Black American identity fuses external ascription with self-identification

Evidence

Now, black Americans are those people who are seen and interpreted as black and self-identify as black American. Here choice matters. In this sense, they understand themselves in terms of a particular history of race in this country (a history that has always included black people from other parts of the world), as individuals in association with other people who share that history, and as participants in cultural expressions and institutions bound up with that history. And this means that you may have some people who are identified as black but who do not self-identify as black American (for example, those who prefer to see themselves as Nigerian or Jamaican or just plain ol’ American). So black Americans are the folks, and I include myself among them, who trace their self-understanding back to the amazing life built in the United States in the light of a society committed to the belief that white people just matter more. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 341

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Racial ascription can override visual passing and self-identification alike — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 526; The legal self-identification requirement for ethnic groups constitutes self-racialization — Mareike Riedel, Islamophobia, Racial Discrimination…, 57; Racial ascription can override a person’s own refusal of that identity — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 526