Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Consciousness
Cochranhad assigned a yearlong thematic project that was intended to provide us with
would all be prepared for the Advanced Placement Examination at the years end. The
unit wed arrived at late in the first semester was concerned with slavery in the
antebellum south. Mr. Cochran believed that the years examination would draw heavily
from this period in American history. To allow for us to garner a more comprehensive
documentaries.
I could tell that most of my classmates felt awash with relief on days when
History Channel clips were on the agenda. I didnt share their sentiments. I knew how
scenarios like this transpired; Id experienced them my entire life and I knew how this
Mr. Cochran turned down the lights and raised the projectors volume. Twenty
minutes into the documentary, and it felt as if the room had been submerged leagues
under the sea. The airs tension thickened. Signs of discomfort and distaste fell across the
scarred and mutilated backs, as we saw humans unclothed, chained and on display like
cattle, as we listened to accounts of children being stripped from their mothers arms and
tried to make out the woeful lyrics of black spirituals. A few girls sitting next to me
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seemed to stop themselves from wincing at the audio of lashings only to widen their eyes
and look to me when the word nigger reverberated from the speakers. Their leers were
followed by dozens of other pairs of eyes peeking over to my desk through sidelong
glances. Some tried not look; I know they did. Their brains were just making
connections, relating what they were seeing on the projector to something more tangible
and immediate, something like methe only black kid in the class. As one of only a
situations such as this one. Situations where the consciousness of my ethnicity was
magnified in a group setting, usually due to its connotation to something like slavery, or
I didnt care for that painful state of awareness. The one in which I was forced to
accept the asphyxiating guilt and uneasiness layering over the room, then subsequently
Im going to puke.
Youre the reason Im being forced to look at all of these naked black people.
I despised being put in situations like that. I hated every minute of having to feel
self-conscious about being me and having what that meant redefined before my very
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eyes. I didnt ask for this, I thought. Im not even from here. Im Cameroonian. This isnt
my history; Im not even African-American, Im just black. I told myself whatever I could
to propel away the reality of my isolationthe fact of how different I was from everyone
else in the room. I didnt want to have to acknowledge the disposition of pity that was so
black history and culture. It didnt take too much of an effort on my part, either. Growing
up in a rural suburb of eastern Kansas, I often found myself as the most diversifying
factor of the many circles of which I was a part. All of my friends were white; my
favorite television personalities, musicians, and role models. I didnt see how my
obsessively opposed to satisfying any of the stereotypes that I was meant to fall under
solely because I was black and lived in America. So the fact that my life outside of home
But when my peers reproached me with concerns about the way I talked, claiming
I didnt sound black or that I was the whitest black person theyd ever metI was
hurled into a state of ire. What had they expected? Was I not a product of the same
environment they were? Should I have forced myself to act out of character or take on a
persona that better suited the media portrayal of African-Americans? No. I wouldnt
change myself to make others more comfortable with the idea of me. I wasnt an idea at
all. I was, and am, a person. I refused to conform to the faces of the box they sought to
put me in. But the more I was confronted with such ignorant ideaswith guys at lunch
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asking me why it was that I hadnt packed watermelon or fried chicken in my lunchbox
the more conscious I became of how outwardly different I was from everyone else, and
the more I sought to mute the parts of me that alienated me from the majority.
I soon found my experiences in senior year English would prove to greatly alter
how I chose to perceive my identity. Our teacher had assigned us readings of works of
literary merit that ranged from The Scarlet Letter to Catch-22. However, The novel that
impacted me most was Toni Morrisons Beloved. It dealt with a lot of controversial
themes, many of them laden with race relations and even slavery. I had anticipated not
enjoying the bookmost likely because its author was black and my peers might have
expected me to. The class discussions seemed like another opportunity for me to distance
myself from others preconceived notions of me. I knew they would expect me to be
infuriated by the subject matter, to have a lot to say about Sethes escape from slavery, to
be moved more than other students in the classroom, and as much as I didnt want to
prove them rightI did. I loved the novel. Beloved moved me. It was written so
beautifully, like a poem drawn out into hundreds of pages. It dealt with inequity,
prejudism, poverty, and other issues that enraged me. As I raced to the last page, I only
wanted to experience more of Morrisons writing. Immediately after putting the novel
down, I checked out another one of the authors revered works, Paradise.
into one another. It was very disorienting for me, initially, and I was forced to read
almost every chapter multiple times to take away the full extent of its beauty. What has
stayed with me, though, is the overarching concept of the story. Its narrative follows the
turmoil existing within an all black town (Ruby) in Oklahoma as well as the issues that
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arise between it and a neighboring convent. The idea of a town existing anywhere, a
within me. I couldnt believe it. What a concept, I thought. How could Morrison have
depicted in piteous hues. In elementary school, I recall efforts being made during Black
History Month to inform students of the accomplishments of black men and women
throughout American history and how they contributed to bettering our country. The
examples of Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr. always gave me the impression
adversity before gaining recognition. I could have never imagined whole townseven
independently and despite being voided of the legal rights that checked their upward
mobility. I did some research on the inspiration for Paradises town of Ruby, Oklahoma
Greenwood district. I was upset that I had only just uncovered this parcel of American
resounding prosperity that the twenties had wrought. Considered a predominately African
American community, Greenwood was often referred to as Little Africa. The idea
perpetuated by early 20th century Greenwood was that everyone possessed a right to
opportunity. The area had, for years, attracted blacks on the principle that it posed as a
racism-free environment, viable for individual betterment and growth. The community
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was exceptionally successful and featured nearly two hundred businesses including
hotels, law offices, a theater, physicians offices, and even a skating rink. Greenwood
avenue, the anchor to the districts commercial base, would come to be known nationally
Everything I had been exposed to forced me to feel embarrassed, victimized, and grateful
for being born generations past the plight of slavery and segregation. The concept of
afford myself some peace of mind, I sought to distance myself from African-American
culture and history without realizing the detrimental effects of my efforts. In voiding the
past I was detaching myself from a demographic I would later heavily identify with, only
to seek refuge in one that I would always feel insulated from. I found myself in a limbo
space until I could bridge the gap where my teachers had faltered.
I hadnt realized how much it meant to me to know that blacks werent simply a
debilitated and wounded race in America. Id always thought that acknowledging the
promoted competition among racial groups and disparaged them even more. But that
wasnt the case. I gained a sense of pride in knowing that black peopleregardless of the
fact that they were African-Americans and not Africanswere more than just slaves and
victims of Jim Crows South. I learned that I didnt have to distance myself from my
racial identity to assuage my discomfort at the horrific events tied to black peoples
history within this country. I was motivated to learn more about the parts of history that I
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felt Id been deprived of, to look back upon more points of pride and to be more
conscious of the balance in both positive and negative aspects of Americas black history.