On Being ‘Black Enough’

In this special issue I discuss race in the context of recent questions about Vice President Kamala Harris’s racial identity.

A picture worth a thousand words. From left: My mother, me, Vice President Kamala Harris and my dad in June.

Back in 2022, I was at a dinner party with a friend from college and two older couples who he had known since childhood. Having walked in empty-handed and overdressed after believing we would be eating at a restaurant instead of the host’s hotel room, I was already feeling edgy and eager to impress. Regardless of my faux pas, we enjoyed drinking wine, chatting and getting to know one another over a yummy home-cooked meal.

Before any of us knew, the host began a slurred soapbox speech on how he “understood the Black experience” because he had grown up poor and in a violent home. He was frustrated with people who crucified 16-year-old White kids for wearing blackface, effectively destroying their lives by way of slander because of one mistake they’d made as kids. The concept of White privilege bothered him.

I was no stranger to being near men who rarely spent time with people who don’t look and think like them. It seemed like once they got around a young Black girl like me, they jumped at the opportunity to share all their most controversial opinions about liberal rhetoric, minorities, you name it. Never making eye contact, they would speak to the air, perhaps trying to avoid visual confrontation while they spoke.

When the host finished his rant I gingerly shared my thoughts on blackface, teenagers being morons, etc. I highlighted that there was not just one way to be Black. That I hadn’t grown up in a “poor and violent” household, so did he still know my Black experience?

“—Mixed,” my friend from college cut in to correct me. Oh brother. How did I get here?

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This week, when Vice President Kamala Harris’s racial identity was questioned by former President Donald Trump, the internet flooded with responses asserting why she did, in fact, qualify as a Black woman. People spoke of how she attended the historically Black Howard University, her Oakland, CA roots, even her alleged ex, all as ways to affirm her Blackness to the public.

Growing up in Taipei, Taiwan I was basically the poster child for the “Black experience.” When I recently connected with the only other Black person from my class we agreed we had felt like the living representation of “what it meant to be Black” at our massive K-12 American school. I overcompensated for the stereotypes of laziness, ugliness and stupidity by speaking carefully, over-exercising and rejecting most sports. Sometimes I think I would have bonded with my family over the Chicago Bulls a lot sooner if I hadn’t tried so hard to show my peers that “not every Black person likes or is good at basketball.” I can confidently say now that ball is life.

Over a decade later and back in the United States, being mixed-race with unique experiences seems to omit me from what most people consider to be the “Black experience.” Perhaps it is worth noting that the friend from college who corrected me when he said I was “mixed, not Black” was from Europe, so I won’t fool myself into believing questions like these around Black identity are isolated to the United States. When former leaders like Donald Trump openly question the racial identity of mixed-race Black women like Vice President Kamala Harris, it is indicative of a larger issue in which Black people are pigeonholed into only being able to look a certain way, sound a certain way and have certain experiences. When who we are appears to be outside of those boxes, we are no longer considered Black people.

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So there I was, in a Midtown hotel room with five tipsy, conservative White people speaking on the subject of Blackness, White privilege and my own racial identity. I wish I could say the conversation got tied up neatly with a little bow on top, but that wouldn’t be true. It was a fun and dramatic night (mostly), and at the end of it the host told me he was looking forward to the next time we would get to engage in a heated debate. As much as I resented the smug smile on his face, I shook his hand and agreed with sincerity.

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With that, thank you so much for being here. This morning Danzy Senna published a piece for The New York Times that provides some great historical context on this topic. I am so excited that more people are talking about what it means to be mixed race, and I would love to know your thoughts and experiences, too. Always feel free to reach out to me via my contact page. I would love to hear from you!

Tomorrow is my 28th birthday, so next week is going to be a FUN article. I hope to see you there. Until then, keep owning all of who you are, and don’t let anyone question who that person is!! x

Yours Truly,

Kyoko