yes, i am biracial. no, i did not "turn Black".

The endless conversation on race and validity is tiring for some of us who just want our personhood left alone.

Me at eight years old, likely just days before I turned Black.

When I was around eight years old, I got into a small argument with a friend of mine on the playground at recess. It was a seemingly innocuous interaction: we were taking turns with the jump rope, and she was very clearly trying to cheat me out of a turn. I continued to insist that I get a chance with the rope, and she continued to insist that she’d barely had a turn. Eventually, the heated exchange ended with her blurting out “Okay but you know you’re Black, right? And your dad isn’t your real dad.” (I don’t have time today to review the audacity of using “Black” as a put down.)

Suddenly, the jump rope didn’t seem so important.

Imagine with me, the car line after school. I hop into my mom’s Mercury Sable, and before she can so much as utter a greeting or ask me how my day was, I blurt, “Mom, am I Black? And is Dad not my real dad?” Now imagine her shock that an absolutely normal school day just cracked open my racial identity and even my parentage.

The conversation wasn’t difficult; she was simply unsure at what age a conversation about race would be appropriate. And this was 1998, so trust me when I say it wasn’t as talked about as it was now. And perhaps it’s important to note that I experienced this in my Oklahoma childhood. Not exactly the most racially forward state.

She told me the story of me and my dad, and confirmed to me that I was not, in fact, a white child. I had never been told that there was more to me than the white family that raised me. And my stepdad was white, too. It didn’t take long for me to realize that “otherness” would follow me throughout my life. And the beauty and celebration and pain and isolation of carrying both heritages inside has followed me since that day on the playground.

I guess you could say it’s the day I “turned Black”.

Of course, this is an absolute joke, just like it was when the former President of the United States called Kamala Harris’ identity into question.

“I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. Is she Indian or is she Black? Because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went she became a Black person,” he said after being asked if he thinks Harris made the ticket because she was a Black woman.

Now, as much as I wish I could just turn this into a personal essay on my lived experience as a mixed person, the past 24 hours on social media have made it increasingly clear to me that we must work from the same foundation. So I am going to lay out some facts before we continue:

• Kamala Harris is half-Black and half-Indian. Her mother is Indian and her father is Black. Period.

• Harris is proud of both heritages; she was a Howard (HBCU) graduate, she has been a long standing Black sorority member, and has repeatedly mentioned in interviews that she is a Black woman. She also celebrates her Indian heritage in the same way, especially through her cooking. At no point did she omit her “Blackness” from the conversations surrounding her heritage and culture. More likely, one sound clip of her talking to an Indian actress and cooking Indian food while discussing her ancestry, has now been conflated to mean she was “Indian until Blackness suited her better”.

• Kamala’s father is Jamaican by descent and by birth. This does not mean he is not Black. It does, however, mean that he doesn’t identify as African-American.

• While we’re on that topic, this is why Black Americans feel it is so important to stop using African-American to describe the Black community. Over four million slaves were stolen from Africa during the slave trade and delivered to the Caribbean. There are Black people in Jamaica.

• Yes, she is technically descended from slave owners. So am I. If you’re unfamiliar with the evils of the Transatlantic slave trade, know that slave owners repeatedly and shamelessly raped their slaves. The first mixed children were products of slave rape. So yes, we’re all descended from slave owners in some way or another, if our ancestry was stolen from us by slavery.

• And finally, being proud of one half does not mean the other half ceases to exist.

Being biracial is a confusing, invalidating, and sometimes lonely existence. I was taught by white family members that Black people hated me for being half white. I’ve been told by Black people who see that I present as ambiguous that I “don’t count” (but in the interest of full transparency, that phrase has been uttered much more often by white people).

I’ve been told I was a product of sin because I was a combination of two races that should never mix. I was told it’s the reason I was undesirable to a young crush. I’ve been seen as a white person appropriating my own culture, and I’ve also been surrounded by people comfortable enough to repeat the n-word in my presence: not just at me, but about me. It’s a fun anecdote for some family members.

I’ve also felt isolated from the Black community because us biracials haven’t always done right by them. We have paraded our light skin and our “good hair” around as a way to feel superior, and it has turned our features into a potential warning to darker-skinned people. No wonder I was met with suspicion! We have claimed that colorism doesn’t exist, as if we haven’t benefited from the perpetration of it. We inherently benefit from their oppression if we don’t check ourselves and remember what we’re fighting for.

This bouncing between tables is exhausting at times, but what part of being non-white in America isn’t?

I’ve lived these two identities for 34 years. And I am still surprised when people don’t understand how thin the tightrope is you have to walk of perfectly representing both heritages equally.

But, most importantly, I want to address this issue of the phrase “turn Black”.

I first heard this phrase used when someone was recounting something said behind my back in 2020 when I got very public about the injustice of police brutality in the murder of George Floyd. I was questioned as though my Blackness lay dormant, like it was a switch I could flip at my own pleasure. Where did this come from? Why am I suddenly so outspoken? Why did I decide I was Black now, and not when I was younger?

The problem with this rhetoric is that it paints a desire for racial justice for one’s own people into an agenda or a convenience. I never “decided” I was Black; I have always been Black and any white person who saw me as otherwise did so in response to their own racism and unconscious bias. To equate Blackness with activism isn’t the worst thing in the world, but to co-opt it when I express outrage is a dangerous derivation of the “angry Black woman” trope that is so unbelievably tired.

I also take issue with white people, who created the One Drop Rule, who insisted that even a fraction of Black heritage makes an individual Black, suddenly want to police and gatekeep something as personal as my racial identity. And don’t be mistaken; Trump might have been speaking about Kamala yesterday, but if he’s willing to question hers, he is willing to question mine. And I refuse to let that happen without a fight.

I have lived this experience for 34 years and could talk about it for 34 more. But others have said the most important truth already, so I will leave you with this:

“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing”. (Toni Morrison)