“The Struggle To Think Outside The “Black” Box” Donna Britt

Black Intellects: The Struggle To Think Outside The “Black” Box

Chatting at NABJ [National Association of Black Journalists], Boston Globe columnist Derrick Jackson and I admitted the unadmittable: We aren’t “really” black—or, as Jackson later explained, “really black in the eyes of some people.”

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Jackson recently asked an editor at a black women’s publication whether the mag would run a piece on peaceful walking destinations for stressed-out sisters. “There’s not a market for that among black women,” the editor replied. Once, a black friend whom he asked to come camping recoiled, saying, “I don’t touch dirt.”

Says Jackson: “It’s as if black people, forced for three centuries to work in the dirt for nothing…are now dedicated to a complete disconnection from it.”

Or from potentially fulfilling parts of themselves. “Black” isn’t a box we must contort ourselves to squeeze into. It’s a sense of ourselves and the world that we get to define. Like water, it expands, shrinks or otherwise shapes itself to whatever human vehicle embraces it.