What and who is considered black are two questions that have long been used to separate and categorize people. It is these ideas that are at the heart of white supremacy and racism in the United States and around the world. While those systems do not solely impact black people, anti-blackness continually positions black people at the bottom of social and racial hierarchies that do nothing but perpetuate hatred, discrimination, and inequality.
For centuries, one way that this inequality persisted was through the census. A process by which the government counts residents of the United States every 10 years, it is supposed to provide a snapshot of America’s people and economy. It has also used demographic data for purposes of representation in Congress. In theory, using numerical data in itself to figure out how many people live in a particular district, and therefore proportionally assigning representation, should be pretty benign.
However, since almost nothing involving humans is fully objective, the census becomes problematic when racial data is used to distribute resources and feed white Americans’ obsession with race and racial purity. To that end, the census hasn’t always counted each person fully, equally, or accurately. As Gregory Smithson notes in Mother Jones:
The census has always reflected a Trumpian view of America, revealing our deepest anxieties about race and inequality. It’s a bit like a bathroom mirror the morning after a big party, reflecting what we’ve been up to in a way that is honest and ugly. [...]
The section of the Constitution that required the census was the same that set out the ignominious Three-Fifths Compromise that counted an African-American slave as three-fifths of a person for purposes of apportioning congressional seats.
After Emancipation, the census reflected white American hysteria about miscegenation, distinguishing Blacks, Mulattos, Quadroons, and Octoroons.
As the 2020 census approaches, there is much thought about how to greater reflect the ethnic and racial diversity among people living in this country. Some advocates have already begun that process by requesting that the data collection allow opportunities for more categories for persons of black ancestry. Currently, the census allows a person to mark black or African-American. But according to NPR, the 2020 census will ask blacks to be more specific.
On the upcoming census form, you'll likely see a new space under the checkbox for black or African-American. That's where you're supposed to write in non-Hispanic origins, such as African-American, Jamaican, Nigerian or [...] Ethiopian.
The Census Bureau has said it's been trying to respond to calls for, quote, "more detailed disaggregated data for our diverse American experiences."
Some may wonder what this means and why its important at all. It’s important because there is often an assumption that “black” is synonymous with “African-American.” And that simply isn’t true.
While they are used interchangeably, they are not one and the same. There are blacks living in this country with direct African, Caribbean, British, etc. ancestry who culturally and ancestrally identify with those places. They are counted in the same category with black Americans, who may be the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to this country and have a very different cultural experience and heritage.
For purposes of transparency: I, personally, do not identify as African-American, but instead as black. That does not mean that I am offended when African-American is used by someone who is referring to me, but I intentionally don’t refer to myself that way. I like claiming “blackness” specifically—especially because it has been used as a pejorative for so long. I have a hard time describing myself as a hyphenated American because of the complicated relationship my people have to this country (citizens by birth and on paper but treated as foreigners). One of the biggest challenges in my own personal social justice journey is wrestling apart the privilege of my American nationality from the experience of living in this country as a black person. I am much more likely to feel American when I am outside of America than when I am in it.
I also believe it is blackness that connects me to other people of the African diaspora—be they black British, black African, black French, black Haitian or what have you. Black, for me, is a cultural identity. While all of the aforementioned groups have ancestral roots in Africa (and I have actually traveled to and worked in several countries in Africa before), that geography feels less important and connective for me than the shared bonds of this social construct (race) which have formed a particular lived experience that reflects resilience, oppression, religious/spiritual beliefs, sometimes language, and most definitely some shared elements of culture. Side note: this is also why I don’t believe for a second that someone like Rachel Dolezal can be transracial and “feel and identify as black” when she does not have this shared history, experience, and culture.
Recently, I did ancestry testing which revealed that my heritage is more than 80 percent Sub-saharan African. That, in itself, meant very little to me (especially because the service did not specify countries) in terms of situating my history in a particular location. It feels much more genuine to me when my friends who are actually from countries on the continent (or have parents/relatives who are) claim their identity as African or African-American. This is simply my personal preference. I do appreciate and understand how complicated this is and how many diverse ways there are for us as black people to articulate how we understand our heritage.
