Vice President Kamala Harris has been on my mind. I’ve been thinking about whether she’s Black enough to appeal to Black voters, too Black to get the white voters, and how it must feel for her to find the “right” balance. I’ve also been thinking about how many times she’s been the only Black (or Indian) woman in the room. I think about how much pressure she feels to do right by Black women or take positions that represent the greater good of Black women in America. I’m ashamed to say it, but what I think about the most is how her behavior influences what white people think of other Black women like myself, rather than the way her decisions as a politician have impacted the lives of voters.
If any of these statements determine whether you vote for Kamala Harris, they should not. You may have a hard time accepting this, and I do too sometimes, but as a psychiatrist, Black woman, and race expert, my standpoint is that our thoughts on Kamala Harris’ Black identity have nothing to do with her. It has to do with a lot of other things, including internalized racism.
Internalized racism is a hard subject to talk about. I’ll be honest, I struggle with it. It’s defined as beliefs about one’s own inferiority, weaknesses, or shortcomings as a function of membership in an oppressed group, like Black people. This is what it looks like for me: Being on the subway when the Black youths (I’m 40 so I can say this now) are rapping aloud to music blasting through their headphones, followed by me worrying that white people on the train will think all Black people are musical, disrespectful or only listen to rap music. Those feelings are then followed by the fear that those same white people will use that experience as evidence that Black people are “bad,” just like they saw on the news, heard from their friends, or saw in movies.
The feeling that “they are bad so therefore I am bad because I am also Black” is internalized racism. And the feeling that those youths need to “pull up their pants,” turn down the music, and “act right” so they don’t give all the Black people in the world a bad name is also internalized racism. Catching myself judging people from a lens of internalized racism gives me the ick. Then I have to remind myself I’m not their grandfather and that it is ridiculous that every Black person will be judged by the youths’ behavior.
Before you judge me, know that it’s likely that something similar happens in your head when you see someone “like you,” whether you are conscious of it or not. Our brains automatically size up who is like us or not like us to assess danger. So when we see someone like us, we compare them to the definitions and categories we have in our head. So if Blackness means a certain kind of speech, clothing style, or culture—I am assessing how someone fits that definition. What is terrible is that I do not fit that definition that I have in my head because the meaning was shaped by the media and my community. Per my own standards, those youths are Blacker than me because they look like the Black people I see in Law and Order. Am I like them? Do I cause trouble? Am I bad?
If you identify as Black (or Indian), does seeing Kamala Harris trigger any of this? Haven’t you been in at least one conversation with other Black people and someone has asked if Harris was “Black enough”? Or maybe you have seen the Black TikTokers debating whether we can call her the first “Black” woman to do any of the stuff she has done because she is also Jamaican, was raised by an Indian mom, and is not an American descendant of slavery?
I have been in these conversations and understand why her Blackness is questioned. I too have had my “Blackness” questioned. It was questioned as a child because many said I talked like a white girl. It was questioned in college because I did not go to events at the Black community center. It was questioned as an adult (and by my own family) because I wanted to do things like see The Nutcracker. I have been seen as not Black enough by simply existing as myself: a queer, androgynous-looking non-believer of Christ who likes sushi. I too have questioned another’s “whitewashing,” to appear likable, profitable, or palatable. This questioning then leads to comparisons about their lighter skin color, femininity, or intergenerational trauma as a Black American. And this spiral ends with questions about my flavor of queer neurodivergence, South Carolina roots, and whether I look like society’s standards of what a President could “look” like. As it turns out, my questions have led to a great deal of tears, isolation, and insecurity over the years.
Harris is not the only one harmed by Blackness questioning. As Black people, we all are. I am a psychiatrist who treats people who aren’t seen as Black, Muslim, or X enough. I see the emotional damage caused by our brains believing we aren’t enough, or internalizing the negative ideas about our identity, and then using it to assess whether others are enough in some way. To be sure, I am not suggesting we should not have these thoughts, because we all do and we certainly can’t decide which thoughts to have. I am, however, judging the decisions we make that impact other people because of these assessments, like whether we vote for them, physically harm them, or consider them unlovable. We all have these thoughts because we live in a world where the definitions of Black, successful, or worthy enough to exist were created by European men who needed to convince themselves they were enough. But they also needed to feel the “most” enough, defining laws about who is enough to deserve land, money, and freedom from enslavement. They used these definitions to gain power over the media, government, and our self-beliefs to convince us of the same.
I’m not writing about internalized racism, to convince you to vote for Kamala. I am writing this because internalized racism hurts me, I know it hurts you, and it hurts the other people who we see as enough to believe in. And it should not be the determining factor of who gets our vote to be the next president of the United States.
The political views of the writer are their own.
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