Much has been disputed lately about whether Kamala Harris is in fact Black. She has shared that she has an Indian mother and a Jamaican father.
Harris’s description of her own heritage did not stop Donald Trump from questioning when Harris “became” Black during an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists. Recently, Janet Jackson was quoted as saying she was told Harris was Indian and her father was white. In the same interview, Jackson later said she simply did not know if Harris was Black.
The way Harris defines herself is inextricable from the way race is defined in America. And let’s be clear, America has a unique way of defining race. It was developed over time, and it is not a universally accepted definition. Other countries define race differently — which ought to further indicate the arbitrary nature of these definitions.
What is “Black” anyway?
The original racial categorization of people in America was not related to their personal identity or cultural pride. People used to be defined by their geographic origin or their kinship group. Racial classification in the U.S. was introduced to uphold the societal hierarchy that was the foundation of this country with an economic infrastructure completely reliant on forced labor.
In the 1600s, as shared by the National Museum of African American History, the ideology became widely accepted that people of African descent did not measure up to their European counterparts. They were less intelligent, needed less rest and could endure harsher conditions. We can still see the aftermath of these falsehoods today.
To justify the perpetual enslavement of African people and their descendants, they were classified by scientists of the day as subhuman. How else could someone rationalize using another human and any person born to their future lineage as free labor?
Author Ta-Nehisi Coates stated, “Race is the child of racism, not the father.”
Like Blackness, being “white” was created to consolidate economic and political power. It determined who could own land or property and vote. The term “white” was eventually used to describe most Europeans, but many were not originally included.
However, as people of different races coupled and had children, the racial backgrounds of Americans became more varied.
Hardly anyone is 100% one race, especially African Americans.
“In fact, the average Black person descended from enslaved people has 75% African ancestry and 25% European ancestry,” according to African Ancestry, a DNA testing company. “But we can’t always see it and we don’t always know where in the family the mixing occurred.”
This means on any given day, pick any African American person, test their DNA and you will likely find some European roots. Whether those European roots were founded in a consensual or coerced partnership is the question. (See Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.)
In 1790, according to the Pew Research Center, the first census only had three categories: free whites, all other free persons and enslaved people. There was no mention of Negro or Black, or any other races for that matter.
Later, census takers determined how much “Black blood” a person had and recorded their race accordingly. “Mulatto” was included as a category sixty years later in 1850 and nearly a century later, in 1960, people could choose their own race.
It wasn’t until the year 2000 that people had the option to select more than one racial category on the U.S. Census.
“In 2010, 2.9% of all Americans (9 million) chose more than one racial category to describe themselves,” according to the Pew Research Center.
We must wonder why, in 2024, it still matters so much if a person who identifies as Black has one Black parent or two or exactly where that parent came from.
We know our DNA is intertwined with that of others. Part of being a free person with the rights of a full human being is the ability to define oneself.
Racial categories were quite literally created for a specific purpose at a specific time. That we are continuing to be so rigid about who is and is not Black ignores the very real history of this country including how and why the races were invented in the first place.
