{"id":53200,"date":"2017-04-02T16:20:56","date_gmt":"2017-04-02T16:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=53200"},"modified":"2017-04-06T02:10:18","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T02:10:18","slug":"black-and-proud-even-if-strangers-cant-tell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=53200","title":{"rendered":"Black and Proud. Even if Strangers Can\u2019t Tell."},"content":{"rendered":"

Black and Proud. Even if Strangers Can\u2019t Tell.<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2017-04-01<\/p>\n

Rebecca Carroll<\/strong><\/a>, Editor of Special Projects
\nWNYC, New York, New York<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nRachel Levit<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n

My 11-year-old is understated, but not shy. He likes to bake, loves video games, is loyal to his friends and, biased as I may be, is a pretty good-looking kid. He gets mad sometimes, though, that people don\u2019t immediately register him as black. \u201cYou\u2019re so lucky,\u201d he said to me a few months ago. \u201cPeople look at you and know that you are black.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being black in America has historically been determined by whether or not you look black to nonblack people. This keeps racism operational. Brown and black skin in this country can invite a broad and freewheeling range of bad behavior \u2014 from job discrimination to a child being shot dead in the street. For my son, though, being black in America is about more than his skin color. It\u2019s about power, confidence, culture and belonging.<\/p>\n

You inherit race, though. You don\u2019t steal it. We\u2019re reminded of this once again by Rachel Dolezal<\/a>, the white woman who made national headlines in 2015 for claiming a black identity because she felt like it. She released a memoir<\/a> last week…<\/p>\n

…My son is not the only light-skinned, mixed or biracial person I know who identifies primarily as black. Increasingly, I have observed my adult peers and colleagues who fall into this category not merely identifying as black, but routinely pulling out the receipts to prove their blackness.<\/p>\n

Some of this may have to do with what the brilliant Jordan Peele<\/a>, who is also biracial and black, tapped into for the plot of his genre-redefining box office hit, \u201cGet Out<\/a>\u201d \u2014 that it\u2019s cool to be black right now, that we are trending…<\/p>\n

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

Being black in America has historically been determined by whether or not you look black to nonblack people. This keeps racism operational. Brown and black skin in this country can invite a broad and freewheeling range of bad behavior \u2014 from job discrimination to a child being shot dead in the street.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,414,125,8,20],"tags":[16433,2640,20241,22899,2327],"class_list":["post-53200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-family","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-jordan-peele","tag-new-york-times","tag-rachel-dolezal","tag-rebecca-carroll","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53200","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=53200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53201,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53200\/revisions\/53201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}