{"id":64398,"date":"2024-08-06T02:06:50","date_gmt":"2024-08-06T02:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=64398"},"modified":"2024-08-06T02:07:19","modified_gmt":"2024-08-06T02:07:19","slug":"in-kamala-harriss-blackness-i-see-my-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=64398","title":{"rendered":"In Kamala Harris\u2019s Blackness, I See My Own"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Kamala Harris\u2019s Blackness, I See My Own<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2024-08-04<\/p>\n

Danzy Senna<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
By Pedro Nekoi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We seem to be beginning yet another season of a perennially popular American spectacle, \u201cHow Much Is That Mulatto<\/a> in the Window?\u201d I frequently think that, after 400 years, this show is about to go off the air \u2014 jump the shark, as it were. But then it returns, with ever more absurd plot lines. Yet even as a so-called mulatto myself, I can\u2019t stop watching.<\/p>\n

The Hollywood<\/a> pitch goes something like this: Put racially ambiguous Black people in the public eye \u2014 Kamala<\/a>, Meghan<\/a>, Barack<\/a>. Have them declare themselves Black. Count down the minutes before the world erupts into outrage, distress and suspicion. People scream their confusion and doubt, accusing the figures of lying about who they really are. It makes for good TV.<\/p>\n

On last week\u2019s episode, Donald Trump<\/a> got his cameo, accusing Vice President Kamala Harris<\/a> of switching races. \u201cShe was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person,\u201d he said during an appearance<\/a> in front of the National Association of Black Journalists. His staged bewilderment, implying that she was practicing some sort of sinister racial sorcery, felt wild for 2024, when mixed-race people are everywhere, visually overrepresented in Target commercials and Kardashian family reunions. Yet even in the midst of our fetishization, a stubborn strain of mulattophobia remains widespread. And no matter what answer we give to the ubiquitous question \u2014 What are you? \u2014 someone, somewhere, will accuse us of lying, of being a grifter trying to impersonate another race, a more real race.<\/p>\n

Multiracial, mulatto, mixed-nuts, halfies \u2014 whatever you want to call us today, we remain the fastest-growing demographic in our country. When we enter the spotlight, we are often treated as specimens, there to be dissected, poked, debated, disputed and disinherited. We are and always have been a Rorschach test for how the world is processing its anxiety, rage, confusion and desire about this amorphous construction we call race…<\/p>\n

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

The Hollywood pitch goes something like this: Put racially ambiguous Black people in the public eye \u2014 Kamala, Meghan, Barack. Have them declare themselves Black. Count down the minutes before the world erupts into outrage, distress and suspicion. People scream their confusion and doubt, accusing the figures of lying about who they really are. It makes for good TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,8,26,394,20],"tags":[1340,21057,19040,28247,19041,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-64398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-danzy-senna","tag-donald-trump","tag-kamala-d-harris","tag-kamala-devi-harris","tag-kamala-harris","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64398","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=64398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64399,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64398\/revisions\/64399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}