Right now, there are a lot of conversations among black people that demonstrate that we are grappling with the vastness of blackness and who or what is considered black. This is a good and important conversation to have. When I think about how quick the U.S. was to label any person with a supposed drop of black blood into some category of blackness, I think this might be a fairly old conversation being had in a different time. But it seems particularly relevant now, given eight years of a black president followed by Donald Trump, and because so many more people are identifying in diverse ways. The recent advocacy which ultimately prompted the census to allow for more ethnic categories among blacks reflects this. There have also been some conversations in social media about it.
Recently, there was a pretty big controversy about singer Bruno Mars and whether or not he is culturally appropriating black music, since his music comes from genres created by black artists while he doesn’t specifically identify as black. Some of the response has been to say that even if Mars doesn’t claim blackness, because of his Puerto Rican heritage, he is black. Others like writer Seren Sensei say he isn’t black, shouldn’t be considered black, and his success is 100 percent because of the labor of the many black artists who came before him. This is a sore spot for many when we think about the fact that white artists are often so easily able to step into black music and become famous while more talented black artists are used, ignored, and disregarded by the industry.
An article in The Washington Post discusses a recent video where Sensei explores this idea more:
“Bruno Mars 100 percent is a cultural appropriator,” Sensei said in the video. “He is not black, at all, and he plays up his racial ambiguity to cross genres.” [...]
Sensei continued, saying “because people have realized that they prefer their black music and their black culture from a non-black face. … We have artists now that are much more willing to step into black genres.”
Michael Harriot of The Root had a really interesting take on the debate.
Every single word Seren said was correct, but none of it defined cultural appropriation.
But I have a theory about the people who accuse Bruno Mars of cultural theft:
Maybe they are tired of seeing people like Post Malone take bits of black culture and use them to make derivative, unoriginal content meant to be palatable for white mouths. Perhaps they are tired of seeing more-talented black artists outshone by beige newcomers who pass the paper-bag test and don’t give white people the heebie-jeebies. It is possible that they are overzealous custodians of their culture. [...]
[Even] if he is always careful to give props, maybe they understand that Kenny G is the best-selling jazz instrumentalist in the modern era, Eminem is the best-selling hip-hop artist of all time and there isn’t a black face in the top five best-selling music artists of all time.
For my part, I’m not particularly interested in discussing whether or not Mars is a cultural appropriator. I am interested in a different conversation—which is about how diverse black experiences are and how we understand and express our identities. I am deeply curious about how we make space among us for all of those. I also wonder how some of us will experience the census asking about our origins, especially for those of us who are less clear about from where our ethnic and cultural backgrounds originate. I am particularly interested in how we navigate this in Trump’s America, given the white supremacist agenda of his administration, which has already begun to take on the census. Per Gregory Smithson mentioned above, Trump is already working on doing whatever damage he can to the process of collecting census data.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has proposed asking who’s a citizen and who isn’t, which both scares noncitizens from participating in the count, and provides the data for a Republican disenfranchisement scheme to only count eligible voters (instead of all residents) when drawing federal or state legislative districts. [...]
Adding to the problem, the administration has indicated it will only dole out census jobs to US citizens. The main effect of this announcement was to broadcast the words “census” and “American citizen” in the same sentence for yet another news cycle, further discouraging immigrants—including those with green cards or work permits—from participating. [...]
Next, Trump considered making his highest ranking official in charge of the census Thomas Brunell, a political science professor who has no government experience and has testified for Republicans as an expert witness defending gerrymandering.
Perhaps this is why black people are taking matters into their own hands and conducting a 2018 black census. Alicia Garza, one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, has launched a new initiative called Black Futures Lab. One of their first projects is a census of black America, which seeks to collect information about the experiences of black people in diverse communities across the country.
Who knows what the future of the black census or the 2020 census will be? Who knows what it will reveal about black people living in this country? But in an age of increased racial unrest, racial inequality, racism, and xenophobia coupled with incredible advocacy and determination for black liberation, it will be important to find out.