Close readers of this blog will know that when it comes to defining myself, I prefer Black over African American. I’m really not that up in arms over whether Black should be capitalized or not. Hell, in this day and age of instant messages, text messages, Twitter, emails and blog posts from your iPhone or Blackberry, nobody pays attention to capitalization anyway. I’ve been meaning to write a post about why I prefer Black over African American, and I’ll do so soon.I bring this up now because I find this video of Smokey Robinson at the Def Poetry Jam riffing on Black identity very intriguing. I don’t agree with everything he has to say, but he does raise some interesting questions about how black folks (and everyone else) in the United States identify.

(And just in case you haven’t noticed, I don’t like referring to The United States of America as America either, but that’s a whole other post.)

Props to PurpleZoe for the heads up on the vid.