Black identity is politically constructed, not grounded in fixed biological categories.

Evidence

We have arrived, Hall argues, at an encounter, the “end of innocence,” and so the end of the innocent notion of the essential black subject. What is at issue here is the recognition of the extraordinary diversity of subject positions, social experiences, and cultural identities which compose the category black. This involves the recognition that black is essentially a politically and culturally constructed category, one that cannot be grounded in a set of fixed transcultural or transcendental racial categories and which therefore has no guarantees. This brings into play the recognition of the immense diversity and differentiation of the historical and cultural experiences of minority communities in societies that throughout modernity have traded on their claim to, and acted to “protect” their projected homogeneity. This inevitably entails a weakening or fading of the notion that race or some composite notion of race around the term “black” will either guarantee the effectiveness of any cultural practice or determine in any final sense its aesthetic value (Hall, 2000). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 128

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘end of innocence’ moment: the recognition that ‘black’ is a politically and culturally constructed category with no guarantees.
• XREF: connects to: Racial identity is a dynamic bricolage, not a fixed biological given.; Race being social means it consists of identity practices, not biology. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 89