After hearing convicted-felon-slash-presidential-hopeful Donald Trump express his confusion over Kamala Harris’ decision to “turn” Black, it brought me back to that time a few years ago when I made the same choice. It was a blustery October afternoon, overcast, with hints of an oncoming storm. But the real turbulence that day was in my parents’ living room, when I shared with them my plan to crystalize my identity. They were angry and confused.
“Identity? What the hell do you need an identity for?” my Dad asked. “Everybody knows what you are!” He seemed to get more agitated the more he considered it. You see, my father is a very fair-skinned Black man. In fact, his mother and grandmother could have easily passed for white in their day. But that was impossible. There was something called the “one drop rule,” which meant that if you had any trace of “negro” blood in you, you couldn’t be white. Black blood was a contaminant.
It was white people who were in charge of that decision. And this was not just a cultural peccadillo, but was codified into laws, particularly around interracial marriage—which was only recently overturned in the 1967 Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia.
