By Kenneth L. Hardin

A character in my favorite movie, “A Soldier’s Story,” said something so profound back in the WWII setting that it still has relevance and resonates with me eight decades after that war, “Any man ain’t sure where he belong gotta’ be in a whole lotta pain.” As I sat marinating on that quote, it brought to mind the intro to a song sung by my favorite rap group, Public Enemy, “Have you forgotten that once we were brought here, we were robbed of our name, robbed of our language, we lost our religion, our culture, our God… and many of us, by the way we act, we’ve even lost our minds.”

I’m my ancestors’ wildest dreams. I’m certain that when they laid down on the bare dirt floor of their slave cabin at night, exhausted from toiling under the hot, brutal and unforgiving Southern sun and the watchful eye of a similarly barbaric overseer, they never dreamed one day their progeny would move beyond the fields and into a life so unattainable to them.  What I know they didn’t hope for was a people so broken, confused and misguided that they’ve become active participants in their own degradation and demise. The late Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, a writer, behavioral scientist and author of “The Isis Papers, lamented, “We’re the only people on this entire planet who have been taught to sing and praise our demeanment, ‘I’m a bitch. I’m a hoe. I’m a gangster. I’m a thug. I’m a dog.’ If you can train people to demean and degrade themselves, you can oppress them forever.”  The miseducation of the Negro from within continues.

The tears my ancestors shed at being powerless to fight back against their subjugation, brutality, rape and murder still water the ground today. From above, they’re witnessing the actions of their offspring, who are now doing it to themselves. There’s a whole lot of people, who look like me, in pain because they have no knowledge of self. They fill this void with character traits and behaviors foreign to a once proud people.

Although I’ve never engaged in actions contradictory to the pride my forebearers held when in the confines of forced servitude, I felt an emptiness within. This untenanted space in my mind existed because I had no idea where I originated from. We have a great keeper of our family history, and she regularly disseminates information of my paternal lineage going back to before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. I reveled in the fact of knowing some of my people actually took part in a back-to-Africa movement and boarded a ship home to the Motherland. But that desolate feeling inside me remained because I knew my history was more than a slave plantation in Clover S.C. Author and lecturer Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu said, “If you teach a Black child his history began on a slave ship, his future will be limited. But if you teach that same Black child his future began with the pyramids, and kings and queens, his future is unlimited.” By the looks and actions of our  young people today, the miseducation of the Negro is alive and well.

I took it upon myself to find a solution that would fill the void. I took an African Ancestry DNA test that would trace my maternal lineage back to my African birthplace. I sat down with some doctor and nurse friends and asked them to review the validity of the process, and all said it was sound. I spent 45 minutes on the phone with a therapist, who fleshed out my reasons for wanting to do this. She then helped me mentally prepare for the results I would receive. For several weeks, I waited impatiently for the results to post to my online account.  When I finally received the notification that the test results were in, I was excitedly nervous. I clicked on the link and found that my life history started in the Central African nation of the Republic of Cameroon with the Masa people. Finally, I felt full and whole.

From that finding and with more studying about the history and heritage of my people, I made a conscious decision that I would never again use the sociopolitical term “Black” or the even more ridiculous “African American.” Every other ethnic group has a physical location to identify their composition whether its Japan, China, Ireland, Europe or Italy.  I’ve never seen anyone travel to the country of “Black.” I’m proud of my African heritage and even prouder to have been born in America. I was so gratified; I volunteered to serve and defend it unlike other so called patriots who boast the loudest. I understand I’m African without memory of my homeland and American without full rights and privileges here.

I am an African in America.

Kenneth L. (Kenny) Hardin is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.