My thoghts and feelings

this is just a shitpost but maybe ill actually add something to here

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We continue to indulge the politically wrong-headed, counterproductive, and even reactionary features of the 'representative black voice' industry in whatever remains of our contemporary public sphere. And we never reckon with the truly disturbing presumption that any black person who can gain access to the public microphone and performs familiar rituals of 'blackness' should be recognized as expressing significant racial truths and deserves our attention. This presumption rests on the unexamined premise that blacks share a common, singular mind that is at once radically unknowable to non-blacks and readily downloaded by any random individual setting up shop as a racial voice. And despite what all of our age’s many heroic narratives of individualist race-first triumph may suggest to the casual viewer, that premise is the essence of racism.

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What is blackness? Is it cultural (eg: Africana culture; what does Africana even mean outside of a purely sociohistorical context in or relating to American (continental) slavery)? Is it biological (eg: pigmentation, hair texture, etc.)? Is it sociological (eg: race as social construct)? Or an uneven mix of all three?

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“When are people going to realize that they don't own people? When are black people going to learn that they don't own black people? When is humanity going to realize they don't own humanity? I suppose never, which is when we'll all realize at once that we are God's children and we don't even really know God. The alternative belief is more comforting and wrong.

So it's easy to ask, where are all the black people? The answer is disappointing on the surface. The black people are still at the back of the bus. But they are not who you think they are and their reasons for being there are more than the simple answer implies.

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One must be wary of drawing any defining lines around blackness: the concept is too malleable for containment. Blackness is not just skin colour, but a polysemous consciousness.

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