{"id":27587,"date":"2013-01-15T19:39:53","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T19:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=27587"},"modified":"2013-01-15T19:39:53","modified_gmt":"2013-01-15T19:39:53","slug":"black-in-america-its-not-just-about-the-color-of-your-skin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=27587","title":{"rendered":"Black in America: It’s not just about the color of your skin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black in America: It’s not just about the color of your skin<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In America: You define America. What defines you?<\/a>
\nCable News Network<\/a>
\n2012-12-15<\/p>\n

Moni Basu<\/strong><\/p>\n

(CNN) \u2013 What is black? Race. Culture. Consciousness. History. Heritage.
\n\u00a0
\nA shade darker than brown? The opposite of white?
\n\u00a0
\nWho is black? In America, being black has meant having African ancestry.
\n\u00a0
\nBut not everyone fits neatly into a prototypical model of “blackness.”
\n\u00a0
\nScholar Yaba Blay<\/a> explores the nuances of racial identity and the influences of skin color in a project called (1<\/span>)ne Drop<\/a>, named after a rule in the United States that once mandated that any person with “one drop of Negro blood” was black<\/a>. Based on assumptions of white purity, it reflects a history of slavery and Jim Crow segregation<\/a>.
\n\u00a0
\nIn its colloquial definition, the rule meant that a person with a black relative from five generations ago was also considered black.<\/p>\n

Your take on black in America<\/strong>
\n\u00a0
\nOne drop was codified in the 1920 Census and became pervasive as courts ruled on it as a principle of law. It was not deemed unconstitutional until 1967.
\n\u00a0
\nBlay, a dark-skinned daughter of Ghanian immigrants, had always been able to clearly communicate her racial identity. But she was intrigued by those whose identity was not always apparent. Her project focuses on a diverse group of people\u2014many of whom are mixed race\u2014who claim blackness as their identity.
\n<\/strong>\u00a0
\nThat identity is expanding in America every day. Blay’s intent was to spark dialogue and see the idea of being black through a whole new lens…<\/p>\n

…Black and white<\/strong>
\n\u00a0
\nCalifornia author Kathleen Cross<\/a>, 50, remembers taking a public bus ride with her father when she was 8. Her father was noticeably uncomfortable that black kids in the back were acting rowdy. He muttered under his breath: “Making us look bad.”
\n\u00a0
\nShe understood her father was ashamed of those black kids, that he fancied himself not one of them.
\n\u00a0
\n“My father was escaping blackness,” she says. “He didn\u2019t like for me to have dark-skinned friends. He never said it. But I know.”
\n\u00a0
\nShe asked him once if she had ancestors from Africa. He got quiet. Then, he said: “Maybe, Northern Africa.”
\n\u00a0
\n“He wasn’t proud of being black,” she says.
\n\u00a0
\nCross’ black father and her white mother never married. Fair-skinned, blue-eyed Cross was raised in a diverse community.
\n\u00a0
\nLater, she found herself in situations where she felt shunned by black people. Even light-skinned black people thought she was white.
\n\u00a0
\n“Those who relate to the term ‘black’ as a descriptor of color are unlikely to accept me as black,” she says. “If they relate to the term ‘black’ as a descriptor of culture, history and ancestry, they have no difficulty seeing me as black.”
\n\u00a0
\nAt one time in her life, she wished she were darker\u2014she might have even swallowed a pill to give her instant pigment if there were such a thing. She even wrote about being “trapped in the body of a white woman.” She didn’t want to “represent the oppressor.”
\n\u00a0
\nShe no longer thinks that way.
\n\u00a0
\nShe doesn’t like to check the multiracial box. “It erases everything,” she says.
\n\u00a0
\nShe doesn’t like biracial, either. Or mixed. It’s not her identity.
\n\u00a0
\n“There’s only one race,” she says, “and that’s the human race.”<\/strong>
\n\u00a0
\n“I am a descendant of a stolen African and Irish and English immigrants. That makes me black\u2014and white\u2014in America…<\/p>\n

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

Black in America: It’s not just about the color of your skin In America: You define America. What defines you? Cable News Network 2012-12-15 Moni Basu (CNN) \u2013 What is black? Race. Culture. Consciousness. History. Heritage. \u00a0 A shade darker than brown? The opposite of white? \u00a0 Who is black? In America, being black has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,8,394,20],"tags":[9447,3142,13386,13387,12668,7993,3343,7992],"class_list":["post-27587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-cable-news-network","tag-cnn","tag-in-america-you-define-america-what-defines-you","tag-kathleen-cross","tag-moni-basu","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\/27587","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=27587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}