Cedric’s Question Corner
Hi Cedric,
For years now, I’ve had a number of
feelings towards the Black community and
my place in it. I always felt like the odd one
out because I didn’t know what the newest
song was, or my interest in movies and the
way I talked always felt a bit “off”. Even
when I got to high school, I tried to talk
more like my other friends to try and fit in,
but I never felt like I really managed to quite
get it right. Since I started undergrad, I
haven’t spent much time around other Black
students, which kind of put me in an even
weirder position. Since I wasn’t around
anyone I was familiar with, I really didn’t
know what to do or how to act, and I just
defaulted to imitating the people I grew up
around, mostly by trying to mix up how I
talked to others and putting on a bit of false
confidence.
But now that I’m more involved in social
media and see the experiences of other
Black people around the world, it made me
think about my own life. For the first time in
a long time, I’m seeing people who share the
same interests and talk the same way as me,
and to be honest, I’m a bit embarrassed at all
the silly attempts I made at trying to fit in.
At this point, I’m still not sure just how
much of what I’ve done over the past several
years was me acting on my own and being
my own person or basing my personality on
what I though other people would expect of
me. I think I need some help sorting out
whether or not this feeling’s ever going to
go away and if there’s any way to avoid
making this mistake again.
Sincerely,
Anonymously Embarrassed
What’s up Anonymous,
To me, it sounded like you were using what
people saw in pop culture as a basis for what
you thought the “Black experience” would
look like. This kind of thinking is pretty
inaccurate to reality and can be pretty
harmful since it can spread poor
representations of a group to people who
aren’t that familiar with them, but at least
you realize what was wrong with your
situation. It’s a good thing that you’re
starting to see just how varied and different
the Black living experience is; just in
America alone there’s differences in the
living experiences in the Black community,
and those differences can depend on what
part of the country you grew up in, the
people you grew up around, your parents’
and how they raised you, or even how your
finances looked while growing up. In other
words, Black culture is just like any other
culture; you’re going to see a bunch of
different “subcultures” and niches that apply
to different people. So, while it sounds like
you realized that not everyone’s life is going
to match up to what you see on TV or hear
in music you’ve still got to figure out
exactly what it is you want to reflect and
realize what kind of person you want to be
going forward in life.
-Cedric’s Consensus