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I recently watched a funny video clip called “The Black Mama Pep Talk,” and it features an ostensible slew of greatest Black mama hits, including “when I say it’s time to go, it’s time to go,” “don’t ask can you stay the night — you cannot” and “don’t touch nothin’; don’t break nothin’.”

I laughed — kudos to that lady for an outstanding one-take performance — but my next reaction was, "Wait a minute. My Black mama never talked to me like that." Matter of fact, no one in my entirely Black family ever talked to me like that.

This realization sent me tumbling into an "Am I Black enough?" hole. It wasn’t my first time there, but I’ve generally only been toppled into the space by someone else. My so-called Afrikan-centered Black nationalist friend, for one — who definitely thinks his Blackness is so black that Vantablack should pay him hush money — is always good for knocking me in. But this time, I seem to have fallen in of my own accord, an occurrence that made me think about the way that Blackness is collectivized internally as well as externally. Walk with me on this.

You see, external (or dominant) society — also known as “wypipo” — lumps all Black people together as a monolith. The sins of one are assigned to us all, as are the virtues. According to wypipo, all Black people can dance well, sing well, excel at sports and fry some mean chicken. All Black men are dangerous. All Black women are angry and attitudinal.

This shared yoke is the reason why, when a terrible crime is committed, we Black folks simultaneously hold our breath and hope the perpetrator isn’t one of us — because, if it is, we know the blame will be heaped on us all collectively by external society.

We talk about this in negative terms. We ask Hollywood to stop making Taraji P. Henson play the same sassy Black woman in every film. We rail against the rampant application of the word “thug.” But at the end of the day, we do it, too!

Internal Black collectivization is the assigning of universalities to ourselves. It’s the assumption that we all got beatings as children, like sweet potato pie, have seen the movie, The Color Purple and use a washcloth. This is essentially the same thing that white people do to us from the outside; when applied internally, though, the assumptions are more demanding and more nuanced because we actually have some inside knowledge. Additionally, the goalposts are always moving due to variations in the experience of the Black person applying the assumptions — and God help you if it’s Mr. Blacker-than-Vantablack.

Just like with external collectivization, these assumptions cut both ways. Sometimes they are garbed in the robes of loving communion, like the imaginary Black Delegation (or the actual Black Twitter) speaking on our behalf. Or like a shared side-eye with a Black stranger upon witnessing some WPS. Or, like the use of the term WPS in the first place. In addition to the expectation that we all know what WPS means — because it’s in-group speak, love language, code — there’s also an assumption that we all share belief in this sentiment.

The flip side of internal collectivization, however, is a more mean-spirited affair. This is where it arrives cloaked in derision, looking to belittle or to snatch somebody’s proverbial Black card. In this form, it is the act of accusing a Black person of “talking white” or “selling out.” It is revoking folks’ invitation to the proverbial cookout. At its least harmful, it’s a mean girls sort of clique-ishness. At its most damaging, however, it is a small-minded and limiting manifestation of the crabs-in-a-barrel mentality, which in itself is probably a never-ending visitation of the divisions sown among us in slavery. It's a "this one is better than that one" idea — house n****r vs. field n****r, dark-skinned vs. light-skinned, good hair vs. bad hair, jiggaboo vs. wannabe.

What internal Black collectivization — in both its negative and positive forms — fails to acknowledge or appreciate is the breadth of experiences Black people have incorporated over 400 years of being in America. To a rural or Southern Black person, familiarity with chitlins or pig feet might be considered an expected marker of Blackness. To an urban dweller, experience with childhood games like double dutch could be presumptively Black. For Black people of means, Jack & Jill and cotillions are norms of the Black experience. If you’re from the hood, speaking African-American Vernacular English is a defining expectation. Not to mention the experiential differences of Blackness in Cali vs. the Chi vs. ATL vs. D.C. The music, the food, the dances, the lingo; it all changes from one setting to the next. My point is: a monolithic framework of How to Be Black is clearly unreasonable within such a widespread and diverse group.

So let’s talk about the opposite of collectivization: individuality. White American individuality is a given. The white gaze of dominant society participates in collectivization only with regard to out-groups — never with regard to themselves. Collectivization of white people only exists in the minds of said out-groups. For us, they all let their children cuss them out, love LaCroix, allow their dogs to lick them on the mouth and don’t use washcloths. But, aside from a few small nationality-driven enclaves — Boston Irish or Jersey Italians, for example — they don’t think of themselves as a collective. To white people, it wouldn’t matter if fully half of their number had committed mass shootings or serial killings; each perpetrator would still be a distinctly troubled loner with his or her own unique set of issues and circumstances. Did I say white individuality is a given? Hell, it’s a gotdamn privilege.

“White privilege,” as we know, is a set of advantages that non-whites are not afforded. For example, a white man can walk down the street with an assault rifle in an open carry state and not have police draw their weapons or detain him. Meanwhile, a Black man would imperil his life to attempt this even with a toy gun. This is a privilege of white skin and the favorable implicit bias that goes along with it. The root of this bias? White individuality — or the assumption that each white person is an individual free of collectivized negative qualities or assumptions. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

So, can we get it? In this writer’s opinion, no longer perpetuating the notion of "how to be Black" would at least be a good start.

The term “jump the shark” originally referred to the point when a television show has passed its prime and is becoming far-fetched to the point of irrelevance. I recently saw an ad for the TV show, Mixed-ish. In this ad, a Black character accuses a white character of being so white that he likes “orange juice with the pulp.” Hear that, Black Americans? In addition to disliking LaCroix, camping, Taylor Swift, mental health therapy, ice hockey, pumpkin spice and swimming, we’re also supposed to collectively dislike citrus pulp. Citrus pulp!

Isn’t it time we admitted that this "how to be Black" thing has jumped the shark and took it off the air? Hell, if we need something to bond over, we’ll always have racism.

Jan Miles

Writing since December 2019 · 1 story contributed