{"id":64400,"date":"2024-08-06T02:16:59","date_gmt":"2024-08-06T02:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=64400"},"modified":"2024-08-06T02:16:59","modified_gmt":"2024-08-06T02:16:59","slug":"you-were-either-black-or-white-to-claim-whiteness-as-a-mixed-child-was-to-deny-and-hide-blackness-our-families-understood-that-the-world-we-were-growing-into-would-seek-to-denigrate-this-part-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=64400","title":{"rendered":"You were either Black or white. To claim whiteness as a mixed child was to deny and hide Blackness. Our families understood that the world we were growing into would seek to denigrate this part of us and we would need a community that was made up, always and already, of all shades of Blackness."},"content":{"rendered":"

Though I am younger than Ms. Harris<\/a> by six years, in her Blackness, I recognize my own. It is a Blackness born not in slavery but much later, in a whole other context, in the wake of the civil rights<\/a> and Black Power<\/a> movements, when there was no mixed-race category. You were either Black or white. To claim whiteness as a mixed child was to deny and hide Blackness. Our families understood that the world we were growing into would seek to denigrate this part of us and we would need a community that was made up, always and already, of all shades of Blackness. The big secret I knew \u2014 and Ms. Harris surely knows it as well \u2014 is that our Blackness was born not out of something lost but out of something gained.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Danzy Senna, \u201cIn Kamala Harris\u2019s Blackness, I See My Own<\/a>,\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, August 4, 2024. https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/08\/04\/opinion\/kamala-harris-biracial.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though I am younger than Ms. Harris by six years, in her Blackness, I recognize my own. It is a Blackness born not in slavery but much later, in a whole other context, in the wake of the civil rights and Black Power movements, when there was no mixed-race category. You were either Black or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1340,19040,28247,19041,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-64400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-danzy-senna","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\/64400","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=64400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64401,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64400\/revisions\/64401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}