I am seeing people question whether Kamala Harris is “really Black.” I don’t think these people know the origins of judgements of who’s “really Black.” Let’s dive into history.
Beginning in the 15th century, human traders not only constructed what we now call Blackness—combining the different peoples of Africa into one race, one inferior race, worthy of enslavement. These human traders also judged who was “really Black“ based on whatever ethnic groups in West Africa they imagined made the best “slaves.” Different human traders from Portugal, France, Holland, and England expressed various ideas about who were “really Black,” meaning who made the best “slaves.”
Human traders created a hierarchy of peoples of African descent, what I call ethnic racist ideas in my work, where ethnic groups from regions like Senegambia were imagined to be superior (“slaves”) than ethnic groups from regions like Angola. These ethnic racist ideas contributed to different ethnic groups across West Africa being priced differently in the transatlantic human trade. So, originally, to be considered “really Black” was to be considered really servile.
By contrast, racist theorists constructed White people as the “free” race. These racist ideas became so widespread the anti-slavery resistance of biracial people were attributed to their “partial” Whiteness, including in books like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tim’s Cabin. Which is to say, both White enslavers and White abolitionists suggested biracial abolitionists, like Frederick Douglass, were not “really Black” because biracial people were not completely servile.
Today, these racist ideas of Black people as servile justifies Black people disproportionately still having to work in service jobs. When Black people become leaders and have the audacity to give direction, the attacks are regular and toxic and personal since racist ideas socialize people of all races, including Black people, to resist taking direction from Black leaders. Today, like two centuries ago, the servant, not the leader, is “really Black.”
Over the last few centuries, antiracist Black people have reconstructed Blackness by eradicating the “slave,” by decolonizing the mind, by making Blackness equal to Whiteness (and other racial identities), by making Blackness a global identity of solidarity, of cultural diversity, of resistance that includes biracial people who identify as Black. After these radical reconstructions of Blackness, it is easy to not know that human traders were the first group to judge who was “really Black.”