Tag: Black

 My white black dad.

I’m black. I live in America, so that makes me African-American. However, I say I’m black, because I also contend that Charlize Theron is African-American because she’s from Africa but she’s white and well that makes my head spin and question the African-American label. Further, the label African-American overlooks the country of origin of black people as Africa is a continent, not a country. I mean does anyone run around saying, I’m a South American-American, instead of I’m Brazilian-American? And I understand that the African-American label gives a nod to the fact that most blacks in America don’t know their countries of origin because of slavery, but still. Anyway, I digress.

As a black person from America, that means most likely I am a combination of ethnicities thanks to the evil design of slavery. However, growing up with a father who looked very much like a white man and a mother with roots from the Bahamas, I often wondered what exactly that ethnic mix would turn out to be. Also, because I watch a lot of PBS these days (see being in my thirties with a family), I secretly wish Dr. Henry Louis Gates would do one of the big, black book of family trees for me like he does for the celebrities on his show Finding Your Roots. But without access to Dr. Gates, I did the next best thing and opted to do genetic testing.  Since my father was considered black, but looked white, I set out to start with his genetic make-up first. Since my father has been dead for awhile, I turned to one of his brothers, my favorite uncle and used his saliva. (This does presuppose that my grandmother wasn’t running around and that they have the same mother and father. But they look alike, so I’ll go with she was faithful.) When I got back the test results, I found out that my father and his siblings are almost 70% white, with the remainder being African, Southeast Asian and Indian. With that my father went from being a light-skinned black person to a dark-skinned white person. Upon learning their genetic make-up, my uncles and aunts brushed it off and said that they will always be black. But really, are they? My mom’s genetic make-up was less of a surprise with her being 90% African and the rest Portuguese, what seemed like a direct result of a slave ship from Africa sailing to an island in the Bahamas.

So, with that, I wondered what did it make me? I’m not delusional enough to believe that in America I will not be accepted as 100% black even if my genetic make-up doesn’t reflect that.  Just look at Meghan Markle or Tiger Woods, for example. They both try their hardest to give a nod to their non-black side perhaps even more than their black side, but no matter what they do they still are categorized as black by both black and non-back communities. I argue if they weren’t categorized as black, they wouldn’t have gotten as much press as they have. Being thought of as 100% black is what makes people take interest in them because they are operating in what have been traditionally white environments. Not because they are thought of as 50% black. Again, I’m digressing; back to me.  If my father was mostly white and my mother is mostly black, that makes me a mixed race person, no? And if it does, am I entitled to say that I am mixed race like someone with a 100% white parent and a 100% black parent? And if it does entitle me to say that I am mixed race, is there some percentage cut-off point where a person could no longer say they are mixed race? Say if someone ended-up being 15% white and 85% black, does that still count? My point is, that being labeled black in America doesn’t really care about the hue of your skin color on the black spectrum or your genetic make-up. Being black really is based on your identifying cultural upbringing and experiences. Again, my father didn’t look black at all so he wasn’t openly discriminated against in some situations like my mom was, however once certain people learned that he was black their attitudes toward him changed. And so, being black is about having the one drop of black in you that makes you a descendant from someone in Africa and a recipient of some form of acknowledgment that you aren’t white in America. It’s about a communal acknowledgment of being a descendant of people who were mistreated in slavery and its aftermath, not ever given equal standing or footing and still attempting to make a patchwork quilt of the American dream with jagged scrapes from the throwaway pile. It is about overcoming an attempt to erase your native tongues and histories and mass extermination to building business, social and political forces. It’s about being made to think that you were less than something in America to acknowledging that there is no America or American wealth without the head start of free labor given to many white Americans off of the backs of blacks. Being black is simply about knowing how it feels to grow up as an underdog and learning how not to just survive, but to live. I’m not sure if blacks in America will ever live as freely as whites in America, but I do know that blacks in America are a beautiful product of many ethnicities, struggles, achievements and experiences that make us vibrantly unique.

So, regardless of the fact that neither I nor most blacks in America are 100% black, we’ll always be considered black and that label should acknowledge our varied ethnic mixes. It also should acknowledge that the construct of racial discrimination specifically against blacks is ignorance at its finest and relies on a lack of imagination and disregard of history from its proponents. Being black is more than just one thing. It isn’t a label that should be rejected or shunned. It’s a result of cultural descent and shared communal experiences. No matter how black you are, or aren’t, on the outside or the blackness of your genetic make-up on the inside, as any financial expert will tell you, being in the black is the best thing to be.