What It Means To Be Black In America Research Paper

Talking Black In America addresses how advanced, unique, and culturally important African American English is (Hutcheson and Cullinan, 2017).

As I sit here and think about what it is to be Black in America. I realize how there are so many factors that affect African American people daily. One of the most damaging forces tearing at young black people in America today is the popular culture's image of what an "authentic" black person is supposed to look like and how that person is supposed to act. People assume all black males where raised in a single parent home. People assume that if you are a black male, that you sale drugs or you are really great in some type of sport. If you are a black female, they assume you will have kids by different men, referred to as “baby daddy” or they may not even know who the fathers of their children are. This same society expects African

In his essay, “As Black as We Wish to be,” author Thomas Chatterton Williams tries to paint a picture of a world where the sight of interracial families was still considered an oddity and shows how, over the decades, society has slowly became more acceptable towards the idea. He begins the essay briefly discussing the ignorance of people during the late 1980’s while also elaborating what hardships African Americans have dealt with over the past century. He explains that even with the progression of interracial families and equality of African Americans, a new problem has now risen for interracial children of the future. While either being multiracial, African American, or White, what do they decide to identify themselves as? This is the major question that arises throughout Williams’s argument. While Williams’s supports his argument with unreliable environmental evidence, as well with other statistical evidence. His argument is weakened by an abundance of facts, disorganization, and an excessive use of diluted information.

Prior to viewing the series, I have always felt like race was a social construct that really didn’t represent the diverse civilizations on earth. Anyone who see me would assumes my race is Black however to me race is general terms for my ethnicity. Having been brought up in an Nigerian household I never really completely related to my Black American friends. This really made me question was I truly Black and if so are there different types of Blacks. Racial terms like Black, White, Hispanic, and Asian fail to convey the disparate cultures that their are in the world. Instead the pigeon hole people of a specific skin color by classifying them

Everyone is raised within a culture with a set of customs and morals handed down by those generations before them. Most individual’s view and experience identity in different ways. During history, different ethnic groups have struggled with finding their place within society. In the mid-nineteen hundreds, African Americans faced a great deal of political and social discrimination based on the tone of their skin. After the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans no longer wanted to be identified by their African American lifestyle, so they began to practice African culture by taking on African hairdos, African-influenced clothing, and adopting African names. By turning away from their roots, many African Americans embraced a

Personally, I am all over it on consumers creating their own media because media outlets have purposefully ignored and neglected minorities. For example, I wasn’t well aware of the struggles black Americans have endured or continuing to in America. It was through social media sites like Twitter, Tumblr or YouTube that I truly learned about what it means to be black in America. I learned about police brutality, sexism towards black women, the hyper-sexualization of the black body and all types of racism/sexism because of people taking media into their own hands. It truly sheds a light on issues I have not know about or experience and I am grateful for that.

To other people, the average black man is simple. Very athletic, not too bright, but very street smart. But in all actuality, an African American male is much more than what meets the eye. There are many obvious traits that pertain to being classified as an African American man such as, skin tone and lineage. Those are very broad characteristics though, there are many different black men and they are all special.

This presented a big problem to those making decisions at various institutions. In fact, the most recent case is where the United States Army stopped using the term Negro in any of its official documents and other institutions proposed that the terms ‘African American’ and ‘black’ can be used interchangeably. The truth is that the blacks are viewed differently from the blacks. The blacks are viewed more negative than the African Americans due to the difference in economic and social classes. Hence, the blacks can be viewed as having colder characters and are less competent.

Race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, poverty, and sexual orientation, all play a role in developing one’s identity and more often than not, these multiple identities intersect with blackness. Being that American society has deemed colored people and populations as minoritarian subjects, African diaspora people can be seen making safe spaces for themselves to survive as individuals and as a part of communities.

Black culture is intersectional. What people think is black is heavily dependent on their education level, age, and family

In the essay “What is this ‘black’ in black popular culture?” he says that popular culture is not “the arena where we find out who we really are.” Instead, it is “where we discover and play with the identifications of ourselves, where we are imagined, where we are represented, not only to the audiences out there who do not get the message, but to ourselves for the very first time. “Black” signifies: A community in which experiences, pleasures, memories, and everyday practices of black people occur. Historical perseverance of black people in the diaspora. An aesthetic of distinctive cultural selections out of which popular depictions were made. And of the black counter narratives we have struggled to voice.

To be black in the world has been known to carry a negative stereotype. When people think of black they think of, death, sadness, failure, being dirty, and all things negative. But on the contrary if you were to look up the definition of white, it is known as being clean, pure, happiness, and even

African Americans expressed in other people’s view might seen as poor, useless, powerless, not belonging and so much more. But

“The term African American refers to individuals who are residents of the U.S.A., usually raised here, who are of African ancestry, whereas the term Black is more general and can refer to anyone of African ancestry, including recent immigrant” (Education.byu.edu, 2012). African Americans make up about 14% of the population in

According to that definition a  person is considered to be black if the person has one drop of an blood, seeing what is going on in the world today, people with dark skin color are treated unfairly compared to other people who consider themselves to be black based on the one based on the one drop rule. Personally I believe it’s more suitable to class people with mixed race as biracial. In the sense not everybody can be  consider to be  black,  it all depends on these physical features and most importantly  how society views them.being called an  African, American emphasis more on a person's a social and cultural group. So I don't consider being an African America as a race, but rather as a person ethnicity, like where they are from  people is