Ever been told "You're Not Black Enough"?
A Blackstack Original piece on our shared but unique Black experiences, and how impactful the words "You're Not Black Enough" have impacted our biracial community members.
This is on a topic that I,
, cannot speak on, however, I do owe this community the space to freely and respectfully discuss the topic. It’s a blessing that is here working with me because when we got this submission in we both knew this would be her first curated piece. Now listen, this is another heavy topic so make sure you engage in the comments - don’t hold those thoughts in, we need to start having the discussion.
Happy Womens History Month!
To reclaim ourselves after fragmentation is revolutionary and brave.
So, whether you’ve experienced the feeling on not being black enough due to your skin tone , the way you speak, your interests (s/o blerds), your abilities, your gender, your sexuality, your place of origin it’s within you to be yourself. Embody the fact that the box was never yours. You have always been and will always be whole. And it’s from that space of wholeness that we can honor differences and build our future. We do this by taking accountability for the ways that our own biases impact our interactions with ourself and the world.
We manifest our freedom from within. I welcome you to a deep reconnection to self. You are a brick in the building which will house your wildest dreams. Patricia Palmer gives a speech on TedX, with the intention of speaking specifically to black people to teach us to return to our roots and recall our sense of self/identity that is shaped by our history before enslavement.
Patrice, specifically, speaks about how their gender is something they put on the back burner for fear of diverting attention the movement and creating divisiveness. I can understand this, sometimes it feels like talking up space as a queer person in black spaces feelings like a distraction. But, just like Patrice it’s my intention to return home and recall the pre-colonial notion is existence. One where we appreciate our differences and view them as strengths which elevate our empathy and understanding of our creator.
"Home ain’t never had no walls. Home ain’t never had no chairs. Home always been in here.”
Patrice Palmer
I want to thank
for being the first to submit to this topic. It’s work that means a great deal. I look forward to seeing your perspectives on our experiences with blackness.
I’m Still Learning to Believe That I’m Black Enough
“You’re not Black enough to be friends with us”.
A paraphrase of a memory, just as impactful regardless.
I wanted for so long to believe that what I was being fed growing up, what I now know to be a straight up lie, that because I’m not fully Black that I wouldn’t ever be able to REALLY know what it means to embody that so illustirtive designation. And on top of not being fully Black, I’m also White which means that for so many I am the antithesis of what it means for them to be Black and proud because I am the product of someone that “Got in bed with the enemy”. Again, another paraphrase but you get the idea.
I grew up in what in comparison to many of my friends and classmates must have been viewed as pure fiction: Three older siblings who all loved and guided me in their own unique ways. A large home with pleantly of space to learn and play. My own bedroom, the size of which I have never had since in all honesty, complete with my own television and landline. And two loving, caring, doting, married parents who I knew even then often went above and beyond to put the wellbeing of mine and my siblings above all else. I also grew up with the knowledge from some of my first conscious interactions that I was a contraversy; that my very being in the world was a point of contention for many.
I remember several occasions as a child so naively not understanding for example why some of my childcare teachers were taken aback when my Dad occasionally would be the one to pick me up. I’d run to him like any Daddy’s girl would, all excited and surprised since it was a rare occasion that it was him and not Mom who got off work first to come get me. And I would watch as they questioned why I was so happily running into the arms of this strange white man. Did they check his ID to see that it matched with the approved list? Did they question their own judgment of if it was right for me to leave with him, because there just had to be something fishy going on there.
The reality for me is that I grew up lying to myself thinking that I wasn’t ever going to fit into any one group or one narrative, and that that was a bad thing. And that because I couldn’t be ONE categorized thing in my childhood, that it would inevitably lead me to never belonging to anything or anyone in my adulthood. As I am writing this I am less than two weeks shy of my 30th birthday and for the first time in my entire life I can feel myself entering into a new phase of life, all be it with trepidation and fear, but also with tears of joy streaming knowing that I have defeated my own best estimates in this life already.
