from NewsOne.com
Cool Like Obama
by Stephane Dunn
The emails, surprisingly, began to flow in shortly after midnight and President-elect Barack Obama’s speech at Grant Park. I had told my students at Morehouse College that we would have an electronic class in lieu of our Wednesday classes. They would have to email me their reactions to our historic election by midnight Wednesday (within twenty-four hours after Tuesdays election night) come what may.
I gave them one mandate: Keep it real.
In that first wave of emails, one steady refrain stood out-I’m proud to be a black man.
The sentiment brought to mind Michelle Obama’s statement, “For the first time, I am proud to be a black American.” Her comment was much maligned in mainstream media. But among the African-American community, however, her statement was anything but unpatriotic and incomprehensible.
Michelle was signifying the historic definition, treatment, and representation of black folk as something less than first class, genuine American citizens. She was echoing W.E.B DuBois’s much referenced articulation of double-consciousness, that curious condition of being American and, yet, via the demonization of one’s own blackness not American too.
My eighteen through twenty-something black male students at Morehouse may not grasp all the historical representations of black masculinity and various names for them that have dogged black male identity in America-Zip Coon and the brute-for example. But they have come of age when the culture and music that in part defines their speech, fashion, and masculinity has been marked dangerous and dysfunctional.
Read the Full Essay @
by Stephane Dunn
The emails, surprisingly, began to flow in shortly after midnight and President-elect Barack Obama’s speech at Grant Park. I had told my students at Morehouse College that we would have an electronic class in lieu of our Wednesday classes. They would have to email me their reactions to our historic election by midnight Wednesday (within twenty-four hours after Tuesdays election night) come what may.
I gave them one mandate: Keep it real.
In that first wave of emails, one steady refrain stood out-I’m proud to be a black man.
The sentiment brought to mind Michelle Obama’s statement, “For the first time, I am proud to be a black American.” Her comment was much maligned in mainstream media. But among the African-American community, however, her statement was anything but unpatriotic and incomprehensible.
Michelle was signifying the historic definition, treatment, and representation of black folk as something less than first class, genuine American citizens. She was echoing W.E.B DuBois’s much referenced articulation of double-consciousness, that curious condition of being American and, yet, via the demonization of one’s own blackness not American too.
My eighteen through twenty-something black male students at Morehouse may not grasp all the historical representations of black masculinity and various names for them that have dogged black male identity in America-Zip Coon and the brute-for example. But they have come of age when the culture and music that in part defines their speech, fashion, and masculinity has been marked dangerous and dysfunctional.
Read the Full Essay @
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Stephane Dunn is the author of Baad Bitches and Sassy Supermamas. She teaches popular culture and African American Studies at Morehouse College.
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