What is Blackness?

A while ago, I watched this video on youtube of Audra McDonald singing a song written and originally performed by the talented and under-appreciated Laura Nyro. One of the commentators remarked that Laura Nyro, a Jewish singer, sang "blacker" than Audra McDonald. In other words, the commentator implies that there is something inherently "black" about the way someone sings and that Audra McDonald, with her opera-trained voice delivers songs in a way that is "less black" than Laura Nyro.

Which begs the question, what is blackness? And more importantly, how is it objectively identified? And why does degree (or lack) of blackness even matter among black people? Is recent Kennedy Center honoree Grace Bumbry less black than, say Mary J. Blige because of the kind of music she sings?Is Terrence Howard "more black" than Will Smith because of the types of movies in which he stars? Or is Tiger Woods "less black" (I know he's bi-racial...) than Michael Jorndan because he excels at golf rather than basketball? Or is Lauren Anderson, former prima ballerina and THE ONLY black woman to be a prima ballerina in an American ballet company, less black than Judith Jamison?

Identifying things as black, with black referring to a state of being rather than a race or ethnicity is a very slippery slope. It limits what the realms of possibilities for black people.

Perhaps it's a defense mechanism to reject those things that have historically been off-limits or difficult-to-achieve for blacks like opera, golf and ballet. Whatever the root cause, if we want to truly achieve post-racialism (like the media want us to believe we have), we have to stop pigeonholing and stereotyping groups of people. It starts, I believe, with the representations we have of people on television. We still have very limited portrayals of people of color on television. It takes more than to just count the numbers of people of color on television but to look at what occupations they perform, what is their socio-economic status level, and their relationship status. When we truly have a sustained group of representations on television shows, movies and most importantly on the news (I won't even start in on the racialized way in which news is presented), we may begin to see a change in what we describe as "blackness."