Real Talk For People Who Need It : What does it mean to be an honorary black?

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

What does it mean to be an honorary black?

I ran across this article from Goldie Taylor of TheGrio

I watch her a lot on MSNBC and she always impresses me with her commentary. However, I have yet to agree with much of what she writes in her column, this article included. I always attach the link and encourage you to read it for yourself, but in short she goes into some commentary about how Incognito could not understand the struggles of blackness and thus is no honorary black.

The notion of an honorary black man did not seem odd to me when I first heard it, especially within the environment of a sports team. We used to call the NBA basketball star Jason Williams, White Chocolate because he had moves like a brother. Did he get treated like a brother in the locker room? Who cares.

It seems the older generation, which the writer of this article is a proud member of, doesn't quite understand that some of us are tired of looking at good or bad people and connecting their color to our affection or lack thereof.

What does it mean to be an honorary black? It means about as much as this black/white Santa nonsense. Barbie wasn't black or brown either, until she was. If that team bonds to each other more by naming Incognito a black man, so be it. In all of this attack on Incognito (Goldie Taylor certainly attacks him), I have yet to hear one of his teammates (who by the way named him the honorary black man) speak bad of him. In some ways it sounds more like they were calling Martin too white which is another blog for another day.

Either way, the sanctity of the American football team must be preserved.