sis, bro, no matter the lack of blood ties, they have severed the ties of community by focusing on “nuclear” family values, mom-dad-child, once they are in a relationship, they disown their own parents, how does one keep traditions and culture when you sever the branches of your own family so thoroughly?
We care for one another despite the myth of “black on black crime” when one of us is killed unjustly we protest, we march, we demand justice. I’ve seen countless posts of white people saying, “well white people are killed unjustly too and you don’t see us protesting!”… do you even realize the import of your words? The question you should be asking yourselves is why aren’t you protesting the injustice done to your own!
Several times I’ve asked white people on social media, to define their culture, only to be met with superficialities or claims of cultural ownership of other ethic cultures. There is a reason we call culture our roots, because it grounds us, it reminds us of who we are and even though Black folks were transplanted from another continent to the US, we planted our feet and grew roots, white people severed their roots and never grew them back.
Without roots you cannot grow.
#ThePoet
Muriel Vieux – April 5th, 2025, ©All rights reserved
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