Black Like Me

Let’s get this straight: Kamala Harris is Black — and Asian. That she has chosen to identify as a “proud Black woman” and Asian is her right and, I would argue, her mission as she valiantly tries to advocate for social justice for all people. My focus in this article is on blackness. Those who try to deny Senator Harris blackness need ask themselves, Why are they doing this? Why does it matter?

We need to talk about race in order to move beyond this debilitating social construct. Doing so takes work and vigilance. In this pivotal moment in the life of America, we cannot let the gargoyles of white supremacy try to define who is or is not Black. That Black people —African Americans — are discussing these issues is understandable, although difficult and painful. However, it is disingenuous and outrageous that some conservative commentators are trying to stir doubt and resentment of those whose legacy is something other than two Black parents descended from enslaved Africans — just another in their playbook of racial dog whistles and pathetic attempts to divide and conquer people of color and confuse our white allies. We must not be hoodwinked by their faux concern and outrage. SNCC veteran Judy Richardson, the series associate producer for Eyes on the Prize, reminds us not to go for the “okey-doke.” In other words, don’t get played. Let me say it plain: Ari Fleischer, Dinesh D'Souza, and Ann Coulter have no standing or right to say who is or is not Black or African American.

I grew up in an African American family with skin colors ranging from chocolate brown to café au lait, our eyes from blue-green to black. I am somewhere in the middle, brown skin, hazel eyes. Our beautiful hair — curly, straight, gloriously nappy.

My family integrated the county school system in Erie, Pennsylvania, in the 1940s and 1950s. I was either the only Black person — excuse me, “colored” — in my class or one of several. In my large high school graduation class, I was one of only two Black students.

Way back in elementary school, a teacher asked the class to identify our ethnic backgrounds. She meant white ethnics, because the Black diaspora was not even considered. She asked who had Irish blood, I innocently raised my hand. She asked who had Scottish blood, I again raised my hand. The teacher could barely contain her anger that I had the audacity to identify with something that was so precious to her. She kept me after class and said in a threatening tone, “Don't you ever do that again.” When I asked her what she meant, she spat out “You are a Negro.” Recently I was giving a book talk, and a white classmate — whom I had not seen in over 50 years — drove a long distance to see me and remind me of that incident. She said that years later, she finally understood the significance of it. She said she knew I was an honors student, had never been in trouble, and was being reprimanded. She concluded that it was because I was Negro or Black. After her ah-ha moment, she dedicated her life to social justice causes and organizations. She understands the crippling effect racism has on white people, too.

As our nation continues to grapple with racial identities, I am sometimes asked what I am. Am I “mixed”? With checking DNA the rage, I was encouraged by friends to get an ancestry test. My refusal is based on the fact that I know who I am. I, like Kamala Harris, am a proud Black woman. When people say, But you must be mixed, the reference is usually not one of factual curiosity, but implies some exceptionalism in having white blood. My response is, I’m Black to the max. Case closed. Now, please hear me. I love all people. I was raised to appreciate myself and everyone else, to love myself — and my Black heritage — as the first step toward freedom.

A friend jokes that people of African descent in the United States have been called a lot of names. Among the nicer ones are Negro, colored, Black, African American. I self-identify as Black and African American. Born in the middle of the last century and a historian and race scholar, I remember the one-drop rule, you know the one: One drop of Black blood made you Black. That rule was not said with kindness; it became the story of the tragic “mulatto” who was deemed broken and inferior. Popular culture amplified this insidious racism.

The history of American chattel slavery is one in which slaveholders could and did rape Black women at will. Black women’s lives did not matter. Our foremothers were forced to bear the master’s children, who became, like their mothers, the master’s property. And where were white women during this time? Surely, they must have noticed that some of the slave children bore striking resemblances to their husbands, brothers, and other white relatives. But the White Code was one of racial complicity at all levels. Thank goodness there were also good white folks who refused to accept the dehumanization of other people and themselves. But it is this White Code that Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and others continue to exploit. They use the Code to keep all but their chosen few people down — white miners as well as Black farmers, white suburban mothers as well as Black city service employees. Poor white people are acculturated to blame their poverty on “the other” while McConnell and his cronies get a free pass to plunder and pillage. It is long past time to break the White Code!

Professor and author Cheryl Harris notes that the American psyche is wrapped up and warped with the obsession of race and Black subjugation. Certain Europeans — Jews, Italians, Irish — were once deemed undesirable by the dominant class of white Anglo Saxon Protestants, who gradually let them into the club by granting a property right in whiteness. Poor whites may have had little else, but they had whiteness and the bankrupt ideology of white supremacy — a Faustian bargain.

My late mother, a beautiful, brilliant woman born in the rural South in 1917, was denied access to educational opportunities and, therefore, educated herself. She always told me, “You are as good as anybody. But no better than anyone else.” Restricted solely because of race to working as a maid and household worker much of her life, she was a staunch believer in the power of education and the power of the vote. She did not miss PTA meetings, even when it meant a loss of pay for taking off from work, and she always voted, even if it meant taking a long bus ride in the often severe Erie weather. She would be proud of Kamala Harris: Black like her — and, yes, Black like me.