RACIAL IDENTITY
Why Question Blackness When You Don’t Care About Black People
The irony of a White man trying to gatekeep blackness
Questioning someone's blackness when you, in fact, do not care about the black community presents a quandary. As a general rule of thumb, those who do not belong to a group should not be considered the authority over who belongs. However, when someone who doesn't care about the hopes, dreams, or well-being of Black people attempts to define blackness, it's doubly offensive. We should address the big white elephant in the room — that White people are the ones who created race as a social construct to divide and control racial outgroups. Hence, the one-drop rule, established first by Virginia in 1662, classified anyone with a drop of Black blood as Black for all legal purposes. This hypodescent law assigned individuals to the subordinate group. For much of our nation's history, blackness was treated as a burden.
Why does this matter? White people have historically treated the concept of racial identity like a sword that only they should wield. During the chattel slavery era, as well as Jim Crow, White people benefited from racial categorization, as they could abuse and discriminate against those who either self-identified or were classified as Black. It benefited White…
