Angela Rye is a CNN political commentator, NPR political analyst and CEO of IMPACT Strategies, a political advocacy firm in Washington. She is also a former Congressional Black Caucus executive director and general counsel. You can follow her on Twitter @angela_rye and on Instagram @angelarye. This is part of the “First time I realized I was black” series. The views expressed are her own.
I never had a moment of realization about my blackness — I just was. Blackness was a central thread of my experience as a child and as an adolescent, as it is now that I’m an adult.
It seemed like my father knew everybody in Seattle, where I was raised. When he and I would walk down the street I remember people would regularly ask him how he was doing. He would respond without missing a beat: “You know, just out here fighting this racism, man.”
My mother worked really hard to ensure that I had black dolls (of all hues), black books by black authors, and my personal favorite: a poster from the 1975 Anheuser-Busch Great Kings and Queens of Africa collection (of course, she removed the beer logo). She would regularly have me name family members and friends who looked like each of the queens and kings on the poster.
My mother would always emphasize that we were related to the royalty on that poster because EVERYONE originated from Africa. Not only did I always know I was black, I always knew we were and are beautiful, culturally rich, and creators of everything from the sciences to the arts.
My father constantly reminded me that he named me after Angela Yvonne Davis, a scholar and activist who was well known for her work in tandem with the Black Panther Party. That felt like a purposeful, beckoning call to engage in strategic resistance and to fight for the oppressed.
Our name means “bringer of truth” or “messenger of God.” For me that meant telling teachers when history books either inadequately represented or misrepresented black people. That meant engaging in high school discussions about re-starting the Black Panther Party and then settling for the creation of a Black Student Union instead. It meant serving on a community committee, developed by the police chief, to address excessive force and police brutality in my hometown of Seattle.
It meant protesting Initiative 200, which worked to strip gains made by people of color in Washington state by eliminating affirmative action policies. It meant serving as a youth chaplain to the King County Juvenile Detention Center while I was in college. It meant running a computer lab at a community center, so people like me had access to technology. It meant tutoring black high school students to make sure they got into college.
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Source: CNN | Angela T. Rye
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