I always identified as black. That was, I think, the only choice for me. The other choice wasn’t psychologically healthy for me, because my whole family didn’t have that option.

“I always identified as black. That was, I think, the only choice for me. The other choice wasn’t psychologically healthy for me, because my whole family didn’t have that option. So I think black was my identity, and in many ways still is, though I think of black and mixed as related in a complicated way. I think of myself as mixed, and I think of myself as part of a long history of African-American writers, so I don’t see them as so distinct as people do these days.”

“…The black community was where I placed myself, and I felt actually sort of disparaging of people who identified as mixed; that seemed kind of tragic to me, because it seemed like they were avoiding the politics and the power relations that were really at the heart of race, to me. So a lot of my politics grew around this identity growing up, of identifying myself as black and seeing race as much more than a biological category. I think now I don’t worry so much about what I identify as; that just seems sort of simplistic, to suggest that there’s one answer to that. But I don’t feel badly that I didn’t.” —Danzy Senna

Tamara Wieder, “Saving Race,” The Boston Phoenix, May 14-20, 2004. http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/qa/multi_1/documents/03827943.asp.

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