Why I claim my blackness…

If blackness in America has been defined broadly enough to claim me as one of its own, that still leaves the question of why I claim my blackness. I could call myself mixed race or even Latina/Hispanic.  I certainly recognize that I am multi-racial, but I don’t feel a common bond with mixed people simply because we have parents of different racial backgrounds. Equally, I’ve always been unnerved by the categories Latino and Hispanic to describe people from the Spanish Caribbean and parts of Latin America that are heavily populated by people of African descent precisely because they erase/e-race our ties to Africa. The categories Black and Latino/Hispanic are often defined as mutually exclusive on identification forms in the U.S., such that one is instructed to check “Black” provided they are “not of Hispanic origin” and to check “Hispanic – regardless of race”!  Since when has anything in America ever been regardless of race? As history has too often demonstrated this is a calculated attempt to create divisions between black people based on language and country of origin.

Ray, Carina. “Why Do You Call Yourself Black And African?,” The Zeleza Post (July 4, 2009), http://www.africasia.com/services/opinions/opinions.php?ID=2235&title=ray.

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