Kwanzaa: Kujichagulia / Self-Determination

Habari gani, everyone?

Today’s principle is kujichagulia, or self-determination if Swahili isn’t your thing. Right after ensuring we’re united with our kin in common struggle, the ability to “define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves” is the most essential principle. For most of us living in subcultures, we intrinsically know the subtle yet foundational power of a name. We also understand the responsibility to live up to the names we choose. But most of us find it a lot harder to comprehend the devastation of having the world refuse the person you choose to be. 

I think about the scene in Zootopia where Nick Wilde unearths his foundational trauma to Judy Hopps a lot. Instead of being initiated into the Junior Ranger Scouts, this group he truly believed in, he was told he could never join — or uphold its values — because of who he is. After that, he stopped believing anything but what the world told him. It’s a quiet beat in this billion-dollar animated movie that perfectly distills a part of the Black American experience to me. People of color break themselves against this ever-present, unyielding social pressure to be bogeymen every day. We’ve only very recently begun to process and articulate how much it shapes our daily lives.

I grew up in an insular environment, in a way. Inner-city Baltimore in the 1980s and 90s was its own world, shaped by cultural sources of our own choosing. We had Jet and Essence in our barber shops, Soul Train and 70s comedy reruns on our TVs, only went to movie theatres for things like Boyz N The Hood or New Jack City. Almost everything else was “white shit” that we paid limited attention to.

But I never felt connected to the examples of manhood that were presented to me growing up. I couldn’t be as hard as Ice Cube, or as confident as Biggie, or suave like Blair Underwood. I wanted to be wide-eyed like Teddy Ruxpin, or as inventive as Donatello, or a dashing magic-rat like Justin. I grew up with the implicit understanding that the world saw me as a monster. My community told me I had to be hard, unapologetic, and iron-willed to make it in this world as a monster. What I really wanted was to be a monster somewhere with the freedom to be soft and curious. 

Over time, the tangled knot of tension between my true nature (name) and the faces allowed me by the world has been smoothed somewhat, given shape. I see myself in the stories with characters considered hideous, dangerous, or disgusting by the world but are truly loving, curious, deeply feeling beings in their minds. I sided with the monsters and aliens, the noble savages, the Talking Animals who were familiar and strange at the same time. In Dungeons and Dragons, I gravitate towards the “Sasquatch” character — the firbolgs, the gnomes, the werebears — the people who are twice-outsiders, unaccepted by their secret communities, unknown to the wider world. It feels truest to my experience, and the ethos that has sprung up from that.

There will always be a gap between the way you see yourself and the way the world sees you. You will have to develop specific behaviors to help others bridge that gap. (For me, that is smiling and greeting everyone who looks my way by lifting my hand to show it’s empty or I’m holding a phone; wearing clothes that signal I’m geeky or invisible; never showing anger if I can help it.) Home isn’t where you come from; it’s where you can be yourself. Family aren’t the people that raised you; they’re the people who see you as you really are. And, at some point, you will forget about the way others see you if you spend enough time with home and family. It will be very jarring when it happens.

Thanks to the Internet, I’ve been lucky enough to find other Black American geeks like me — enough to know there’s a whole community of us with surprising shared experiences. Most of us come up sympathizing with monsters. Most of us have similar geek touchstones if we’re in the same generation. (We all owned at least one shirt of Looney Tunes characters in street gear.) Most of us struggle with our blackness in some way. 

Which is why when Black Americans express identities they’ve shaped themselves, tell the stories that center their narratives, it’s a cause for celebration. I’m not a member of the Beyhive, but what Beyonce is doing with her career should be lauded. We have so many Black American luminaries bending the conversation with their unique perspectives, and it’s truly wonderful. It inspires me to take up the same responsibility of shaping my own narrative — choosing my own name, as it were — and rejecting the constant pressure to be the monster I’m not. I’m a jackalope, damnit. Let me be soft and curious.

Before I go, I just thought I’d celebrate a few people of color who have been singular in their self-expression and who inspire me to up my game every day:

• Caudlewag. I’ve been a lurking fan of this dude for some time — I wish I had the confidence and discipline to pull off his aesthetic, but I’m nowhere near put-together enough. Fantastic author, voice-actor, and all-around neat dude.
• Boots Riley. Writer, director, rapper, Communist radical. His instant-classic 2018 film Sorry to Bother You dives deep into how Black Americans navigate the gap between their true selves and the people the world allows them to be, and what happens when you give too much ground. His follow-up, the seven-episode Amazon Prime series I’m a Virgo, is just as weird, twisty, and surprising. A true original more people should be following!
• Samuel Delany. Hugo- and Nebula-award winning Grandmaster of Science Fiction who writes mind-bending stories wrestling with Queer identity and class struggle? It’s a crime I hadn’t learned about him before his wave of recognition in the 2010s; it feels like he marries Langston Hughes with the best experimental 70s sci-fi, but I’ve never read him. That changes in 2024.
• Janelle Monae. Pansexual, non-binary avatar of pleasure. As an ace cis man, I find Monae my opposite in many ways — but I still see them as this bodhisattva who has learned to transcend the limitations I grapple with. Their casual sexuality is something that makes me feel shockingly old-fashioned, and reminds me that there are still whole frontiers being enthusiastically explored by vanguards like them. I’m always happy to see them pop up — with a new album, or in a random movie. 
• Justice Smith. I really liked this actor in Detective Pikachu and the Dungeons & Dragons movie, but it feels like he flies under the radar for most people. His blerd energy is on a wavelength I find relatable, almost comforting. To be honest, he’s the main reason I’m interested in The American Society for Magical Negroes. He can strike the right tone the concept would need to work.

These folks challenge the stereotypes of blackness in America while reaffirming the values we hold dear just by…being themselves. That, in turn, shows me how I can do the same. I sincerely appreciate that — in times like these, people like them are badly needed.

I sincerely hope all of us find ways to be more authentically ourselves in 2024, and think carefully about the responsibility of living up to the names we choose. It’s sobering to remind myself that I am a jackalope with a writing desk, and only I have the freedom to decide what that means.

Tomorrow is a celebration of ujima, or collective work and responsibility. How is doing work for someone else something to be celebrated? I’ll try really hard not to tell you that eating your vegetables is something you can learn to love, so to speak…but I will tell you why I love eating my vegetables.