Black Is Black

I'm pretty sure that as a biological question "race" simply does not exist.  I mean, no doubt there are genetic differences that govern skin color and such, but the human genome is the human genome.  So when someone claims to be "transracial," I really don't know what that word means, any more than I know what "race" means.

On the other hand, I'm also pretty sure that there is such a thing as a social construct called "race."  I mean, if indeed there is no biological ground for racial differences, then white privilege is as much a product of social discourse as is black poverty or Asian intelligence or . . . fill in your favorite social stereotype.

Bringing my third hand into play, I can therefore easily, very easily imagine that someone of who fits one socially constructed category might affiliate with members of a different socially constructed category.  I don't mean that a person who is "white" might empathize with the black community, or vice versa; or that an Asian person might love the culture of Puerto Rico so much that s/he becomes acculturated to the Latino way of life—and I say this knowing full well that there is as much "racial" variation in Latin America as there is in North America, so that the Asian might very well be Latino by birth.

My fourth hand tells me, however, that there is a huge difference between affiliating with a socially constructed category and asserting that one is a member of that category.  The reason for that difference is expressly because the categories are indeed socially constructed.

Say that I, who am Latino and yet, as certified by Ancestry.com more European than a great many white Americans can make claim to—say that I affiliate with the African American community, as in fact I do.  Despite that affiliation, my life experiences, the set of circumstances that have constructed my identity, are chock full of white privilege.  When I was a little kid facing the horrible sign that adorned the restaurant in the Coral Gables bus depot where I went daily en route to and from Coral Gables Elementary School—a sign that read NO NEGROES, NO DOGS, and then, scrawled in magic marker, NO CUBANS—I could safely ignore the sign because, as I've indicated, I am more European than a great many European Americans.  As my very ill-informed friends used to say, I don't look Cuban.  When I walked into the bookstore located next to that restaurant, I was not followed around by the storekeeper, as were the black children who also went into the store.  When I climbed onto the bus, I did not have to sit anywhere in particular, as some of my peers in age albeit not in socially constructed identity had to do.

In short, socially constructed though "racial" identities are, they are powerful determinants of how people experience life and so experience their own identities.

I felt empathy for my peers when I was a kid.  I felt outrage at the experiences that they suffered through.  I affiliated with them, therefore.  But their experience was not my experience.  I could not then, nor could I now assert that I am black.  To make such a claim does more than falsify the experiences that define the socially constructed groups and give those groups a powerful reality.  Indeed, it would be simply another assertion of my white privilege.