I am black. I am proud of it. I come from a family that not only takes pride in their blackness but tries to contribute to the culture. My father, mother, and sister went to HBCUs. I grew up in Oakland and Houston, two major black epicenters. I am informed and knowledgeable in all things black culture. With all these qualifications and conditions met, I feel lacking. Lacking this security and oneness with the culture. I feel strangely disconnected from the black community.

From my adolescence to adulthood, I have felt this way. I have always loved my blackness. I started a black student union in my high school, was a part of many protests in my life, and was part of many black organizations throughout college. I always wanted to have a pulse and connection to my culture. However, I had this wrongly idealized notion of “how” to be black in my head. Blackness was this thing I couldn’t achieve, you see. I did too many “white” things. I love coffee and coffee shops, I love Simon and Garfunkel, I play dnd, etc. I felt like I wasn’t the ideal black man in my head. Therefore, I felt disconnected and unattuned to my culture.

This insecurity of my blackness may have stemmed from my formative years. In a previous era, if you didn’t fit a certain mold people made sure you didn’t feel good about it. I surely didn’t feel good liking what I liked as a kid. I could find comradery in common hobbies and activities with my non-black peers. I could very rarely find black folks with similar interests as mine at that time. Did they exist? Yes. Did I have them in my life? Sadly no. My non-black peers did not help either. From the infamous phrase “Oreo” to comments like “You’re not ‘black’ black” really made me feel like my blackness was less perceived due to my personality. So as I got older, I carried this insecurity of my personality and blackness interacting.

As I got older, I was fortunate enough to meet more like-minded black folks. They loved nerd culture, eccentric movies and music, and thought-provoking political and philosophical discussions. I also learned that my interests and blackness were not at all actually conflicting. The birthplace of coffee was Africa. Simon and Garfunkel got most of their musical influence from black folks. My dad played DnD back in the day. MLK even watched Star Trek. In these most recent years, I was able to understand that my personality and interests were not at odds with my blackness no matter what others say.

I think a big part of this journey to feel more secure in my blackness is not caring about how others perceive me. Even outside of just blackness, I worry about how other people see me. My blackness is something I must learn to be less critical of myself about. I want to clarify, by my blackness I don’t mean being black. I know I am black, I know my culture, and I am extremely proud of the two. By my blackness, I mean being a good representation of blackness. In my head, a proper representation is to be cool, intelligent, expressive, passionate, lively, and strong. I have to live in a relatively black populated city. I have to say what most black people would say. Respond as most black people would. Culturally, walk the walk. In life, I feel like I rarely satisfy these conditions and in turn, I wonder if I am reflecting my culture accurately. I think my head is most definitely wrong. Blackness is those things and much more. It is up and down, left and right, hot and cold, rigid and fluid.

In order to conquer the insecurities of my identity, I must accept that blackness is a space of “and”. As long as I exist, who I am will always be black.