Stay Solid! Vol. 2

Please don't call me bi-racial...

Look, I'mma cut straight to the chase: I don't see any circumstance in which the term "bi-racial" can be used without it being either explicitly or implicitly rejecting Blackness. Period.

I know this is going to ruffle some feathers, and despite the subtitle of this paper I'm not trying to tell anyone what to do or think. I do, however, want to delve into the history a bit, and explain why the term bi-racial is harmful to the Black community, and how Black people with White ancestry have historically upheld White supremacist values, despite being victims of said power structures themselves.

I have no idea what this is but it’s definitely relevant…

Although I don't have tik-tok, I've been vaguely aware that there is a situationship happening on the platform, involving Black folx who do not include "bi-racial" folx in the fold of the Black community (I'll get back to this). This seems counter to the solidarity that has been shared historically. Certainly during Jim Crow when just being suspected of being Black, even if you basically looked White, was enough to be discriminated against. Thus, save the immeasurable amount of people who passed secretly as White, the one drop rule held the Black community together, if contentiously, through perceived ancestry and proximity to Whiteness. Dictionary.com states the one drop rule as:

“a social classification, codified in law in some states during the 20th century, that identifies biracial or multiracial individuals as Black if they have any known Black African ancestry, even from a Black ancestor many generations removed."

This made sense to White people who at one point wanted as many slaves as possible, and after slavery ended wanted to keep as much power as possible, even when they were vastly outnumbered.

Fast forward to today, and we can definitely see that light skinned Black people have different experiences than dark skinned people, and those with European features have different experiences than those with more African features. Colorism is real.

The Whiter you look, the safer and more successful you're likely to be. And frankly, the more African your features, the more your life and livelihood are in danger of being impacted, or heaven forbid ended, by racists working outside or even inside of the law. This is the country, and largely the world, we live in. It's fucked.

So, for basically the entirety of American History, there have been essentially two classes, two castes which were separated by the easiest way to determine who was and who wasn't potentially a slave: skin color. You had the Whites, who were free, and the Blacks, who were slaves. Indigenous people weren't even part of this equation, as White people had done their best to eliminate them from their own lands. This binary was a crude and cruel way to keep power in the hands of Whites, whether they owned slaves or not.

Which brings me to the word bi-racial.

Rapper Latto, who changed her name from Mulatto after backlash on the internet

"Creoles functioned as a buffer class that helped whites to maintain their dominant status and keep unmixed Blacks in their place." (Yaba Blay)

Before the United States was even a country, and long before Slavery was abolished, the French had ownership of Louisiana, and there was a third class of people, apart from the White upperclass and the Black non-citizens: the gens de couleur libre, or, free people of color. These creoles were, generally, a mix between French or Spanish, African, and Indigenous. They were given special privilege, based on their White ancestry, which served to "legitimize the superiority of whiteness" (Blay).

Consider this passage from Yaba Blay's book "One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race":

Rather than being defined by the one-drop rule, Creoles were defined by the exact amount of Black ancestry they possessed. In Louisiana, the term “Negro” applied usually to one of full “Negro” blood. A “Negro” and a white produced a “Mulatto.” If a “Mulatto” were to reproduce with a “Negro,” their offspring would be referred to as a Griffe, and if that Griffe were to reproduce with a white, their offspring would be referred to as Sacatra. A “Mulatto” and a white produced a Quadroon or Quateron. A Quadroon and a white produced an Octoroon or Sang-mêlé, and so on and so on. And a person “sufficiently light-skinned to pass for white” was considered passe à blanc. Whereas the term passé á blanc points to how others perceived a particular person, the term blanc forcé was used to refer to someone who was intent on being seen as white “by force.” Interestingly enough, however, when pronounced in New Orleans dialect, the term sounds more like blan fo’cé, and as such, the descriptor could also derive from blanc foncé, which means “dark white” in French.

Las Castas, painting depicting the different mixings and skin colors in Spanish Colonies

Goddamn these people were obsessed with skin color!!!

Ok Baba, but what does this have to do with today’s idea of bi-racial??

I'll tell you!

First, technically, we are all one race...the human race. So the word, in and of itself, is fallacious, lazy, and inaccurate.

I think what most people mean when they say bi-racial (God I'm tired of typing that!) is a person who has one Black and one White parent. And I think, in a way, they mean bi-cultural. Certainly this applies within other communities, or with people who’s parents belong to two different cultures but aren’t Black or White. Here in America though, bi-racial almost undoubtedly means Black culture, and White culture. But, outside of the problematic history of labeling and quantifying blood and skin color, this is where I get hung up on the word. Because to me, there is definitely a clear and historical "Black" culture. As a group of people we have survived centuries of utter devastation, transforming the distant silhouettes of the African culture which was ripped from our fingers into new, tangible forms of art, music, food, language, philosophy, etc. It's beautiful, it's diverse, it's Black.

