Published Paper Details:

What defines a person as being black? Identity, culture, skin colour, other people or something else? Only an individual can determine what defines him/ her. If the African- American people lived in a society that did not care about skin colour, there would not be a "black identity". Americans consider Africans as black not on the basis of African ancestry, but based on whether it's visible. Being black is definitely more than just an appearance, to be 'black' somewhere down in spirit, is to connect with the ancestors and know what has been taught, what you thought was truth. The writer James Baldwin had said "people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them." Some people reject the black identity and this has led to criticism from those who believe that they had a right and a voice to stand up for their race and culture and their individuality. This paper speaks about the antecedents of the black identity through the selected poems of African-American writers.