Black American Identity Belongs to Our Own History
I would rather be called Black. My family’s story is a story of America, and I want the language used to describe me to reflect that. I understand the ancestral connection to Africa. I can look at a DNA test and recognize what it tells me about origins. Yet I do not have family stories about life in Africa. I do not have a recent personal connection to a country there. The history I know, the history that explains who I am, is rooted in Alabama and the American South. By my understanding of my family’s history, that separation stretches back more than two centuries. Generations have lived and died here. Their experiences were shaped by what happened in this country, under its laws, in its communities. When I say I am American, I am describing where my people’s lives unfolded. White Americans with distant European ancestry are routinely understood as American. Their family origins do not require them to feel that another continent is home. I want the same consideration. Why should ...