Innocent Ignorance
Prior to my family's relocating to The South Bronx from Jamaica, Queens in the late 80's, I had not experienced much ethnic diversity, if any at all. I was about 6 or 7 years old and up until then, I had only been around family and friends who, as far as I am concerned, looked, spoke, acted, and lived similarly to the way I did. Not long after we made our way to The Bronx, I remember roaming up the block to the corner bodega (Pete's) during which, I witnessed a Black man conversing with the store clerk in Spanish. At that point, language was the only cultural distinction I could make between me and the man. Hence, not long after starting school in the Bronx, I had formulated a simplistic notion that if you were black and somehow learned to speak Spanish, you were labeled a "Dominican."
Growing up in The Bronx, a melting pot of Black, Hispanic, and American cultures, naturally, I assumed a more practical understanding and/or familiarity with Latin-American culture. Moreover, I deducted that said Spanish-speaking black folk actually had far more cultural similarities to other Spanish-speaking people who looked nothing like us. By 11-12 years old, I was more or less able to recognize the ethnic distinction between said cultures, mainly Dominican, Honduran, and Puerto Rican. Furthermore, I then believed people like the "Afro-Hispanic" man I'd initially encountered to be a race separate and apart from my own.
Super Dave's 2 Cents
Every so often, usually on Sundays, my mom would flex her cooking hand, cooking and baking her heart out, and everyone, from family to friends to our friends' families and even their friends, was welcome, some of the best times of my life. Anyhow, this one instance, I overheard my Uncle Dave semi-shout something to the tone of "Boy, you're Black! Look at your nose!" I had come to find out that Dave had gotten a bit indignant over one of my friend's claiming to be "Hispanic, not Black." Hiram’s family is from Honduras so he identified ethnically and culturally as Hispanic. Dave likely understood, but failed to articulate to us, that neither ethnicity nor culture can negate the fact that Hiram is clearly of African decent. At the time, Hiram and the rest of us just kind of laughed Dave’s comments off as though my uncle was the ignorant party, trying to tell Hiram, whom he barely knew, where he'd come from. We simply knew no better. Curriculums at our beloved Community School 66 never delve that deeply into facts regarding American History's uglier truths.
To put things into perspective, suppose a Chinese couple gives their child up to a Jamaican foster family at birth. The child is raised by said family into adulthood. Naturally, this person will have adopted the foster family's culture and ethnicity. That said, if this person were to look you in the eyes and tell you he/she is Jamaican, not Asian, what are your thoughts?
Enlightenment
With so much readily accessible information about any and everything imaginable at our fingertips in 2017, you'd almost have to make a conscious effort to remain ignorant to anything of societal relevance. These days, Hiram seems to have learned and embraced his ancestry wholeheartedly and I understand that the only difference between his ancestors and mine is the points of which they were unloaded from slave ships. In conclusion, what I found most interesting about this particular recollection of occurrences is the fact that up until perhaps my mid 20's, I had yet to realize that, as a child, what I had initially perceived the man at the bodega to be had eventually rang true.
Innocent Ignorance by Deijohn E. Brown
