As a light-skinned black girl the question I often get asked: “what are you?”. At first, the question confused me, “what do you mean what am I?” It seemed like a highly existential question for a second grader. “No, like, what's your race?” Oh, that again. I roll my eyes and say “I’m just black.” My favorite response I've ever gotten in “yeah, I know you're black, but what kind of black are you?” The older I got the less I would say that I was just black. My thought process was, “ if people kept asking, it must not be good that I’m just black.” So I started asking my family about my uncertain history.

Because of slavery, it’s extremely hard to know where exactly your ancestors come from. I would get replies like Irish, Dominican, Egyptian and Native American. So whenever people asked me I would say “yeah I’m black but I also have Irish, Dominican, and Native American in me.” In all reality, so many black people could say something similar - but I looked “exotic” or whatever so I went along with it. People were much more satisfied with that answer. “Oh yeah I can see that”, they would exclaim.

But, then, I heard how that Irish part of me had come to be. It was through rape. So, I started to question what I was telling people. Did I really want to claim this heritage by means of rape? Just to seem more interesting? I started to re-evaluate my identity and who I am. I did want to know my history, where my ancestors came from and the traditions of those countries. It’s a balance between wanting to know who you are and accepting yourself as you are.

I needed to reclaim my blackness because that is who I am.

Yes, being black is being of African descent, but it’s also so much more than that. It’s about sharing a history of struggle and oppression with people similar to you. It’s about how those people formed their own culture, a new culture since their identities were silenced. I needed to understand that I come from a people of struggle. Even though I don’t look like what some people perceive to be black, I know for a fact I have that rich history in me.

I’m trying to figure out how to claim my blackness while also exploring the depths of my heritage, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I still want to tell people the different parts of me, yet I don’t want to turn my back on the blackness that has been there for me. It’s not necessarily about race, it’s more so about culture. How do I express the rich culture that has raised me, while being curious about the one that violated my ancestors?