When you fit the description…

Gloria Atanmo shared this wonderful post on Facebook, titled “Is it rude to call us Black?” and it stirred some feelings in me. As much as I appreciated and identified with the article, it also described a perspective and an experience that only felt… half-familiar. Intersectionality works in mysterious ways, I guess. For some people, Black is a culture. For other people it’s more of a descriptor that doesn’t even fit that well.

Take myself as a case in point

“African American” doesn’t fit, because my parents and grandparents were all from the Caribbean. I have a reasonably strong sense of my own ancestry and culture, and that sense is not connected to Africa at all.

“Black” doesn’t really fit, because… like… why would it? I have mid-tone to light skin, by any objective sense of it. In fact, I color-sampled the patch of skin in the center of my forehead in the portrait above, and the lightness (in HSL) was 54%. By comparison, the patch of hair directly above my forehead is 15% lightness.

And taken subjectively, there are plenty of folks from India, Cuba, South America, Australia, etc. who have dramatically darker skin than I do. In America, you wouldn’t call any of those folks Black though, right? What is it about a person that causes them to become Black here?

So, like, what am I? What is Black to me?

Fundamentally, I feel like multiple concepts ended up piled under the single term. “Black” is simultaneously a color (that’s not me); it’s an ethnicity that’s closely tied to Africa (that’s not me); it’s a culture (that’s kinda me); and it’s a label. And for me, the label applies, whether I like it or not.

It’s another one of those everyday reminders that when you look like I do, the cursory ways that other people see you get to matter more than how you see yourself. It’s another reminder that, for people like me, once you fit the description, there’s nothing you can do about it until some other person comes along to offer a different one.

That label part is pretty dang sticky, though. There’s no doubt that I’ve also lived the experience that’s reserved for Black people in America. Cops called on me in my own neighborhood. Store employees following me around when I go shopping. The inherent expectation that my role is to make White people feel comfortable at my own expense. And so on. But that’s not me.

What am I?

Well, for one, I’m Omari. Nice to meet you.

I’m multi-cultural. There’s a lot of Caribbean in me. There’s a lot of American. And absolutely, there’s a lot of Black as well. I was born in Ohio, so there’s a lot of that in particular, plus echoes of the other places I’ve lived, people I’ve spent time with, music I’ve listened to, languages I’ve learned, and so on. You couldn’t sum all that up in a full sentence, let alone a single word.

I’m multi-ethnic. And both of those ethnicities are Caribbean. For the people like Gloria who hold Blackness as something they can finally grasp onto with both hands, I’m happy for them. I will never understand the heartbreak of losing your own history, but I know it can be extraordinarily affirming to finally find a way to start to reestablish those roots.

In conclusion

Black is beautiful.
And I am also beautiful.
But that beauty is more than skin deep.