I guess I’ve been going down the rabbit hole of understanding blackness in the U.S for too long now.

The statement she made about identifying as black just because people don’t see a white woman. I imagine to some reading that sounds a bit off. It reads as if she’s black by default not by choice.

I think that twitter user has been hearing the word white passing too often in context and perhaps misunderstanding the context.

Halle Berry obviously looks identifiably black.

Not all biracial people are identifiably black on sight and this affects how we experience the world.

It took me a very long time to understand why I probably am not the best representative of the black experience in America.

I really feel it would be disingenuous for any person to view my experience as a black experience. For this reason I have no problem explaining my ancestry. But I no longer try to grab onto blackness. I am an ally who also has African ancestry but I do not identify with the black experience in America. I empathize with it. I have some valid insight from childhood when I was much darker and surrounded by only whites and experienced some racism. But as I aged up through middle school and high school I switched perceived ethnicities. I was now a Latina to everyone I met. It’s very odd I know but I have accepted it now.

I feel that me claiming a black identity is insulting to African Americans who were raised by two parents that were descendants of slaves. I also feel it is an insult for me to try and acquire blackness as an adult. It always feels as if I’m studying blackness as an academic subject not a lived experience. I am as interested in anti blackness as I am in the French Revolution or Roman Britain which is to say very much. But I can hardly call myself genuine.

I do know what it’s like to be othered. But the economic effects, the social environmental factors as well as the cultural factors of blackness were all absent from the majority of my life. I can’t know if I didn’t get a job because of my appearance I have yet to receive any evidence of this. I don’t think I’ve ever interviewed for a job I did not get. Is it likely that I have been passed up for certain opportunities because of my appearance, definitely. But all of those things have not affected me to a great degree.

The only thing that ties me to blackness is my experience with racism and how long it takes me to do my hair.

Those are shallow things at best and negative things at worst to tie together an identity with. Because of this I have chosen not to try to make loopholes for myself that just aren’t there.