One of the interesting things about Kamala Harris’s sudden elevation is the conversation around her race. Her mother is South Asian and her father is Jamaican. Harris has, throughout her life, made various choices that affiliate her with the black side of her heritage: her choice to attend Howard University, her emphasis of her own blackness, and even the way she speaks and carries herself. The issue is not whether she “is” black but the manner in which she “chooses” to be black. In this clip from our most recent Substack subscriber-only Q&A session, John and I discuss this element of choice, which an under-analyzed aspect of contemporary racial identity.
This is a clip from the episode that went out to paying subscribers on Monday. To get access to the full episode, as well as an ad-free podcast feed, Q&As, and other exclusive content and benefits, click below.
Heck, if a man can choose to be a woman, and a woman equally choose to be a man...and can indeed stand upon that choice even in the absence of drugs and mutilation, then why on earth isn't it possible for someone who is White, Brown, Yellow, Red, Green to choose to be Black, at whim? Surely skin color / ethnic / cultural identity shifting is much easier to accept than an impossible biological/physiological transformation that makes one, magically, oppositely sexed?
Or ... would we / should we insist that there must be, within the blood, a collection of requisite genetic markers in order for an individual to be truly considered Black (I'm talking to you Ms. Dolezal!). Would a skin tone actually have to sit somewhere on the darker end of the neutral spectrum before we deign to call the Wannabe real? But isn't there is a danger in this, in that such a requirement might wrongly reject the 'Blackness' of Blacks who are significantly more light-skinned?
This is more difficult than it seems.
The real question, of course, is how much racial / ethnic purity is required before the Black Identity Card can be comfortably (officially!) carried? This is a "tough, tough question," as John puts it.
Such issues of racial purity were, of course, critical to Hitler/Goebbels/Himmler who gloried in the whole notion of Racial Identity / Racial Struggle / Racial Justice. Millions of Nazi labor hour went into the task of researching & proving, conclusively, that one was Truly Aryan....if only because being Aryan in the 30's in Germany was as cool as being Black in America in the 2020's! (which would seem to be not just cool, but sexy given, per the video commentary)
Hitler, in a 1931 interview in a Leipzig paper put it thusly, "We do not judge (the principle of the blood) by merely artistic or military standards or even by purely scientific ones. We judge by the spiritual energy which a people is capable of putting forth." This was what -- or so he believed -- being truly Aryan was all about....this same cool & sexy spiritual energy would seem to be what Black culture is all about today. In both cases, though, there had to be a actual degree of bloodline purity to let one in the appropriate Culture Club. (Karma Chameleons need not apply)
But is this really what we, as a People, want? Is this the ethnically ghettoed world that we truly wish to build? Should we really spend our time worrying whether Kam's ethnic percentages allow her to say, "I'm Black!" And then invest another time sink in worrying exactly how she 'chooses to express that validated Blackness?
My God how trivial can we be! How divisive! How selfish! How silly! How racist! How wasteful!
(This is your brain, and this is your brain as it worries issues of racial purity!)
Shall we parse Kam's dancing....her 'Black-cent'... her word choice... the way she sways her hips at Black Gospel Church Hallelujahs....and then declare, she could have chosen otherwise? Obama could have married a Filipino woman? He could have -- as a Harvard Guy -- worked to keep the 'Black-cent' out of his voice?
(But of course de-accentuating one's Black ethnicity is not a politically wise thing to do, now, is it?!)
In the end.... Isn't this entire question of Ethnic Purity silly? Isn't it superficial? Doesn't it build barriers rather than lower them? Doesn't it segregate rather than integrate? Doesn't it push us that much further down the rabbit hole when we're otherwise trying like mad to climb back out?
We know better than this; we just need to act as though we know it.
Let's remember that J.D. Vance is every bit as much a DEI pick as Kamala Harris: The right wing has its qualifications based on biology rather than merit too. There's *no way* Donald Trump would have picked a black man (like that ass-kisser a few months ago, can't remember his name) and his little toadstool would drop off if he picked a woman. His candidate absolutely had to be white, and a man, and straight. Vance appeals to the Christian right even if he doesn't, so far, espouse religion as much as they might want. I don't think he's the worst pick (and I'm a 'childless crazy cat lady', lol, but he's far from the best. But he in no way would have been picked had he been black. Trump will pick some Token Negro to be in his Cabinet just like he did Ben Carson (stereotypically slipped into the HUD role rather than HEW because, you know, those Negroes all grew up in the ghetto so they understand that urban stuff).