When I was a little girl, and my siblings teased me for being a "Yankee Girl", there was something within me that wouldn't give, that wouldn't allow it to bother me. It had something to do with the African Americans I had found myself around in Brooklyn. It had something to do with the pride they had in their history, in themselves, the strength in the day-to-day struggle and refusal to let anyone bring them down. It had something to do with the picture of Martin Luther King Jr. my father had in our living room. It had something to do with how my classmates, even in the first grade would place arms akimbo and say, "When I grow up, I want to be President" and how we would all say, "I'm Black and I'm Proud!" It has something to do with the fact that I was born in Brooklyn and also identified as African American, and the warmth in which I was received by this community. And when I traveled to Trinidad, and saw Black heads of states, and read a...