Awa Konate, BA Poltiics and African Studies
By now, most of us (if not all) have heard of Rachel Dolezal; an NAACP president and professor of African-American studies, and also a white woman who, for nearly a decade, pretended to be Black. Yes, people, you were bamboozled, and ultimately the response from Black communities was deep confusion, humour and anger.
But the case is more than Dolezal, #AskRachel hashtags and closet transracials divulging. It’s a high-light of racial identity complexities and their boundaries which have to be addressed. For many Black kids who grew up in mostly White spaces where things weren’t generally catered to us, racial identity was confusing and complex to grasp.
In my case I moved at the age of six from Abidjan, Ivory Coast to Copenhagen, Denmark with my mum. Upon arrival I couldn’t speak a single word of Danish and spent my first 3 months feeling misplaced culturally and socially. I did have a good childhood, but the feeling of being different to others never escaped me.
Growing up in such a homogeneous city as Copenhagen I realized quickly that Black and Brown bodies weren’t really “developed” to be included. I struggled to fit into the Danish narrative of a successful immigrant story whilst embodying the frames of my francophone, Muslim, Ivorian heritage. Back then having a “funny-sounding” name, a dark complexion, vibrant fabrics and a “different” hairstyle was the epitome of my identity, yet I always wanted something else. God knows I had successes and failures of embodying a look that really wasn’t for me. I desperately wanted to have flowing hair, be a shade or two lighter, and embody the clean cut of Scandinavian style that would cast a shadow of mystery anywhere I went. Although it took a while to fully reflect on the being I am and embrace every bit of it, I eventually achieved acceptance; an acceptance I have to credit to my parents and to emerging Black platforms such as Afropunk, Essence, and Oum x Yuki for reshaping the notion of Blackness and show-casing its multitudes. But I can’t be the only one who’s noticed a growing tendency to embrace identification as Black or anything different to one’s racial heritage? Well, say hello to the new buzzword: transracial.
First of all, let’s make one thing clear; transraciality doesn’t mean what Dolezal and company want it to mean. It isn’t an attempt at a transition to something ‘other’.
Transraciality is the lived experience of a person raised in a home which has a different culture to that of their culture at birth, and to claim otherwise is detrimental to the experience of those that have been, or still are, psychologically torn between two cultures. Given that identity is always in motion, this presupposes another thought about how transraciality works for those psychologically torn between cultures, but I’ll save that for another given time.
That race and our notion of ‘Black’ and ‘White’ is constituted by social constructs is undoubtable. However, history has been quite powerful in shaping its affiliations, and although we say otherwise, race does matter. If this was not the case, the colour of one’s skin wouldn’t be hereditary and determinant of one’s privilege. If this was not the case, some Blacks – out of fear, need of power and privilege that race offered – wouldn’t have tried to pass for White.
The idea of transraciality and its attempt to pass freely through racial and ethnic spaces without the persistent historical baggage of racial marginalization, discrimination and disenfranchisement becomes a mockery of the experience of those who embody something they can’t just forge. Emphasizing your hair’s texture and darkening your skin colour doesn’t give you a pass. Blackness isn’t and can’t be reduced to impressive wigs and one hell of a tan.
And the suggestion that ‘if we can celebrate gender transitions, then why not racial transitions?’ is wrong. The notion of transraciality can’t compare to transgenderism as Darnell L. More (of Huffington Post) defines it; gender identities are expressed according to categories that reflect who you are. Transgenderism is about defying the psychological and social boundaries of gender that society dictates to you, not to be performative. Simply put, the rigid perceptions of gender and race may have similarities, but they are not the same and to compare the politics of gender to that of race is to ignore two very different historical contexts and their manifestations in society today.
Amidst the whole debate on transraciality, a prominent question remains: what is Blackness and who gets to occupy its space? If we argue that it is a social construct, created by self- choice and societal interactions, then surely Blackness wouldn’t sustain a solid definition and would therefore be subjective to everybody, transracials included, right? Wrong. It should be considered that Blackness was a colonial construct to oppose Whiteness in every way possible, and later to be considered by some as a political identity rooted in oppression and subjugation. William Cross’ 1974 model defines “Black identity development is recognized as the construction of one’s sense of Blackness”.
What is essentially Black then? In our attempt to oust and vilify transraciality, we aren’t actually defining Blackness either! If we argue that race is a social construct and rooted in the history of White patriarchal supremacy, then everyone could pass for Black if they wanted to.
But whatever opinion one holds, Blackness is ultimately a social and cultural product to be recognized in a society which was previously opposed to doing so. And whatever the underlying motivation to racially transit racially, the key point is to define the boundary between an authentic and manufactured identity. Perhaps the problem is rooted in the fact that individuals moving into the space of Blackness end up becoming voices of it, while Blacks who already constituted that space aren’t always granted the same privilege. A Black or Brown person doesn’t have the privilege of moving into White spaces without being denigrated, and that’s a fact.
However, our means of defining ourselves end up becoming contradictory and complex and perhaps we should simply say, ‘so be it’. But whether one is for or against transraciality one crucial thought remains: what is Blackness really constituted by, who gets to claim its space and what is the importance of society re-examining the way we perceive race?