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Sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant coined racial formation in the first edition of their book Racial Formation in the United States in 1986. It is defined as “the sociohistorical process by which racial identities are created, lived out, transformed, and destroyed.”

My racial formation transformed when I discovered that I am 23% white. As a child, I thought that if I ate soap or scrubbed my skin the freckles would go away. By age 14, friends encouraged me to start wearing makeup. I quickly realized that makeup was a way to cover my freckles. I gladly caked-on foundation and cover-up and powdered my nose at any chance I got. I didn’t start dating until college, but when I did, there were rarely any brothas around. I had gone to private school and didn’t have exposure to Black culture, besides basketball leagues and charity organizations. When I started dating, white men loved to fetishize my freckles. I tried my best to hide them, but after a workout or hook up, there was no way to cover the little dots on my nose.

Finding out that I was almost one-fourth white wasn’t surprising, but it was difficult to acknowledge. For centuries, the categorization of who is deemed black was defined by the one-drop rule. The one-drop rule was established in the early 1700s to separate Black folks. The rule determined that if someone was “one drop negro blood,” then they would be deemed entirely African-American. Black identity has evolved over the past 300 years, from the slave to the freedman, then the negro and now “Black or African-American.” But the thing that hasn’t changed about Black identity is the one-drop rule. Despite being free for so long, African-Americans still follow the one-drop rule in a de facto manner. African-Americans with freckles, green eyes and sand-colored skin will still identify as entirely Black.

Black folks find it shameful to identify with their white roots, a notion that was pushed in the early 1960s by political leaders like Malcolm X. X preached that there were two classifications of the negro: there was the House Negro and the Field Negro. He believed that Black folks who identified with their mixed-race had chosen to continue in the ways and behaviors of the House Negro. He touches on this growing divide between Black folks in “Message to the Grass Roots,” a powerful speech that calls on Black folks to divorce from their white ethnicity entirely.

This modern house Negro loves his master. He wants to live near him. He’ll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near his master, and then brag about “I’m the only Negro out here.” “I’m the only one on my job.” “I’m the only one in this school.” You’re nothing but a house Negro. And if someone comes to you right now and says, “Let’s separate,” you say the same thing that the house Negro said on the plantation. “What you mean, separate? From America? This good white man? Where you going to get a better job than you get here?” I mean, this is what you say. “I ain’t left nothing in Africa,” that’s what you say. Why, you left your mind in Africa.

Even though I am 23% white, I do not feel allowed to identify with my white heritage. I felt a lot of shame after finding out that I was part white.

White Americans have historically oppressed Black people, to the point at which Black people still suffer and have never received reparations for white oppression. I can’t speak for all Black people, but I do know that feeling shame can be a collective experience.

My advice for anyone who feels a shame is to find other people who feel shame. Shame comes in all forms: racial shame, body shame, socioeconomic shame. Find a community that supports you working through your shame. It may be uncomfortable at first, but working through shame will eventually lead to feelings of pride. And pride, that’s a beautiful thing, especially when dealing with racial formation and identity.

I will always view whiteness as a part of my DNA, but it doesn’t define my identity. I am and will always be proud to identify as African-American.

mayarichardcraen

Writing since February 2022 · 2 stories contributed