Who is Black? By Rosa ClementeYesterday, an interesting thing happened to me. I was told I am not Black.
I am often asked what I am—usually by Blacks who are lighter than me and by Latinos/as who are darker than me. To answer the $100,000, 000 question, I am a Black Boricua, Black Rican, Puertorriqueña! Almost always I am questioned about why I choose to call myself Black over Latina, Spanish, Hispanic. Let me break it down.
empathy, the one thing that always redeems mankind…If you’re trying to accomplish a task, organizing people around a philosophy can be useful, but limiting. Organizing people around one task to solve one problem that everyone can agree upon regardless of their personal philosophies, beliefs and/or politics is more effective.For example, it’s really terrible that there’s poor Black and White families living without food, electricity and clean water in today’s Mississippi Delta. Then folks can get into discussions about partisan politics (the republican this or democrat that, etc) and spend hours trying to figure out who’s to blame.However, if you re-frame the issue as: there are 4, 5,6 year old children going to bed hungry every night in America’s Mississippi Delta right now. Then everyone can get behind children (regardless of your political, gender, race politics). It’s much easier to get a bunch of people in a room to try to create a project that addresses one particular issue like creating free meals programs for poor kids in this region. It doesn’t solve the entire problem, but it does help us make progress one step at a time.
The Children’s Defense Fund was created as a result of NAACP Civil Rights lawyers getting Bobby Kennedy to tour the Mississippi Delta to examine the condition that children were living in the 60′s. What he found was an American problem, not just a race problem. No electricity, plumbing, food, a feudal sharecropping system that left families destitute and mostly he found hungry, malnourished babies, toddlers with no healthcare or food. So the issue of civil rights got addressed in a different way, but addressed nonetheless.
I’m learning that a story, one person’s story has power…it can create empathy, the one thing that always redeems mankind.