Conservative writers Mark Levin and Dinesh D’Souza among others have taken up an appalling banner recently, following the nomination of Kamala Harris for Vice-President. In their view, she is excluded from being called “African-American”, by virtue of having foreign parents and not being descended from American slaves. As “proof”, D’Souza even goes so far as to show proof that Harris is descended from a slave owner, without regard to how such a biological relationship came to be.
This underscores a problematic narrative that runs as a current through portions of American society: the idea that Black America is a monolith, with a monolithic history. “Blackness”, in this right-wing view, comes replete with historical furnishings: transatlantic slavery, the Jim Crow South, segregation, the civil rights movement. Lacking any one of these elements, goes the theory, renders one’s connection to Blackness suspect. Obama’s biracial ancestry opened him up to the same criticism during his presidential campaigns (on top of racist “birtherism” he faced at the time). Black Americans are “supposed to” have a certain background. Deviations from this are not “Black”.
Kamala Harris was born in Oakland in 1964. Martin Luther King riots, Watts riots, and desegregation would all happen during her early childhood. She would be a product of busing. She would be a product of all the post-Jim Crow policies that define much of Black American Generation X (since she’s born on the cusp). Her experience as a Black woman would not differ from that of other Black women in her generation by virtue of having a Jamaican parent.
And every day of her life, Kamala Harris is perceived as a Black woman. Colorism, discrimination, and stereotyping all apply. She shoulders the dual burden of racism and sexism as much as other Black women – in addition to having immigrant parents. Not only does she have to face stereotyping from the non-Black world, she also has to justify her Blackness for those who would make Blackness dependent on a history she doesn’t have?
“Black history” is not monolithic. From America’s founding, there have always been various groups of “Black” people with differing histories. From the distinction between “slaves” and “free blacks” to modern immigrant narratives, Black history has always been a diverse tapestry of stories from around the globe. To invalidate someone’s claim to Blackness based on not having been a slave in the contiguous 48 states is disingenuous – many of those same states had free Blacks just as distanced from slavery as their foreign counterparts.
All Black histories are equally authentically Black, as are all the places from which we hail. All of our faiths, whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, pagan, or whatever else – are authentically Black. Nothing makes a Black American descended from slaves more “authentically Black” than the child of immigrants from Haiti or Eritrea: as America is a diverse mosaic, so too is Black America. Appreciating Black diversity means appreciating Black America in all of its cultural richness, a cultural richness we would be poorly served to erase.