- It tends to be White people,
when they're just trying to figure out what to call you.
They're just like "she's Bla (mumbles) and African,
"I don't know, (laughs), she's my friend!"
- I grew up identifying as Black.
- I identify as a Black man.
- I think I identify, I call myself Black,
just because I'm still trying to trace my ancestry.
- I identify as African American.
- I identify as Black, but I'm also Creole.
- I am Bayesian American and Nigerian American,
but I, honestly, I call myself Black.
- Black is beautiful,
and I've always just found strength in the word.
Black is strong, Black is pretty.
- Depending on the situation or the moment in time,
I feel hella proud,
like incredibly proud to be a Black man,
and Black Power, all that other good stuff.
But then--
- To society, there's a lot of negative.
So Black is synonymous with ghetto,
it's synonymous with loud, it's synonymous with lazy.
- The only time that it really bothers me
is when it's used amongst people who look like me.
Someone from the Caribbean,
or someone from a country in Africa, that are saying--
- I'm not Black, I'm Nigerian,
or I'm not Black, I'm Bayesian.
- Members of my family,
they wanna separate themselves from Black Americans,
because they think that being too tied to that
means that they're ghetto.
- We should be on a much stronger unified front.
- It's interesting for me,
because I technically am African American.
- I mean me personally I feel like,
African American is a label that was created for us.
- It just seems like something that would be
in like the New York Times to describe Black people.
- I'm not from Africa directly,
so I don't feel like I should label myself
as an African American.
- I think for some people it just feels wrong
to hearken back to something that they now,
unfortunately don't really have a connection to.
- I sometimes refer to myself as Ghanaian American,
just because, I mean that's what I am.
African American is still such a wide and broad term.
- My family is from Haiti,
so I never really tied myself to African American.
- There's 90 something countries in Africa, right?
- Just like there are varying types of White people,
there are varying types of Black people.
- I don't think there's anything wrong with that term.
I think it just depends on where you are,
and finding yourself and your ancestry.
It's just kind of interesting how as a people,
we find identity with certain words.
- And maybe that's the other thing,
is that how you identify with it is just fluid.
- I think bein' Black is dope.
I think if you are rejecting it,
you're missing out on a lot of fun shit.
- Regardless of your race and your ethnicity,
your background so to speak,
just be proud of who you are.
("The Gang")