{"id":26838,"date":"2012-12-07T18:50:24","date_gmt":"2012-12-07T18:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=26838"},"modified":"2017-01-26T18:58:21","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T18:58:21","slug":"soledad-obrien-who-is-black-in-america-i-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=26838","title":{"rendered":"Soledad O’Brien: Who is black in America? I am"},"content":{"rendered":"

Soledad O’Brien: Who is black in America? I am<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Cable News Network<\/a> (CNN)
\n2012-12-07<\/p>\n

Editor’s Note:<\/strong> In today\u2019s United States, is being black determined by the color of your skin, by your family, by what society says, or something else? Soledad O\u2019Brien reports \u201cWho Is Black in America?\u201d on CNN at 8 p.m. ET\/PT this Sunday, December 9.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yaba Blay<\/a><\/strong>, Professor\/Scholar<\/p>\n

Soledad O\u2019Brien<\/a><\/strong>, Host<\/p>\n

(CNN) – Yaba Blay, Ph.D. created the (1<\/span>)ne Drop Project<\/a>, a multiplatform endeavor that hopes to challenge perceptions of black identity. Blay, a consulting producer for “Who Is Black in America?” spoke to hundreds of those who may not immediately be recognized as “black” based on how they look, including CNN Anchor Soledad O’Brien.\u00a0 In this edited excerpt from her forthcoming book, Blay spoke to O’Brien about what makes a person black, and why the conversation is important.<\/p>\n

Yaba Blay:<\/strong> How do you identify? Racially and culturally?<\/p>\n

Soledad O\u2019Brien<\/strong>: I\u2019m black. I\u2019m Latina. My mom is Cuban. Afro-Cuban. My dad is white and Australian. And I think because of my job, often a question like “How do you identify?” is really not about the question. It\u2019s always “What side are you on?” “What perspective to you bring?”<\/p>\n

Blay<\/strong>: I remember when “Black in America” first came out, and a lot of people being like \u201cWho is she and why is she<\/em> doing this?\u201d…<\/p>\n

…Blay<\/strong>: So what makes a person black?<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien<\/strong>: I certainly don\u2019t think it\u2019s skin color. And I certainly don\u2019t think it\u2019s how well you speak the language. And I\u2019m not sure I can answer that question thoroughly because my consciousness about race was really implanted in me by my parents. I would say I\u2019m black because my parents said I\u2019m black. I\u2019m black because my mother\u2019s black. I\u2019m black because I grew up in a family of all black people. I knew I was black because I grew up in an all-white neighborhood. And my parents, as part of their protective mechanisms that they were going to give to us made it very clear what we were<\/strong>…<\/p>\n

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

Soledad O’Brien: Who is black in America? I am Cable News Network (CNN) 2012-12-07 Editor’s Note: In today\u2019s United States, is being black determined by the color of your skin, by your family, by what society says, or something else? Soledad O\u2019Brien reports \u201cWho Is Black in America?\u201d on CNN at 8 p.m. ET\/PT this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,13743,8,394,20],"tags":[9447,3142,12774,7993,3343,7992],"class_list":["post-26838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-cable-news-network","tag-cnn","tag-soledad-obrien","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\/26838","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=26838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51306,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26838\/revisions\/51306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}