So, then, what is White culture? Oppression? Murderous lust? Taking things and pretending it's theirs? I'd argue that most "American" things are actually permutations or watered down versions of Black and Indigenous culture. American popular music? Permutations of the Blues, which itself descends from slave chant, which itself descends from Indigenous African music. Fashion. Language. Food. Dance. I won't bother making an argument here, because the influence is so obvious that if you don't already know, you're probably not reading this paper. Any semblance of "White" culture, follows another harsh binary: it is either the reactive, violent force against Blackness, or, the appropriative, watered down version of Blackness- or sometimes even both. I don't see much in between.

Creole in a Red Turban, Jacques Aman, c. 1840

So I ask again: what is the point in referring to oneself as "bi-racial" as opposed to referring to oneself as Black? What aspects of White culture are you trying to preserve in presenting yourself that way? Seriously, take a moment to think about it. And let me know in the comments if you find something. But I think the answer is clear; much like the gens de couleur libre in Louisiana, using the term "bi-racial" is an attempt to anchor oneself into the privilege of White supremacy.

Ok, I can already hear the "well my parent isn't just White, they're Italian/German/etc". Sweetie, there are Black people in Italy, in Germany, etc. Who are Black, and are more Italian/German/etc than you are. What aspect of European culture are you unable to uphold by calling yourself Black? That line of thinking in itself is racist! And self hating. So I ask again, what are you really trying to preserve by describing yourself in a way that was invented by White people to dangle a carrot in front of you, yet subjugate you and your cousins further???

Look, America is a fucked up place, and navigating skin color is, by design, confusing, painful, and down-right traumatizing, especially if you can't trace your lineage on both sides to the goddamned Mayflower. My wife is Arab; Egyptian and Palestinian. My mom and dad are White and Black, respectively. Am I to call my child tri-racial, in line to submit his name into the goblet of fire and participate in the tri-racial tournament??? Bollocks!

Which brings me back to the Tik Toks that I mentioned above. I don't have Tik Tok, so if you need proof just search "biracial". But, I've heard through the grapevine, and took a cursory look myself, and there seems to be a lot of...discourse. Light skin people defending their "bi-racial" identity. Darker skinned people claiming "bi-racial" people aren't Black... it's all so depressing! And if it wasn’t so harmful to our unity, I’d say it was boring.

At the end of the day, we as Black people, of all shades, need to come together. We need to accept that Blackness is diverse, that there is no wrong way to be Black. That even those who have been brainwashed by Empire, even those who have forgotten their roots, even the coons shuckin' and jivin' in front of White audiences are still Black, and victims of Colonialism (big C) and White supremacy.

And I think a lot of Black people are forgetting that, almost all Black American's are mixed in some way.

Consider this excerpt from an article titled "We Should Abandon “Race” as a Biological Category in Biomedical Research" by Wolfgeng Umek and Barbara Fischer:

In 2019, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists issued a statement on biological aspects of race, concluding that _“pure races, in the sense of genetically homogenous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past.” The statement continues: “... The only living species in the human family, Homo sapiens, has become a highly diversified global array of populations. The geographic pattern of genetic variation within this array is complex, and presents no major discontinuity. Humanity cannot be classified into discrete geographic categories with absolute boundaries... Partly as a result of gene flow, the hereditary characteristics of human populations are in a state of perpetual flux. Distinctive local populations are continually coming into and passing out of existence.”

Contrary to what Dr. Umar wants you to believe, there is no "pure" African blood, just as there's no pure Aryan blood. Before Africans were kidnapped and taken to America, they were mixing with each other, different countries, different castes, and different social standings. As soon as they arrived here, they were, forcibly, mixing with Whites. And, how many people have an uncle or parent claiming their grandmother on their mother's side once removed was Cherokee, or whatever? Well, they might be right, but they're probably also leaving out that their great, great, great, great, great grandaddy was a White man who had "mulatto" children, and since it's impossible to have consent within a power imbalance such as slavery, it's pretty unlikely that he set the woman free, married her, and lived happily ever after.

The truth is, bi-racial, and even to an extent using the term "mixed" is a vestige of Colonialism. If you're Jamaican and Irish, then you're Jamaican and Irish. If you're Dominican and English, then you're Dominican and English. You're still Black. And if you know a lightskin person who seems to think being "mixed" is a personality, it might be cringey and fucked up as hell, and you might want to keep some distance from them. But, even if they don't want to admit it, and cling to their small sliver of whiteness, they are still Black.

From left to right: African, Mulatto, Quadroon, Octaroon (North African?), Pass for White

"All this talk is disturbing," says Rainier Spencer, director of the Afro-American Studies Program at University of Nevada, Las Vegas and self-professed racial skeptic. "What drives my antagonism is that people are coming in and saying, 'We're new, we're different, we are the answer to race problems in America,'" says Spencer. "Population mixture has been going on for hundreds of years. Calling people 'mixed' erases the history of race in the U.S."

-this article

Don't let Colonialism win, don't let Empire rape and pillage while we fight amongst ourselves, don't deny your history as a Black person in the United States!

And as always,

Stay solid, y'll.