Don’t call me African-American Written on November 30, 2011 by Ann-Marie Murrell
This past summer I spent an entire day with PJTV’s AlfonZo Rachel at his Macho Sauce Productions studios. AlfonZo has some amazing upcoming projects including an appearance in the new movie Runaway Slave which will be opening in January.
Since Barack Obama took office in 2008, his administration has seemingly been trying to create huge race/class divisions between Conservatives and liberals. Almost daily someone in the media comes out swinging their race card, trying to vilify Conservatives and/or the Tea Party.
For years, AlfonZo Rachel has been creating brilliant mini history lessons via his PJTV videos, telling the truth about the huge role Democrats have played in everything from perpetuating slavery, forming the KKK and fighting against the Civil Rights movement. Following is part 2 of the interview I conducted with AlfonZo about race relations in America 2011.
A-M: Zo, I want to talk about labels because like it or not, we all have them and we all use them. I’m a white middle-aged woman, but I’m also a Texan and Californian and on and on and on. When I was a little girl, it was ‘colored people’ then black, then African-American. Almost every time I hear someone trying to describe a black person, they struggle. So what gives?
AZ: It’s not gonna be about what’s safe to call someone because everyone wants to be called something else. If I had my druthers, I would say call us what we are—we’re a Nubian race. That’s what I’m descended from—the tribe of black people. At some point it’s gotta be up to the recipient to take that chip off their shoulder and know that whatever he’s called, no one meant anything harmful by it. Not everybody knows—if people knew better they’d do better. And the ones who want to make a big issue about it, they’re the ones who want to control you somehow.
A-M: So instead of saying ‘African-American’, you’d prefer to be called Nubian?
AZ: When people say they want to be called African-American, they’re really overlooking something. To be called African-American it doesn’t properly define you or articulate what your ethnicity is. See when you say African-American you’re basically talking about a continent that was named after a Roman conqueror. What does a Roman conqueror have to do with you? It doesn’t explain your ethnicity. You obviously want to be titled with something to show that you’ve overcome something but the things you want to be titled with is the title of a person who overcome the country that you came from! I’m not the descendent of a Roman general— Scipio Africanus, what does he have to do with me? Nothing. He came over and he imposed a nation with his name. So that’s why so when people say ‘what are you’ or in the Bible they called him Kush, descended from the Kushite tribe. Kush was the grandson of Noah. So you had Noah, you had his sons they had their sons and Kush was one of the sons. So this is where it comes back to. That’s what is written. Kush is synonymous with Nubian, which in the Greek is Ethiopia. So that’s my heritage. I understand a lot of people don’t buy that but it’s more definitive as opposed to saying African-American. That culture doesn’t have anything to do with me and it doesn’t define my skin tone, where Nubian or Ethiopian or even Kushite does.
A-M: I’d love to have a day when skin color isn’t an issue at all. What do we do about this?
AZ: It’s easy. Whatever conversation I have I can usually engage someone and not feel the need to bring up race at all. Some people are hung up on it, some want to get over it. Sometimes it gets a little annoying—why are we going to let race invade the fellowship that we’re having right now? For some people, I give way because people want to understand, want to know how to cope because it’s annoying—it’s cumbersome and people just want to get over this issue and that I understand. I think the thing that irritates the most is when people say they want to get past racism but then somebody has to point out the fact that I’m black. People will say, “We got a black person here—you know what they say about us Tea Party folks or us Republicans—“ and all I can think is ‘yeah, and right now you’re kind of validating it.’ I understand you’re being sarcastic because you’re sick of other people accusing you of being racist, but by you trying to point out that you’re not a racist and you’re trying to be defiant of what they think of you, you’re bringing racism into the element. I understand some people are just so frustrated they don’t know what else to say.
A-M: People are either just frozen with fear or they bury their heads in the sand about race.
AZ: It’s almost like they want to press until they get the reaction they’re looking for. I’m gonna keep accusing you of being this or that until you actually demonstrate it. I’m gonna pull it out of you on way or another. No, you didn’t pull anything out of me. You’re basically like a corrupt cop—you want to bust somebody for drugs and then you pull them over and plant drugs on them and then say you got ‘em. That is exactly what these people are doing—they’re trying to plant something on you. Incriminate or expose you for something THEY did to YOU.