I have learned over time to push through the ingrained feelings of self-hatred in all its forms. That it’s acceptable and enjoyable to learn more about yourself in the most intimate ways. That doing that work isn’t selfish or sinful, but the only way we can truly soar to the heights we want so desperately to claim as our own. That feeling good in the body that I am currently in isn’t shameful or lustful, but a radical form of self-acceptance after over a decade and a half of hating everything you saw in the mirror.
I am often reminded of a quote my older brother told me when I was much younger that I know he repatriated himself; Nothing is new. Every single possibility in the world has likely already happened in one iteration or another. With this, I have to believe that my ongoing feelings of loneliness in the sea that is longing to understand one’s true self, that I was never alone in it. That while I thought I had just barely been treading water in an aimless storm of pain, that so many others over the centuries have been all but inches from my fingertips.
We are never as alone as we feel. Know that those feelings will always be valid. But know that it will also always be you who must do the work to touch the hands and hearts of those around you that you so desperately seek to connect with. And know too that the old adage of “It get’s better” really is true. Finding who you are and where you belong is a life long process that we are rarely taught how to cultivate. This generational cycle taking things as they come, for better or worse is something I am fiercely aiming to end in myself. That has truly been my greatest lesson thus far; that we are our own homes and must do the work to adorn our homes with the beliefs and belongings that flourish us, rather than suffocate us.
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 | A guest post by
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Thank you for these pieces and yes, there is so much more to be said. I have three things that come to mind.
First, there's Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye -- how many Black girls and women deep down want to be someone other than who they see in the mirror? How many want to not change their name or hair or shape or size but all of it. All of it.
Second, I think of my husband, a blended man born in Oakland CA, the product of a Jewish, Black, and Wampanoag woman and a European man. His experience of living in a world that thinks he is out of pocket for not passing.
Last, I think of myself, an only child born to a Black woman who was the last birthed by a midwife in a little forest enclave that no longer exists and a Black man born of a young mother and older father who gave him up for adoption. How I felt like I was raised by wolverines, raising my self, a latchkey kid who likely would have been labeled as neurodivergent had such labels existed back then.
All examples of ways "not Black enough" can manifest in our lives. But we are here, we are Black, and we are wonderful.
Mixed
I have never felt as white as I look, nor have I have been seen by others for as black as I feel.
The message I have repeatedly felt is that, “You are only as black as your skin color allows you to be.”
If I allow myself the freedom to be as black as I feel, I face judgment and ridicule and accusations of cultural appropriation.
If I deny my blackness, just because it doesn’t show on my skin, I feel like I’m betraying myself and a culture I very much identity with.
My skin color was never the shelter I felt at home in but it provided privilege I can’t deny.
When the first question a stranger usually asks you is, “What are you?” Meaning, “what’s your ethnic background?” Or other’s describe you as “exotic” or “ethnically ambiguous” depending on hair color, tan, makeup, etc. Then you know you can “pass” but you don’t fit in.
And “passing” can feel shameful and frightening, as can not fitting in. This is a complex concept that goes much deeper than skin deep, much “darker” than color.
When I look in the mirror I expect to see Maya Angelou looking back at me.
I do my best to keep these feelings to myself because they seem insignificant in comparison to the harsh reality of racism.
It feels insensitive to discuss my skin color as a problem when I know it’s probably the only thing that’s kept me and my bold ass mouth alive thus far.
Besides, I feel like the melanin mix is the only solution to systemic racism. By 2100, the entire world will be on its way to a swirl, we will all be various shades of brown; and racism, at least against people of color, will be in the past.
Until then, we hold the dichotomy that color both matters and doesn’t matter. It matters because it sets the stage for how one is treated, and it doesn’t matter because, we are one.
(In light -no pun intended- lol-of the story I broke on the alleged plagiarism by Mel Robbins, I now end my posts with copyright verbiage. © Sage Justice March 27, 2025. This concept/theory/poem is original to Sage Justice. If you use it, please give credit and link to original work. Thank you.)