Blacks need to shed stereotypes and work more as a community, keynote speaker Brenda Verner. said at Friday's Black History Month convocation in Salomon 101.
More than 100 students congregated for the event, which
addressed the theme of this year's Black History Month - "What is Black? Addressing Our Divisions, Embracing Our Identities - Unifying Our People!"
Verner spoke about her research on stereotyping in the media industry with earnestness and a sense of humor that kept the audience in hysterics.
Introducing herself, Verner said, "I'm a media researcher, I specialize in stereotyping research, and I's black."
Her concern with black identity is linked to the stereotypes represented in pop culture, she said. "My goal is to extract you from the grip of American popular culture," she added.
Citing television shows like "Amos and Andy," Verner said that a generation of young black people has consumed a dishonest cultural stereotype, and has begun to "regurgitate" that stereotype's image through their actions.
She cited a statistic that about 80 percent of black children are born out of wedlock, demonstrating that the lives of blacks have come to reflect the stereotypes that misrepresent them in the media.
The struggle, she said, lies in deciding whether to embrace the cultural image or to chase after the American dream.
Stereotypes, Verner added, "are at the core of why we have problems coming together as a community."
She criticized the behavior of the black community for seeking validation as disparate groups: "If we cannot tolerate difference among us, then we really do not want progress."
She said that blacks need to embrace the "fight for humanity" through calm rationale instead of anger.
"I think it's time we stop sulking in the corner over our maltreatment, and start making an influence," she said. "We have to be able to see what we do wrong, and fix it.
"We do have the authority to change things," she said.
The evening opened with an introduction by Chandra Singh '05 and Basirat Ottun '05, who laid the groundwork for the theme of black identity.
"Racial identity is a really complex concept that symbolizes different things for different people," Ottun said. She added that the evening was devoted to inspiring "conversations and dialogues" about confronting racial identity. "We see the potential of us coming together and working on these issues" to promote change, she said.
Both Ottun and Singh, like the speakers who followed them, emphasized the continued need to work for progress, which they said can be achieved by constructing a more widely encompassing concept of what it means to be black.
Ottun ended her opening statement by urging, "Let us not become complacent with the way things are."
The convocation's introduction was followed by the Black National Anthem performed by Shades of Brown, then by comments by a first-year and a senior speaker.
Graham Browne '08 focused his comments on how one begins to identify as black and what makes someone black. He asked, "Is it about feeling black, or thinking black? Is it about being seen as black by others?"
Ultimately, Browne said, "I hope that others, too, will examine themselves this year, this month and this evening," in order to confront their racial identity.
Lynnette Freeman '05, the evening's senior speaker, opened with a reading about black identity from Jamaican poet Mutabaruka. She went on to express the struggle of coming to conclusions about racial identity, and of "being torn between who we are, and who we are expected to be," specifically in reference to her experience of identifying as both Jamaican and African.
Freeman, like the speakers before her, commented on the constructive quality of identifying a broader range of people as black - even as differences among blacks are celebrated - saying that no individual in the diaspora is "blacker" than another. She added, however, that while a connective thread does link people identifying as black, this should not pressure them to depart from another kind of identity.
Our children, she said, "will (eventually) no longer have to ask themselves who they are, but only who they want to be. ... What my college experience has taught me is, the only person I can be is me."
Joseph Edmonds Jr. '00 expanded on the theme of avoiding complacency with the status quo of blacks' position in society.
"I am convinced," Edmonds said, "that I was called here to nourish discontentment (and) disgust with this status quo." He later pleaded with the audience to "usher in new moments of dissonance."
Edmonds quoted a president of Morehouse College, saying, "There is discarded genius everywhere." The black community, he said, "must move beyond the malaise of mediocrity ... (and) forge new identities" to refuse being subsumed by complacency.
The ceremony ended with a musical selection by Johnny Braithwaite, including songs performed before a photomontage backdrop displaying images of lynchings, chain gangs, freedom marches and Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising black-gloved fists at the 1968 Olympics.
