“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity”. – W.E.B. DuBois, author of The Souls of Black Folk.
“Can a white guy also be a black guy? That’s one of the questions being asked after a student in New Jersey sued his medical school few years ago.
But that simple question doesn’t get to the heart of the matter,” according to a story in The Daily Voice called: Can a white guy be an African American? My answer to the first question is: possibly.
Black people come in all different hues. I would define a Black American as someone who lives in and is affected by the history and context of the African Diaspora. The diaspora includes descendants of slaves, Africans, and others. Haitians would fit the history and context. So would black people from the Carribean. All can trace their roots to Africa at some point in world history. We share many common expriences throughout the world.
“In the movies, controversy inevitably follows when white actors like Robert Downey Jr. play the role of a black character, as he did in the film ‘Tropic Thunder,’” the Daily Voice story reads.
“But in real life, Paulo Serodio is suing his New Jersey medical school because he says he was harassed and kicked out of school for calling himself a “white African American.” Serodio is not of mixed race; both of his parents are apparently white and he has white skin, according to observers. So how does he consider himself an African American? Serodio, 45, was born and raised in the African country of Mozambique. He’s now a naturalized American citizen, making him technically both African and American. In fact, because he was born in Africa, arguably he’s more African American than most blacks in America who use that description. Now Serodio’s background is challenging the popular notion of what constitutes an African American, a term that became increasingly popular or blacks in the U.S. in the late 1980s at the urging of the Rev. Jesse Jackson.”
A white guy cannot be a black guy, because he does not share our history and present context, with all its beauty and pain, joy and suffering Can a white guy be an African American? My answer is … yes.
Seridio is an African American. He is an American of African descent. This shows the problem with that term, first coined by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Due to this language discrepancy, many leaders in our community, including popular Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker, refer to themselves as Black Americans.
DuBois put it best in his thoughts at the beginning of this essay. Race is a dazzingly complex issue, and American blacks are faced with a dual consciousness, always having to relate to a predominately white society, whether they want to, or not. In Seridi’s story, he was given a taste of how many African Americans feel.