"Biracial isn’t black!" The rising tension of the one drop rule 👀
Added 2023-12-05 01:12:47 +0000 UTC👀
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Emily Kugler
2023-12-05 06:22:28 +0000 UTCI wrote a whole text only to delete it because it was too long 😭. Race matters because of racism. Your skin color informs your experience in the world (or maybe it's the other way around), it shapes your reality. So I understand why people get uncomfortable when people who aren't visibly black or not black at all try to attach themselves to the "culture" because it sells. I get very uncomfortable when someone like Latto says the n word for example. Especially because they can easily decide when to be or not be black. They benefit from oppression of black people and do not recognize their privileges. For me, biracial people aren't black, because first it's factually incorrect. They are all they are and should be free to embrace every part of what makes them what they are. But also because race matters because of racism. And as much as I respect them as human beings, I know we are not the same in society. In my country, where the racial hierarchy started, biracial folks participated in slavery and oppression of black folks. In order to control the black population on the island, the colonizers r*ped the women and these women had biracial children that were educated as white, had Portuguese nationality and helped their fathers in the oppression and control of black slaves. We are not the same. Our history is not the same. Our struggles are not the same. And even today, what I see is a lot of lack of solidarity. Also, if biracial is black, that means that all women in the world can make black children but a black woman can only make a black child. That makes zero sense. Anyway, I'm just rambling at this point. I think it would be nice if people who use the one drop rule to attach themselves to blackness when it's convinient could just be supportive of the community without forcing themselves into it. About Tyla, I learned about colored folks in 2019 when I read Born a crime by Trevor Noah. The book is very good and it explains perfectly the intricacies of race in SA. Most colored folks are not even mixed in the traditional sense. They are the descendents of Afrikaans and black people (often non consensual breeding). These people were granted better status in SA society. They weren't "lucky" enough to be white but they aren't black. But they are near enough and if only they put in enough effort to distance themselves to blackness, they could one day have the full privilege of whiteness. Of course, they would never be white but that's the fantasy the system of oppression sold and many believed it. Anyway, these people of course didn't want to darken their skin color or "mess up" their features so they only married and had children within their group or if they were "lucky" enough, with a white person. This happened for centuries and today you have a whole community of people whom neither parents are black or white but look biracial. Biracial people such as TN himself were seen as colored during the apartheid, which protected him and his mom sometimes since colored are not product of interracial relationships (which was frowned upon at that time). I deleted a long text only to write another long text 😩🥲
Ana Cravid
2023-12-05 05:27:13 +0000 UTC
