Name It Claim It

Just looking at him, tall and sturdy, standing on a corner downtown, one didn't know whether to laugh or feel sorry for him.  One passer-by engaged him.

"Excuse me, I notice that you have half of your head bald and the other half 1/3rd is kinky-haired, another 1/3rd is cut close with some little design carved into it, and the last 1/3rd has rope-looking plaits attached to a patch of real hair and hanging to your waist.  Does all that have some significance?"
"Trying to figure out who I am.  Changes keep rolling in."
"Is that why you've got one of your trouser legs rolled up?"
"Yeah that style rolled in around the '70s or '80s.  And this chew-stick you see in my mouth, that came into black culture 'round then, too . . ."
"Chewing on a stick is black culture?"
"Ah-gah, goo goo, woo . . . black English, it means 'yes'."
"Where'd you learn that?  It sounds Afrikan."
"It just now rolled in."

"We've meekly, like frightened sheep, surrendered our identity as black people.  Ever notice that whenever these people talk about black culture or black identity they never mention that we need a real language or we're just cheap imitations of Europeans?"
"A language is serious business; that's why I'm just dealing with this outside-the-head stuff, especially hair.  We been in this hair thing for over a hundred years.  Some dudes still just cover it up with them do-dah rags running down the back of their head, like they piggy-backing on the Arabs."
"Guess they just figure if we piggy-backing on the Europeans who kicked our butts then we might as well piggy-back on the Arabs who kicked our butts, too.  People  who want the identity of those who kicked their butts are an abomination.  We need a language that identifies us like European languages identify Europeans, Asian languages Asians . . . long as we can't speak any language but a European we're locked in the European world -- a white world, talk about black this and black that all we want; can't understand anything unless it's brought to us in a European language, a language of the white world.  How long you been doing this?"
"Today makes a week."
"So after a week who do you think you are?"
"It ain't rolled in yet . . ."