Biracial or Mixed- Whichever you prefer, just don't call them "black"

Written 2/5/2014

 

 

I'm tired of mixed people being held up as an example of black beauty. Tired of it. I think it's about time for us as black people to put an end to the infamous "one drop rule", and reclaim our blackness. It is stupid, and it's old and played out, no longer relevant to today's day and age in which the majority of mixed children born are born to black men and white women, the latter of which who insist often times that their children be seen as bi-racial or mixed as opposed to black. 

 

Many black people protest. They find it scandalous that a mixed person wouldn't want to identify as black. they balk and accuse the mixed-race individual of being "self-hating". Oh, the fire.

 

But honestly, I agree with the mixed-race people who feel that they "shouldn't be forced to identify, that they are a unique, beautiful blend of two cultures/races/identities and would feel it unfair to claim one over the other". I think they should speak louder, and that mixed race people as a whole should see themselves as a group and identity separate from black people so long as we as humans continue to claim that race is not mere construction but biological fact.

 

This last is fallacy, to be sure, but since the masses insist on recognizing race as though it is accepted fact, why not play along? 

And to this end, I will champion the cause of mixed race persons who seek to establish a separate "box" for themselves as "other" or whatever labeling of their choice.

 

The ramifications of continuing to claim mixed persons as members of the black race are far-reaching, the most damning of which is the fact that mixed people are used as a form of "replacement" for actual blacks- particularly women. You see this all the time in music videos, in movies, in commercials, in black men's collective partner preferences. 

 

Ads and movies seem to prefer casting dark-skinned black men for roles, almost to exclusion of mixed-race ones. Or obviously mixed-race ones. But they show no such aversion to casting almost exclusively mixed-race or light-skinned black women for roles. At the very least, you'd be hard put to find an equal number of couplings showcasing a woman who is the same color or darker than her mate to that of the barrage of couplings in which the man is significantly darker than the woman. 

What this does is devalue blackness in a culture that supposedly prides itself on being black. 

 

And it places an unfair burden on the backs of darker skinned black women to somehow hold their heads up high when all around them examples abound to the contrary of the affirmation of their beauty. And it kinda makes you wonder, after you've done the obligatory scratch of the head, if all of this is by design?

 

In any case, i am a huge proponent of removing the label of "black" from mixed-race individuals, if for no other reason than that they cease to be considered the standard of black beauty. The image in black men's minds of their ideal partner being a mixed woman or a very fair-skinned one does a major disservice to black people as a whole. If we want to teach our young men to view dark skin as beautiful in its own right, the least we can do is start by emphasizing black beauty in all of its glory. That's why on this site, when i refer to black beauty, i streamline my pictures to dark skinned black women, who do not ordinarily get enough shine of the right kind. 

 

​This is by no means a jab at mixed race women, and in fact i support racial mixing in general. But i do believe that black beauty is rare and pure, and therefore must be preserved at least for as long as it takes for blacks to gain equality in every avenue of the spheres they inhabit. 

 

Note: All of the pictures on this page with the exception of this site logo are not the property of StraightNatural. They are pictures pulled from google searches, and owned by others.