"You're Not Really Black, Though..."

Right.
I'm not...really.
Really?
Sigh...

"Hereigohavingtoexplainthisagain" I think rolling my eyes internally.
I'm like, 15 or 16, working at the movie theater, and as I take that time to do that invisible eye roll, as young as I am, I patiently explain to, and educate, my fellow popcorn-serving cinema colleague, that while, yes, I was born in Jamaica, raised in good old Broooohken Arroooohhh, and I speak with the appropriate BA affectation, (which means, not "black"?), that I, in fact, can be, and am both.
I am black, and I am Jamaican. My nationality and my race (which I'm learning is a false construct - sigh...what next?) are not one and the same.

It has hit me in the 20+ years since that moment, that that statement indicated that I was palatable...I was not the "black" they were used to or expected. Sigh again...I really never thought about these things until high school, because in my home, they were not discussed. We just KNEW who we were. I don't know if my parents imparted self-worth and self-awareness to us through the umbilical cord or what, but my brother and I GOT IT, and we STILL DO. By virtue of today's climate, this conversation of race and identity has become even more constant for me, but when I was younger, it was nothing I had to talk about as often.

Disclaimer here: Some people don't want to call themselves "black." I appreciate that, but for me, it is not a negative. It is my choice in self-identification. Period. It indicates no lack of self-awareness or any acquiescing to a "slave mentality." Step away from me with that indictment. I'm not conflicted.

I am not American, I am not African, and really, my Jamaican-ness matters more to me than even my color-ness.

Watching Zadie Smith and Chimamanda Ngozi Adiechie discuss matters of race, class, womanhood, literature, etc., and hearing Chimamanda saying she has no desire for "policing blackness," I can say I agree 100%.

Why we try to own how others define themselves escapes me. That's not my job or my business. But I understand...it helps provide context and possibly comfort in relating for some. Sorry, I am not striving to make you comfortable. I'm not even sure I need to be comfortable all the time.

So, here I am, approaching 40, and yet, an enigma to so many but myself. :-)  It sort of amuses me when others sit trying to figure me out, because maybe they feel I should be as confused about who and what I am as they are about who I am, and quite likely, who they are.

Recently, it hit me how inundated I've been with this matter of identity in context of race and culture when I was talking with my cousin who lives in Jamaica, about something racial, and she looked at me quizzically, and said succinctly, "Jamaicans don't think about those things." And she was right to a great extent. Certainly some do, but most don't. In that moment, everything in me wanted to go and take a dip in the waters off the coast of my motherland, and wash off these American notions of race and the idea that it matters... In that moment I immediately wished I were as evolved as to not be affected by the climate in this country, and to be able to have the sensibility and clarity that I heard in my cousin, but that's the nature of this beast we call race in America.

So, even as I'm admittedly affected, I'm not unclear about me, and I really don't care to be clearer about anyone else than I am myself.

Really.