So I wrote a muse, a poem that is actually designed to go with a choir, a choral arrangement of an old Negro spiritual.* So you hear the spirituals referenced in the poem. You may not know what they are, but the music in the background is showing what they are and it’s harkening back to those spirits.
And because I’m African, we revere our ancestors, and we believe that the spirits don’t go away, they’re still with us. And this was my homage to those people who taught this country what it means to be free.
Acknowledgments
Here lies a list of people, places, and things that have helped realize the book you just read. If you feel you have been omitted, please write your name below in the space provided.
My cofounder at Jack & Jill Politics, friend, and generally badass Mamma Jamma Cheryl Contee, with whom the journey of this book began.
Debbie Stier, who spotted me from the crowd, lured me into her publishing lair, and helped me find this book’s true voice.
My little big sister Belinda, in whose footsteps I’ve subconsciously been walking all my life.
Black people and non-black people alike. I love some of you.
The Onion, which truly is America’s finest news source and perhaps the world’s. My humor has found new heights (and depths) and truths thanks to this legendary cultural institution and its sometimes-merry band of misfits.
Derrick Ashong, damali ayo, W. Kamau Bell, Christian Lander, Jacquetta Szathmari, and Elon James White, for allowing me to interrogate your blackness. You won’t believe what you said!
My editor, Barry Harbaugh, who immediately “got” the book and helped improve it to the point where you might get it, too. Apparently, you can’t hand over a pile of photos, scream “I’m black!” and call that a manuscript.
HarperCollins for actually publishing this thing.
My security council for being there always.
Selamawi Asgedom, who was the first in my life to insist I write a book. Please send all complaints to him.
Mieka Pauley, for a life-changing phone call that continues to inspire me.
Brooklyn, for letting me claim you.
My managers, Liz and Meredith, for understanding who I am and what I’m trying to do.
My literary agent, Gary Morris, for having my back.
Karla and Zane, for being amazing interns and then abandoning me for “jobs.”
The Internet and especially Twitter, for allowing my absurdity to go unchecked.
The Universe, for opening and closing doors when I least expected it and most needed it.
________________________________
(your name on this line)
About the Author
Baratunde Thurston is the director of digital at The Onion, the cofounder of Jack & Jill Politics, a stand-up comedian, and a globe-trotting speaker. He was named one of the 100 most influential African-Americans of 2011 by The Root and one of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company magazine. Baratunde resides in Brooklyn and lives on Twitter (@baratunde).
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Credits
All illustrations are courtesy of the author.
Cover design by Richard Ljoenes.
Copyright
HOW TO BE BLACK. Copyright © 2012 by Baratunde Thurston. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition February 2012 ISBN: 9780062098047
Get exclusive extra content, join a community, and expand your blackness at http://howtobeblack.me/bought. You can also find us at facebook.com/howtobeblack and on Twitter with the hashtag #HowToBeBlack.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN: 978-0-06-200321-8
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au/ebooks
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com
Footnotes
* William Shakespeare never wrote this, but wouldn't it be great if he had? Come on, you know it would! Black Shakespeare! Yay!
* It’s also possible that you will sing the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
* Throughout this book I will use the terms African-American, black, and Negro interchangeably. There is rarely a logic to it, so please try not to overthink it.
* It is perfectly acceptable and even encouraged for you to use this book as an example.
* I often say “acquired” instead of “purchased” when referencing your relationship with this book. I’m just acknowledging the reality. Illegal Internet file sharing of copyrighted works of literature about the black experience is destroying the publishing industry and demands government action. Please write your member of Congress before it’s too late.
* For example, one of the chapters in this book contains a detailed plan for the implementation of white slavery. Can you find it?
* Note: “One who is chosen” is not the same as “the chosen one.” The latter has a lot more pressure associated with it and generally ends badly for the namee. I have no religions established in my memory, yet.
* After years of comprehensive anthropological study, my team of researchers found that most children acquire their names from their parental units.
* OCC is an independent bureau within the U.S. Treasury Department. Its mission is, primarily, to regulate national banks. My mother was a computer programmer at OCC, writing and inspecting code in the COBOL programming language, because, you know, single black mothers love programming, son!
* The ankh is an Egyptian hieroglyph symbolizing the key of life or eternal life. It appears often in Egyptian art, Egyptian tombs, and season five of Lost.
*Henry Louis Gates is a Harvard University professor and director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. In 2006 and 2008, he hosted African American Lives on PBS and explored the genealogical backgrounds of several prominent black Americans. In 2009, he, President Obama, and a white Cambridge, Massachusetts, police officer shared a beer at the White House.
* I advise you to be suspicious of any black American whose family does not claim a blood connection to Native Americans. That’s a clear sign of a racial infiltrator who has not done enough research.
* If you’re paying attention and have a decent knowledge of U.S. history, you’ll notice that my great-grandfather was born after slavery officially ended. As with many government programs, slavery continued beyond its official end date in many parts of the country.
* My name is derived from the Nigerian name “Babatunde.�
�� In the Yoruba language this roughly translates to “the spirit of my mother’s grandfather has returned in me.” See the chapter “Where Did You Get That Name?” for more on how I ended up with a Nigerian name and no known Nigerian roots.
* Another word for marijuana!!!!!
