As a black woman, I get empowered by news of other black women and men doing great things and it gives me hope that one day, racism will be a thing of the past.
When Obama won the election, I was over the moon. A black man was president and it was magical.
But the truth of it all was that Obama wasn’t just a black president. He has a caucasian mother and saying he is a black man completely ignores his white heritage and supports the one drop rule created by racist America.
A lot of black people get upset when a biracial person refuses to acknowledge their black ancestry and I wonder why because at the end of the day, it’s this person’s problem. Denying one of your two heritages just shows the truth about who you are as a human being.
Growing up in Nigeria, biracial kids were seen as superior and got all the good stuff. They were allowed to grow their hair in schools where hair growth was prohibited, some job offers bluntly asked for biracial applicants and men and women lusted after biracial people which isn’t a bad thing. Where I have a problem with it is when you disrespect someone based on how dark their skin is and lust after a biracial person. It’s your preference I get it but why disrespect based on what you see as inferior skin tone?
I’ve met girls who say they hate the idea of black men touching them and all I can think is… You were conceived by black people and you came into this world through a black vagina (or belly depending on how you arrived), how can you even have this mindset?
On census forms damals, you weren’t allowed to tick more than one race box which was completely insulting to not just the individual, but the parents of said individual filling out the Form. Yes it has changed now and people of mixed race coupling now have the chance to identify with more than one race.
But what does it matter if a man or woman with mixed race parents chooses one culture? Yes it’s beautiful when they choose both and it makes the world a better place. But should we really make it our problem when they don’t?
Kamala Harris has announced her presidential bid and as much as we want to celebrate her blackness, we shouldn’t forget that she’s also Indian.
So what if she isn’t 100% black? Don’t vote for her based on her skin tone or lack of visible melanin on her husband’s skin. What has she done to improve a cause you advocate for? What are her policies and do you agree with them?
An argument on Instagram began about how Obama was accepted by the black community because his wife is a dark skin woman. Kamala Harris has a non black husband and people are upset about it.
If we want to change the world, we have to start with us. We say we don’t like racists but we get angry when a black woman marries a non black man, we create videos of how many people have mixed race kids and we hate it when black men touch us. How are we different from these people we love to hate?
Since reading about the Lovings, which I did when I got married, my perspective has changed on so many things because it opened my eyes to the dangers of being afraid of anything you can’t control.
Reading about Wilhelm Solf was also very enlightening because as dangerous as race always has been in America, it was and also still is dangerous in Germany.
If you don’t know, Solf was a state secretary of the colonies in Germany who introduced a debate on mixed race coupling, inciting the dangers of having children from such marriages/relationships brought into the world.
According to him, “the vicious consequences of such unions needed to be recognized by all nation whose calling for colonization brought them in contact with colored people of low culture and inferior civilization.” (Wikipedia)
He went on further to address an all male group, asking them if they wanted “black daughters-in-law and woolly-haired grandchildren.”
According to Wikipedia, he didn’t actually get the support he needed after his debate but that didn’t change anything.
As a black woman whose husband is German, there’s a lot of history there to discover but the truth is that that’s all in the past and reading about all that toxicity can be dangerous as well as informative.
We live in a world where we get to marry from whatever race we want and that’s amazing because that’s how it should have always been.
Sure people still think it’s a terrible idea but that’s just their opinion and all they can do is rant and hate.
That S05E10 Colorism debate of Blackish truly tackled it appropriately because as much as we are dark skin and see how much better life seems for black people lighter than us, the others also have identity problems of their own.
Of course everyone who watched it had a different understanding of the episode and it boils up a ton of discussions on both sides.
But the truth is that the episode touched both sides and affected everyone who saw it. Differently or otherwise.
A lot of biracial kids actually do struggle with identity and in a world where their acceptance is divided, imagine how difficult it could be for some of them.
Sure it creates a totally different sense of understanding when you consider that dark skin kids have it very difficult compared to light skin or biracial kids, but that’s just the irony of humanity.
As a couple, we hope to have kids one day and as future parents of biracial kids, we hope we have the opportunity to teach our kids how to navigate both races without feeling like outsiders on both sides.
