Many African Americans see Meghan Markle as just another black person. Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Halle Berry, August Wilson, Frederick Douglass, and Booker T. Washington are also prominent African-Americans.
Irrespective of whether or not one of their parents is white or of some other ethnicity, they are still American citizens. As a group, African Americans are a welcoming bunch. To us, you are a member of our family if you carry a small amount of our blood in your veins.
This may be a return to the one-drop rule from long ago. To thwart racial equality and prevent people of color from passing for white, the South enacted this law in the early twentieth century. Even one ancestor of African descent—one drop of black blood—was enough to qualify a person as black in the eyes of the law. I’m baffled as to why some white people are offended when Meghan Markle or Barack Obama are referred to as “black” in the media. Emails from whites claiming to be “biracial” are frequently sent to me. I’m stumped as to why they’re so concerned about it.
“Maybe you can help me,” a reader wrote to me recently. “It appears that Meghan Markle is referred to as biracial in Britain. Press in the United States refers to her as black. Barack Obama had the same problem. Biracial seems more accurate, but I’m curious about your thoughts. You could explain it to me if you wanted.
There are a lot of rude emails I get about this topic. A few people are so enraged that they can’t stand it any longer. I can only surmise that they believe that black people are attempting to claim the achievements of people who don’t belong on our side of the aisle. For all of their accomplishments, it seems like we’re trying to take all the credit for ourselves.
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Alternatively, they may be concerned about preserving America’s white majority, which is rapidly being overtaken by people of colour. There’s something ridiculous about it, no matter what the reason. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever met someone of mixed-race heritage. In any case, they’re often asked to make a decision.
More than half (56 percent) of multiracial adults surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2015 said they were proud of their mixed-race heritage. While 55% of those polled said they had experienced racial epithets or jokes,
As the daughter of a black mother and a white father, Markle wrote for Elle Magazine in 2015 about her childhood in Los Angeles. When she was in high school, she defied a teacher’s order to check the “white” box on a class census form. She heard her mother use the N-word while she was home on college break. Heated sensations were coursing through her body, she wrote. “I felt the pain my mother was feeling.”
While in Cape Town on her first trip to South Africa last year, Markle spoke about her African-American roots.
Her speech was interrupted by members of the crowd who chanted, “I’m your sister,” as she stated: “While you may think of me and my husband as members of the royal family, I want you to know that I’m here for many other reasons than just being a member of that family.”
Barack Obama’s mother is white, and his father is African, but he is unafraid to identify as either. He’s a man of color.
“You were raised in a white household…Yet at some point you decided that you were black,” CBS News correspondent Steve Kroft asked Obama on “60 Minutes” shortly after the announcement of his presidential bid.” Obama made it clear that he had no say in the matter. This society treats you as an African American because of your appearance. “I think…” he replied.
In spite of her white mother and black father, Halle Berry has a strong sense of belonging to the African American community. She wants the same thing for her daughter, whose father is white, as she did for her.
“I believe she is black. The one-drop theory is a belief of Berry, who is black and the mother of her daughter, in an interview with Ebony magazine in 2011.
No matter what I do, I’m not going to label it.” In the end, it was up to me to decide how I wanted to be seen in the world; the same is true for her “Berry made the comment. Berry might have been onto something. Science has taught us that there is no such thing as a pure European or pure black race. Slavery’s lingering effects can be seen in the intertwining of generations in the United States.
There is no such thing as a mono-racial person. It’s possible that if everyone adopted that gaze, we’d all be better off.