Who is Black in America?

One thing that contemporary American racial politics does is to create incentives to make sharp definitions on race that don’t really make sense in, say, Canada or Mexico, not to mention a place like Brazil. A classic example of this is the blood quantum issue among the tribes, a legacy of colonialism the government used to try and define who got “benefits,” but which has since taken on a life of its own, incentivizing tribes to reduce their membership roles so the casino money is split up fewer ways. So you have controversies within some of the tribes in Oklahoma over the issue of slavery–are the African slaves held by the Cherokee and Creek and others before 1865 also tribal members since there was a ton of interracial sex going on there? It can get very ugly.

Another example of this is popping up in the reparations debate. Who is Black in America after all? Who deserves reparations (assuming it ever really happens)?

When this city announced earlier this year that it would consider giving reparations to its Black residents, it was heralded as another victory in a national movement to offer recompense for the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation.

The city had played a key role in financing the slave trade and was the site of fierce resistance to integration. Now, advocates said, it was time to address the lingering damage.

But as the mayor started choosing members for the Boston task force, the city quickly became one of the chief battlegrounds of an adjacent fight playing out within the Black community: Should reparations programs be limited to people who trace their ancestry back to American slavery, or should they include Black immigrants who came to the country by choice?

The debate highlights tension within America’s rapidly changing Black community and risks fracturing a movement that is already struggling to gain mainstream acceptance. It could also shape the reach and ultimate price tag of reparations programs being developed in more than a dozen states and cities across the country.

“There is not going to be some ‘Kumbaya’ moment,” said Aziza Robinson-Goodnight, a Boston-based activist calling for reparations to be limited to descendants of enslaved people. “We’re going to have to fight, and we’re going to have to make the strongest case possible.”

Of course, Haitians, black Dominicans, Liberians, etc. are shifted into the Black category by white society, including the cops. So they are certainly discriminated against and some of those communities have been here for a long time now, if not back to 1865. But then there are tensions between African-Americans and the Black diaspora. And you know what? There is no actual answer here. That’s the joy of race in America. When people ask why it will never go away and why we can’t stop talking about it, it’s because there will never be a hard and fast answer on the issue.