Black women have too much attitude.

Black men do not take care of their children.

In terms of social advancement, black people have peaked as a race.  (You HAVE heard this, right?)

The problem with blanket statements, particularly those pertaining to people along racial, ethnic and gender lines, is that they amount to little more than stereotypes. They give those who are the exceptions to these rules far too much to live down to.

Yet there is another blanket statement that I’ve heard more times than I can count.  It’s usually said from one black person to another and what makes it so pervasive is that I’ve heard it from teachers, political activists, preachers, drug dealers, inmates and the occasional street corner ho alike.  Ready?

We’re the descendents of kings and queens!

It’s the granddaddy of statements and is used for every imaginable reason.  While the general theory is that it’s a historical fact stated with the intent to empower, it’s used for much more and much less than that. 

“I mean we’re descendents of kings and queens,” says the teacher trying to get her students to finish their assignments and do better on standardized tests.

“You know we’re straight descended from royalty,” states the incarnated thief when explaining why he is above the criminal justice system and their two faced rules.

“We’re the originators of history and come from the land of kings and queens,” says the scholar as she explains why rap videos are not in line with who we truly are as a people.

“We come from kings and queens,” states the not-quite-high school-graduate who will not take a job at McDonald’s, but who refuses to do the work necessary to qualify for an entry-level position at a corporation.

Because it is a blanket statement, it’s abused and the power of it is often diluted.  The implication of this declaration is almost always that the person speaking is above something, but that something changes.  One person claims our royal heritage to prove that he is above selling drugs in the community, while a drug dealer uses the statement to prove that he is above dirtying himself with a “legit” job among the racist mainstream American culture.  But beyond the manipulation of the statement is the statement itself.  It’s overly general, not always applicable and only partially true.

First off, damn near everyone comes from a history of queens and kings.  Royalty is not necessarily a signifier of enlightenment, progress or intellectual superiority.  Development of a monarchy is a sociological fact having much more to do with the size of a society and its transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture than it does to anything else.

Despite this fact, a larger point is lost.

We are indeed the descendent of kings and queens.  But what does this truly mean?

We are also the descendents of water carriers, food tasters, court jesters, baby namers and dancers.

As we move beyond the palace gates, we are also the descendents of laborers, thieves, hunters, slave traders, gladiators, murderers, griots, coup leaders, liars, saviors and gossipers.

While noting our links to kings and queens carries power and instills pride, truth and reality have their place and should be utilized as well.  There were only so many kings and queens – if everyone could be one then they wouldn’t be distinctive or powerful enough to really live up to the titles.  How do you know you’re not the descendent of a palace servant, an infamous thief or a religious change agent who inspired more than any king or queen ever could?  If the statement was not so overused, then I could let this slide.  But it is.  So I can’t. 

Black people (en masse) need to get to the point where instilling present day pride is not forcefully based on conjuring romanticized and unfounded images of what we’d like our past to be.  Of course we are truly the descendents of kings and queens, particularly rulers who existed before Caucasian and Arabian colonization of the continent.  But we are much more than that.  We are a people entire and we are every shade of society that can exist.  We are more dynamic than being limited to royalty.  We can give ourselves more than that to live up to.

The real problem with this statement is that it had to be made at all.  We have been so displaced from who we were before we reached these shores and who our ancestors could have been in the absence of colonization that we often hold onto any “positive” element we come across.  The true problem of those descended from black slaves in America is that we don’t generally have the option of knowing who and where we actually came from.  Perhaps if we knew and were secure in this knowledge, generalizations would not be needed.  They would pale in comparison to hard facts and intimate knowledge of whose journey we have extended through our own birth and life. 

I’m not for completely eliminating the statement all together.  It has its place and should be used with specific examples and within proper context.  But the image of a golden crown and an honorable title should not be needed to remind me that my people are great.  Despite all we’ve been through, my presence right here right now, is a testament to that.  Using the proper context for the statement makes it much more powerful.  Otherwise its just rhetoric and we ARE above such pomposity.  Not because we are the descendents of kings and queens, but because we’re a complete and complex people from the noblest of rulers to the lowliest of society.  We are not limited to any social or historical dimension – be it negative or positive.  Rhetoric does not acknowledge this.  It’s useless and gets us nowhere.  But true confidence in who we are and who we can be goes beyond words and is evidenced in action.

So talk less. 

And get active.