Brazil has more Black people than any place not in Africa. The Portuguese did try and phase out Black people by encouraging race mixing unlike alot of other places that discouraged it. But Black Brasilians still have a very strong connection to their African heritage from their language to their music, literature, food etc
"You Can't Date White Women and Be Pro Black", but I bet you'll smash Candace Owens though.
- Thread starter Goldie
- Start date
Brazil has more Black people than any place not in Africa. The Portuguese did try and phase out Black people by encouraging race mixing unlike alot of other places that discouraged it. But Black Brasilians still have a very strong connection to their African heritage from their language to their music, literature, food etc
SeaSnake
OG
TheNightKing
J.A.P.A.N.
I really don’t know a lot about the history in Brazil so appreciate the correction. Had to do a little research and see that indigenous were enslaved, but it was the largest importer of African slaves as well.
konceptjones
The one between three and three.
The Natives of The Americas were enslaved from one end to the other. Here in the US, Canada, Mexico, and all the way down to Argentina.
The Lonious Monk
Celestial Souljah
lol @ the bold. Do your history man. The terms black and white only exist to perpetuate racism. The one commonality that all black people share in this country is a susceptibility to anti-black racism. That's why the term "nigga wakeup call" exists.
If mixed people want to deny their blackness, then fine, they aren't black. That's their choice. It's not for random people on the internet to make that choice for them.
Gray Matter
Active Member
I am adamant that I am black. I feel extremely strongly about it. And yet I don't want American reparations (my whole lineage is West Indian - different small islands), and I don't feel this way because any possible reparations we (West Indians) might get from Britain.
So, on your way of thinking, what does that make me?
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Gray Matter
Active Member
Bolded is completely false. Africans were taken to all over Latin America as slaves just like our ancestors were taken to America and the West Indies. Most were taken to Brazil and Colombia, but some also were taken to Mexico, Peru and other places not known for having blacks.
My thing is only reason why anyone feels that they are Black is due to the destruction of cultural, ancestral and familial ties that slavery caused.
Black people didn't exist before the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. White people didn't exist either.
Blackness is a vacuum and a dumping ground for White people to put the things they don't want.
Which is why people try argue someone like Adonis is Black.
White people only come into contact with their White identity when confronted with Blackness.
Otherwise they are thinking of themselves as part Irish, Welsh, German - a variety of European ethnic groups.
Even Africans are not thinking of themselves as Black until they are plopped down in the West and then they become Black due to the historical forces of slavery that created the wealth of the nations they flee to. In America, they become Black by Proxy and even then they are treated different because they were never slaves. Their inner psychology is different because they haven't had their entire bloodline obliterated with slavery.
Something that can only exist by self-identifying with the absence that its opposite created is a slave.
Black is not a meaningful category to me other than identifying descendants of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. It's a way to organize a people along a common socio-economic and political history to get restorative justice.
In my opinion, Black isn't a racial group. It's a caste. It doesn't have biological significance.
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Gray Matter
Active Member
Ok, I am going to ask you what I really wanted to know more directly:
Are people who want to keep self-identifying as 'Black' some sort of fools if they're not thinking about reparations?
The fight that Black Americans have put on in America wasn't about race, it was about citizenship and humanity.
Black folks back then understood that Blackness was an unjust penalty. They talked about the degradation and psychological impact of being disconnected from humanity because they were deprived of an inheritance due to slavery. West Indian and Black American scholars were the ones that created this Pan-African, Flat Blackness thing. It was created in exile from humanity.
The fight for Black Americans always to reclaim and refashion America because they worked it and built it. It wasn't to create a whole new race of people and walk around an alien in our own country, separate from everything else, with our identity resting on an eternal struggle in juxtaposition towards White people. Living America, looking for allies with all over the world from other "colored" people, thinking your interest is their interest. That's not self-determination.
The world is different now, it isn't the 18th century, it ain't the 20th century, it's the 21st century and race no longer matters. It matters to us because that's all we got. While the people was developing technology and financial systems, we were developing an identity and a derivative of slave culture. That identity is incomplete and it's shallow because we don't have the means of self-actualization.
Self-actualization requires power. You not gonna get power from a race. Races don't have rights. Races don't have legal standing. Nationalities have rights. Nationalities have legal standing.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and colonialism wasn't done by White people. It was done by governments and corporations that exist today.
Native born-Black Americans are a minority that can't go nowhere else. We don't have the luxury of being going somewhere else where it's our people run everything. Native-born Black Americans need to be American like everywhere else for survival. We are as poor as we were in the 1980s while almost everyone else has in the country has gotten richer. Black American millennials and Gen Zers are overall, poorer than their parents and grandparents. All of our wealth is in the hands of Baby Boomers. Motherfuckers my age.
What has going around, self-identifying as Black, as a broad, global race gotten us? It's a damn distraction from the objective of getting restorative justice where we actually live. Black folks walk around talking about Black unity needs to be achieved and how we need to act like this race and that race because motherfuckers don't wanna struggle with their own government that owes them something. Other Black people don't owe you shit. Non-Black people don't owe you shit. You government owes you.
Black folks care too much about this identity that means absolutely nothing. It has produced nothing that can withstand the onslaught of capital and technology. Shit, when Black folks talk about culture, we talk about entertainers and athletes and how the world owe us for making music they like. We ain't talking about political ideologies and religious. When Palestinians talk about their culture, they talk about political struggle against Israel. When the Chinese talk about their culture, they talk about Chinese dynasties and philosophy.
So what the fuck we holding on to? I been let it go.
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Gray Matter
Active Member
I disagree with most of this. I can appreciate though that you have a well-thought out point of view on these issues.
If you go to places like Brazil, you'll see that black folks there are self-consciously developing the attitudes and strategies that were pioneered by American blacks. Same in other places like Puerto Rico, to a lesser extent.
You ask what has identifying as black gotten you guys. The answer has to do with pride, dignity and self-worth. I think you i) wrongly devalue the value of that sort of thing, and ii) fail to see that having a strong racial identity can protect our people from some of the more insidious effects of racism.
SeaSnake
OG
What this gotta do with Candice Owens
Maybe he thinks their wives aren't Black lol
