Black people are not a monolith.
Robynn T.
Pleasant Hill, CA
I’m so sick of these questions: “Why are black people so _____?”; “Why do black people do _____?”; “Why do black people act like that all of the time?”
Sorry to break it to you America, but black people can be individuals also. I don’t know why one person acts a certain way any more than you would know why Charlie Sheen acts the way he does.
Can’t speak for all black people.
Sayeeda
Brooklyn, NY
On a predominately white college campus in the late 80’s early 90’s I was often the only African Caribbean person in a class. Anytime issues around African Americans, Caribbean people or Africans came up all heads turned, to me as if I were an expert or authority. My classmates didn’t know this but there is no universal “black” person.
I’m always ashamed of being mixed.
Yvonne
Michigan
Black people have really bad stereotypes that’s why I don’t claim black , but I don’t claim Hispanic either, they have there stereo- types as well.
Ghetto
Hoodlums
Mean
Scary
Constant fights
Gang bangs
Workers
Farmers
A lot of kids
No husband
Poor
When people look at me the first thing they see is colored not who I am. That really hurts me to know that racism is still a part of today’s society, the fact is I’m black and Hispanic, so I get it even harder.. wet back nigger a girl that is going to be pregnant before she gets married , those are things I hear on a daily basis. Even though I laugh it off like it’s a joke sometimes I go home and say “I’m not proud of my ethnicity”. Kids are cruel and I live in today’s childhood society, because I am only 16 years of age there is not much I can do about racism without being thrown in jail… racism needs to stop today!!
Stop blaming whites. Stop committing crimes.
Gary
Submitted via: NPR’s Talk of the Nation
As a police officer most black people talk to me like they want to fight before I even talk to them. They know nothing about me. My Latino partner is always called Uncle Tom. I give respect when I get respect. Why do so many blacks hate me because I’m white? It’s the same question many black people ask, but it won’t be fixed by only blaming whites.
Black people hate black people, too.
Juluis Youngerford,
Atlanta, GA.
Nobody can tell the truth about race, that is, what they think about their own race or other races, because nobody makes nice distinctions between race and class, or between the different types of racial prejudice and hatred, so they can’t say just what they don’t like about others, and they don’t have clear ideas about what they think constitutes their own race. I read recently that many “black people” don’t think that “black people” are a single “people” anymore because the black underclass seems irredeemable; on the other hand, it always amazes me how many black people think that they know just what “blackness” is, and that they are the moral conscience for all other black people. It seems obvious that what black people think makes them black did not make black people black 100 years ago, obvious also that a stubbornly superficial self-understanding drives our racial and “identity” politics. Since people don’t understand what “culture” is, they cherish the silliest folk customs as “authentic,” but of course embrace all the alienating social practices of this country–how “ethnic” or “racial” can you really be if you’re on Facebook?
How “diverse” can we be if most working-class people begun to take comedians, Valley Girls, surfer dudes, and rappers as our models in our speech, if they shop at Wal-Mart, etc.? All this nonsense about “celebrating” “other cultures” and “embracing” people of different races is meaningless–it requires one to overlook the things that the racial or ethnic “Other” does which are unjust, disgusting, intolerable, or otherwise incompatible with one’s own way of life.
