Only, the question can be more complicated depending on which black people are in question.ĭo I align myself with black people across the diaspora? With black people on the political left or the political right? With black people who have a nonblack parent? With black people who prefer African American or nigga? It is a political question-do I align myself with the interests of black people? I do. I had passed a test for what kind of black I was. This was all said with great affection, by the way. I am glad a man finally told me that, I tell you what. He also told me that being a dark black woman would prove a problem for me in academia. Too many white people like you.” Which, ouch. A senior scholar of great standing in my profession once said to me, “I do not trust you. The proclamation makes a mistake of assuming that black people, like me, were only ever a problem and not a people.īut, first, just what kind of black am I? There have been many such rooms and I end up in more of them, more frequently, the more I inch up the class ladder. But it was said so casually because of the kind of black that I am presumed to be in rooms such as these. Hence, “black people are over.” I did not feel over and I am most certainly black.

In a discussion of methods and theories and other such things that comprise a significant part of my job, one of the women-we were all women-said assuredly that we have moved on, past black and white. If pressed to do so at a glance, one might have said that everyone in the room was black. The occasion was a meeting of professors who were working together on a student project. “Black people are over.” That is how it was said to me once.

Tressie cottom thick