Blackness didn’t originate with my ancestors’ feelings about how they wanted to self-identify.

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

One thing we often forget about that case is that Homer Plessy’s argument was that he was white! He got bounced from the white section because the conductor said he was black. The question wasn’t that all train passengers should be able to sit together, rather Plessy said, “No, I’m a white person, actually.” The court admitted that it was very important to be able to determine who was white and who was not, and that having the ability to be white is a form of property, that it’s valuable, extremely valuable, in 1896.

Brian Jones, “The Social Construction of Race,” Jacobin, June 25, 2015. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/06/racecraft-racism-social-origins-reparations/.

Blackness didn’t originate with my ancestors’ feelings about how they wanted to self-identify.

Blackness didn’t originate with my ancestors’ feelings about how they wanted to self-identify. It was created over a period of centuries through very specific, deliberate constructions in European and white American schools of biology, phrenology, philosophy, anthropology, and political and legal systems to uphold the intrinsic superiority of whiteness and corresponding black inferiority.

Malaika Jabali, “Shaun King Is Not Rachel Dolezal: What the Media Gets Wrong About Race in America,” For Harriet, August 29, 2015. http://www.forharriet.com/2015/08/shaun-king-is-not-rachel-dolezal-what.html.

Tags: For Harriet, Malaika Jabali

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Mixed Race Studies

Blackness didn’t originate with my ancestors’ feelings about how they wanted to self-identify.

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