Antwan Weatherington
Professor Rumore
Introduction to Literary Studies 300
22 March 2020
Reading Communities
As an African-American male living in American who is in between two generations I feel that I can see the themes and ideas concerning 18th century British colonialism from a rather interesting vantage point. As a person who is in my late 30’s I grew up as a teenager in the 1990s when the country was going through many battles concerning racism. Many of the scars left behind from slavery and the aftermath of reconstruction were being ripped open. In the 1990s, there seemed to be a reemergence of black pride but with the aggression of a newer generation expressing it through music, fashion, & politics. I can remember having my older relatives around me who lived in this country when being the “right kind of black” was a matter of life or death. In these times it was either fall in line, keep your head down, or risk you and your families safety. Listening to my elders I know they dealt with racism which morphed into colorism within my community. Family members who were more socially accepted by their own because they were lighter skin, or their hair was of a finer texture than their counterparts. These standards were not created by African-Americans but pasted down to them through colonialism. It was someone coming in and saying who you are, what you are, and what you believe is not correct. We were systematically fed this message for generations that well after slavery we took on those standards as our own. Hearing the way in which Behn describes Oroonoko in compared to his other African natives infuriated me. She was indoctrinating to her readers that a certain kind of black is more beautiful and acceptable. Aphra Behn doesn’t seem to think it at all possible that all these features could be coming only from his African heritage when she says “His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat”(Behn 6).
This truly illustrated the contradiction with some abolitionist of that time. Yes, they didn’t want Africans to be slaves but by no means were beautiful without some European enhancement. It also illuminates my own bias, ignorance, and pre-programming when it comes to another African Americans features I see in passing. If they do not look like what I think a black person should look like, in my mind, they must be “mixed”. Although this was fiction, it became reality for the African American community and the United States in modern times. This is something that I see time and time again in media; African-American men & women being told by their own race and others what is and is not beautiful. A prime example of this is an incident that happened between two female case mates of a VH1 show called “Basketball Wives”. A women of Latin descent with far more European features compared a Nigerian young lady with prominent African features to a monkey over social media. It was eye opening to see the response from African-American women who didn’t think she was beautiful either and used other cruel names for her physical attributes.
Although I am not a native new Yorker I can feel the reverberations of colonialism in society today repackaged as gentrification . The term gentrification has many connotations depending on whom you ask and which side of the profit margin your own. I see it as an influx of residents of higher socioeconomic status moving into a low socioeconomic status neighborhood. When I originally moved to New York back in 2000 I lived in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. This area is known for its diverse mix of West Indian, African, Jewish, and African-American populations. Over the last 10 years this neighborhood like many others around the country has been transformed into an almost unrecognizable, socially acceptable, even “hip” places to live at the expense of long term residents. In thinking back to Oroonoko’s story told through the eyes of Behn ,where she obviously had preconceived notions about people who she knew nothing about, by saying “He had nothing of barbarity in his nature (Behn 5). Her feeling was something I could relate to, ashamedly, evening being a person of color. The only things I knew about Africa was what I saw in movies and through National Geographic. I thought there was only huts and dirt and no one who spoke English. The lawmakers, real estate developers are allowed to come into an area and people either have to assimilate into a new way of life or move out. The people aren’t even considered for the value and knowledge they bring to a place they have lived for generations. The men in Oroonoko were described as people who knew they did not know the land and needed the native people as a means for survival. What also happens are the small businesses that have been the vein of that community must fall in line with the new ways of the neighborhood or be forced out as well. Although this process makes the neighborhood pretty on the outside it causes more of a rift and makes the line between classes that much bigger. This problem is illustrated in Uniting the Kingdom (2007) when it says “ Internal colonialism did little to alleviate the gap between the poor and the rich, instead exploiting that divide (Levine 24) . The readings in this class have made me open to the experience of validating points of views and ideals that I might not agree with but are an integral part of society that must be unpacked and rediscovered.
This is a picture of my old neighborhood on the corner of Nostrand Avenue & Pacific Street. This bodega is a prime example of what is happening and has happened here. This store used to have windows boarded up, it was smoky and always relatively dark & dank in this store. In 2019, this is the same exact store only now they are calling themselves “Nature SuperMarket”. This is not to appease the longtime residents but the more upscale clientele that has taken over .
Works Cited
Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko. 1688.
Levine, Philippa. The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset. Routledge, an Imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.
