Reflections from a Biracial Teacher on Black Identities

My Dad was born in Trinidad. My mother is Polish and British. I was born with this beautiful complicated ancestry. I am an immigrant. I am Black. I am white. I am British. I am Trinidadian, and “I, Too” am American.

My story is common. As of 2020 mixed-race people increased to 10.2% of the U.S. population. 

In recent weeks, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the phrase “turned Black.” Former President Trump uttered those words, and in doing so sought to cast doubt on Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity. For Trump or anyone to suggest the presumptive Democratic nominee chose her Black identity over her “Indian heritage” — or vice versa — is beyond absurd. It’s an offensive concept, plantation-like even, “othering” nonwhite individuals and sowing division among people of color.

And yet, there was a moment in my high school education when I did “turn black” in the eyes of my peers. I recently reflected on how I experienced my classmates’ purported colorblindness in high school. But come senior year, the same students who had claimed not to notice my Blackness suggested that I was accepted to the University of Virginia only because I had written about biracial heritage in my college essay. At the time, I did not have one Black teacher to help me process my classmates’ racist claims.

When I first started teaching Black history 12 years ago, I did not talk about my own experiences in school. I was so focused on classroom management and objective mastery that I did not realize that my own racial identity and stories would help me build trust with students. They were more engaged after I honestly answered their questions about being a biracial teacher of Black history.

One of the most common questions my students asked me was always in the middle of teaching a unit on the Atlantic Slave Trade “Yo, Ms. Henry,” they would say, “What’s it like to know that people on your mom’s side did that to people on your dad’s side?” I would answer this kind of question with something like, “Oh man, that’s something I think about all the time.” I would tell them that I often dream of my maternal and paternal ancestors sitting together at the dinner table and talking. “Wouldn’t that be a great movie?” I ask them and then pose their earnest question back to them: “What do you think they would say to each other?”

As I observe the discourse over Black identity playing out during an election year, it is so evident why Black history is needed in our schools. It’s also clear that we must expand the narratives in which Black identities are taught to include the diversity of Black humanity that existed in classrooms like mine.

Because the Black community is diverse, “Black histories consist of multiple identities that inform Blackness,” the education professor LaGarrett King put it.

This past year my AP African American Studies students, social justice-minded seniors, advocated for a Black Lives Matter Week to close out Black History Month. On “Rep Your Roots Monday” we encouraged students to celebrate their ancestry. There were Caribbean and African T-shirts, flags, and swags. In our Black diversity, there was a beautiful solidarity, too. One rising senior asked if he could have my Trinidadian classroom flag for his future college dorm room. The passing of this classroom artifact, and our shared heritage, is one of the many positive memories I will cherish.

The West Philadelphia school where I taught is almost equivalent to an international school, and yet at first glance this would not be known. The school has students of color from all parts of the African diaspora. They come from Mali, Iraq, Jamaica, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Puerto Rico, and many other places. My students of color are also religiously diverse. Some students have both a Christian and Muslim parent. 

Intersectionality plays a significant role in many Black people’s lives. So when leaders suggest that a multiracial person can have just one identity, they are telling children to deny something that may be as essential to their identity as their religious background? I deserved better as a multiracial student, and our students deserve even better now.

Looking back at her work and writing, the Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison asserted, “Our lives have no meaning, no depth without the white gaze. And I have spent my entire writing life trying to make sure that the white gaze was not the dominant one in any of my books.” She goes on to say how other Black writers helped her center Black experiences in her novels. 

As we see this white gaze playing out in the political sphere and on social media, Morrison’s message (and her books) are needed by Black teachers, Black students, and schools today. Our students of color are counting on us, to give them the history, words, and classrooms in which they simply embrace their full ancestry and humanity.

Abigail Henry’s blog was originally posted on Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s webpage.