The Debt of Black Identity

 Czariah Rhine

Ms. Harris

ENGL2016-44378

04 November 2022

The Debt of Black Identity

In our course theme, The Sea is Haunted, there was an introduced point of "the debt that can never be paid off." While keeping that in mind, I noticed through the works we have read in this course, I feel that there is a connection to debts that the characters have other than things that are of just monetary value. While reading, I kept getting the sense of the character's feelings as if nothing they did would ever be good enough for them to have the life they envision for themselves. Ultimately, the slave trade and its aftermaths are the cause of them having to live their lives with restrictions on their success. The things that they want, like secure homes, wealth, and access to more opportunities for a better quality of life, were all taken away from Black people.

A prime example of this would be the character Willie from Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing because her chapter takes place during the Great Migration. Willie had aspirations of becoming a well-known singer when moving to New York from Pratt City, but when she and her family made it to New York, Willie soon realized that her dreams were farther out of reach than she'd imagined because of her phenotype. She'd been told that she was too dark for the job she wanted and she soon found herself having to settle for a job cleaning for a wealthy Black family in Harlem that had to separate themselves from Blackness to be "accepted." Willie was forced to give up her dreams due to the rhetoric and views left behind after slavery, with people not wanting incorporate Black spaces into the world. Being a reader, it was easy for me to see that the life Willie envisioned for herself was never going to be attainable, especially with her not being a white-passing Black woman during this time. She was never able to live the life she wanted, and I feel this fits into the debt that can never be paid because initially, before making the move from Pratt City, Willie never had a doubt that she wouldn't be able to pursue her goals now that that slavery was abolished. The opportunities that she should have had were not accessible to her because of racial capitalism. Like Willie, many other characters throughout our readings have put unnecessary pressure on themselves in trying to fit into spaces where they aren’t welcomed. They begin to doubt their capabilities and therefore have to settle for a life that is dissatisfactory to their aspirations. I want to highlight how Black People’s struggle to find their identity has a role as a debt because we have the constant need to search for places to fit into because of all the things that were deprived of during the slave trade, slavery, and much after that as well. I even noticed this same symbolic relationship in our earlier readings with the teaching of Christianity. There is this concept of continuously having to ask for forgiveness, alluding to you never actually being forgiven. These processes instill a way of life where it is felt that you’ll never gain back the things that were taken, and the debt is supposedly “paid” with your quality of life, and the cycle continues.

Works Cited

Gyasi, Yaa. Homegoing. Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. https://www.oasisacademysouthbank.org/uploaded/South_Bank/Curriculum/Student_Learning/Online_Library/KS4/Homegoing_by_Yaa_Gyasi.pdf

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