When a white person tells me ‘you’re basically white’, what I really hear is repudiation for wanting to identify with blackness. When my own racial integrity is undermined with this statement, I am told that I should allow myself to be classified by the oppressor.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2018-01-22 02:13Z by Steven

When a white person tells me ‘you’re basically white’, what I really hear is repudiation for wanting to identify with blackness. When my own racial integrity is undermined with this statement, I am told that I should allow myself to be classified by the oppressor. When the history of my ancestors is erased, I ask myself why I should not be allowed to explore the entirety of my history whilst white people alter theirs to pander to their own self-denial. And I fail to understand why they will tell me that I am ‘basically white’ sometimes, but implicitly or explicitly emphasise that I’m ‘brown’ the next.

Sam Kaner, “‘You’re basically white’: my blackness on debate,” Media Diversified, September 11, 2017. https://mediadiversified.org/2017/09/11/youre-basically-white-my-blackness-on-debate.

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‘You’re basically white’: my blackness on debate

Posted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United Kingdom on 2018-01-22 01:58Z by Steven

‘You’re basically white’: my blackness on debate

Media Diversified
2017-09-11

Sam Kaner
Oxford, England

Sam Kaner talks about experiences of racialization as a person of mixed heritage

‘You’re basically white’

A phrase I frequently heard from white students at my school. They would tell me this after I had crossed a particular threshold in my relationship with them where their racialization of me as Other would soften. It was the point at which they questioned whether they should confer the same amount of respect to me as their white friends, operating under the assumption that being a light-skinned biracial person, I would receive their newfound perception of me as a compliment.

I recently fell into an argument with a white person because they had insisted to me that Mariah Carey couldn’t be black; she didn’t look black, she wouldn’t be racialized as black, and therefore, she should stop claiming to be something she’s not.

I find it concerning how white people will repeatedly make attempts to determine and declare who may claim blackness and who may not; and I wonder, in doing so, if they have ever instead critically considered how this interjection recalls the colonial imposition of blackness as something non-negotiable and as a marker of subjugation…

Read the entire article here.

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