{"id":20264,"date":"2012-01-30T20:19:56","date_gmt":"2012-01-30T20:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=20264"},"modified":"2013-07-05T09:42:08","modified_gmt":"2013-07-05T09:42:08","slug":"opinion-what-does-blackness-look-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=20264","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: What does Blackness look like?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Opinion: What does Blackness look like?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Cable News Network<\/a> (CNN)
\nIn America: You define America. What defines you?<\/a>
\n2012-01-21<\/p>\n

Yaba Blay<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies
\nDrexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania<\/em><\/p>\n

Editor’s note: Yaba Blay, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Africana studies who teaches courses at Lafayette College. Her research focuses on black identity, with specific attention to skin color and hair politics. She is the recipient of a 2010 Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant through which she embarked upon the book project, (1<\/span>)ne Drop: Conversations on Skin Color, Race, and Identity<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

I always thought I could spot a Black person anywhere. My eyes were trained in New Orleans<\/a>\u2014home to a historically preeminent group of folks who self-identify as \u201cCreoles.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Many of them would make it a point to announce that they are different\u2014not White, not Black, but \u201cCreole.\u201d\u00a0 A mix of African, Native American, French, and sometimes Spanish heritage, some Creoles are light-skinned enough to be mistaken for\u2014or \u201cpass<\/a>\u201d\u2014for White people. We call them \u201cpass\u00e9 blanc.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of my favorite pastimes as a youth in New Orleans was \u201cpicking out Black people\u201d \u2013 people whom everyone else might have thought were White or \u201csomething else,\u201d but whom I knew for a fact were Black. Somehow. Without even knowing it at the time, I had blindly accepted the \u201cone-drop rule<\/a>,\u201d the early 1900\u2019s law turned social rule that held that anyone with 1\/32 of \u201cAfrican Black blood\u201d was Black. And somehow I made it my mission to identify that \u201cone-drop\u201d any chance I could get. Maybe it was my way of retaliating against those who didn\u2019t want to be associated with my kind \u2013 those whom I felt were somehow rejecting their own kind.<\/p>\n

In my limited experiences, it seemed that people whose physical appearance gave them the \u201coption\u201d to be something else, chose to be something else.\u00a0 So in my adult life, when I left New Orleans and began to meet people who were very adamant about their black identity, even though they could have easily identified as \u201cmixed\u201d or \u201cLatino\u201d or \u201cCreole\u201d or could have even \u201cpassed\u201d for white, I found myself intrigued. On one particular occasion, I was on a panel hosted by the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI); and for as \u201clearned\u201d and as well-versed as (I thought) I was in global skin color politics, I found myself somehow taken aback each time either of my co-panelists, whom I would have identified as \u201cLatino\/a,\u201d self-identified as \u201cBlack\u201d and \u201cAfrican.\u201d\u00a0 In that moment, I felt ashamed of myself for questioning their identities based upon the stereotypical visions of “Blackness” that lived in my head. Afterwards, as I continued to struggle with myself, I knew that I wanted to do something with my feelings that could be useful to others like myself. I wanted to explore the \u201cother\u201d sides of Blackness.<\/p>\n

So began my journey into the (1<\/span>)ne Drop project<\/a>…<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Read the entire opinion piece here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Opinion: What does Blackness look like? Cable News Network (CNN) In America: You define America. What defines you? 2012-01-21 Yaba Blay, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Editor’s note: Yaba Blay, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Africana studies who teaches courses at Lafayette College. Her research focuses on black identity, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,369,8,394,20,842],"tags":[9247,9447,3142,20754,1438,7993,3343,7992],"class_list":["post-20264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","category-videos","tag-1ne-drop-project","tag-cable-news-network","tag-cnn","tag-louisiana","tag-new-orleans","tag-yaba-a-blay","tag-yaba-amgborale-blay","tag-yaba-blay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}