* At the time of this book’s writing, Herman Cain was a Republican presidential candidate. He is a black man best known for having been the CEO of Godfather’s Pizza. I feel quite confident that by the time you read this book, his campaign will only exist in the past tense. If I’m wrong, then it means the country has fallen into ruin more quickly than I could ever have imagined, and there are probably roving bands of feral, armed children dominating the streets, which begs the question, what are you doing reading this book? You should probably be foraging for scrap metal and hoarding ammunition.
* What’s that? There is a book called Negropedia? By Patrice Evans? Is it still February? Let’s go buy it right now.
* Only now, as I’m documenting this memory, has it occurred to me that operating a motor vehicle while drinking beer and offering some to your five- or six-year-old son is one of the worst, and most illegal, parenting decisions a person can make.
*Baba basically means “father,” and it is how we addressed all the adult men.
* I have kept all spelling, grammar, and punctuation true to the original 1991 formatting, especially the spelling of “Afrikan” with a K, because it’s awesome.
* Go-Go is a type of music unique to Washington, DC. It involves drums. Many black people love it. White people love it, too. People not from DC hate it. For more information on the genre, search YouTube.
* Some of my non-American friends have assured me that hair-touching is quite common across ethnic lines in their own countries, to which I respond, “This. Is. America!” and then kick them into a giant pit as if we lived in ancient Sparta.
* Seriously, this song is amazing. Give it a chance!
* Welcome to my Columbo moment. There’s always “one more thing” with that guy.
* By the way, Avatar is a truly horrible movie. The worst white guy ever somehow manages to be the best blue person ever, just like that? Come on now. If I lived in that world, I’d have to write How to Be Blue, because the tale is basically the same.
* For example, you could grab a clip of the person saying she intentionally discriminated against a white farmer from her government position even though the full video makes it clear this statement was a setup to a larger point about how such discrimination was wrong.
* “Blacks have lower rates of substance use and abuse than whites in early adolescence and young adulthood but similar or higher rates by middle adulthood . . .”
—January–February 2011 issue of Sociological Spectrum, in article titled “Black-White Differences in Aging Out of Substance Use and Abuse”
* Her natural hair color is brown.
* For a more complete exploration of what black folk don’t do, check out the Web video series at blackfolkdont.com.
* His first name is Mamadou, but young people do not call African elders by their first names. If you are under forty-five years old, he is “Monsieur Gueye”!
* This was pre-Google!
* It’s true. Google it.
* Recent census data reveal that Boston is just under 50 percent white. No one told the city!
* I did own a boom box with a four-inch black-and-white TV screen, but that really doesn’t count.
* Shortly after I graduated from Harvard in 1999, the competition among Ivy League schools for new students increased drastically. Princeton led the way by offering full-ride scholarships to academically qualified students who met a certain financial threshold. Harvard and others followed suit. My understanding now is that working a campus job is far less common than it was during my time there. This, of course, upsets me, because I had to clean shit when I went to Harvard, and kids these days don’t know the value of work, and society is going to— Oh my goodness. I’m officially old.
[1] At the time of this writing, I could find no business named Optimus Research Group. In the event that such a company is formed by the time you read this, I sincerely apologize for unintentionally besmirching that organization’s reputation in the name of this teachable moment. Any similarities between this thought exercise—this includes names, company activities, job positions, and the number of minority employees—and the actual work environment at Optimus Research Group are purely coincidental. Also, if Optimus does have a job opening for research associate, hook a brother up!
* No, don’t call it a Blacky Sense. I regret typing that.
* The INSH is a proprietary scale developed by scholars at the Blackness Advanced Research Projects Agency (BARPA).
* We have managed to keep this power secret for centuries. Don’t blow it all because you couldn’t create an effective distraction.
* For the record, I’m a very good dancer. I’m generally the best dancer on whatever side of the Mississippi River I’m on. True story.
* A Soul Train Moment is when you just get hit with the beat, forget where you are, and start going all out like you were with your friends. You start busting moves, spinning, and displaying complex bodily rhythm and coordination. You do what the saying says and actually “dance like nobody’s watching,” forgetting that everybody is watching.
* I would like to thank comedian Reese Waters for teaching me this expression in a joke of his about dancing with white people. He also gave me permission to use it in this book, so you should Google him and go to all of his shows to the point where you start to make him feel uncomfortable. Also, ask him to dance.
* According to the 2008 Pew Center on the States report “One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008.”
* According to the 2011 Pew Research Center report “Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics.”
* Comedy Central refers to this as “the first Barack Obama joke.”
*The New Yorker. October 1998. Never forget.
* Just ask Texas congressman Ron Paul.
* You should know by now that any time I claim to be quoting Shakespeare, I’m lying.
* Comedian and actor Baron Vaughn has a great joke about pterodactyls. You should look it up.
* In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Supreme Court took the extraordinary step of lifting nearly all restrictions on corporate money flowing into election activities and essentially completed the transfer of power from “the people” to corporations. It’s pretty great if you live in Delaware and your last name is Inc.
* So I thought it would be fun for you to experience the same time-delayed knowledge acquisition as I did!
* In August 2010, artist Keith Obadike listed on eBay an item whose description read, in part, “This heirloom has been in the possession of the seller for twenty-eight years. Mr. Obadike’s Blackness has been used primarily in the United States and its functionality outside of the U.S. cannot be guaranteed. Buyer will receive a certificate of authenticity.” After 10 days, Obadike’s blackness, which started at a bid of $10, closed at $152.50.
* The poem was written to be performed with musical accompaniment based on the Negro spiritual “Hold On.”
How to Be Black Page 19
