v. 49 On Race and Identity: I’m Done Explaining
ANNOUNCEMENT: After six years, I’ll be launching something special. I haven’t created anything for women outside of corporate or brand work in a long time, because I rarely work with folks directly anymore. So when I do, it’s because it truly matters, and this does. This is different. Just me. And a few of you. For three months. No strange webinars or performative urgency, I promise. There’ll be a short window to join me, and I hope you will, but it’ll either be right for you or it won’t, and that’s how it should be. Stay tuned…
Now on to today’s essay…
Welcome to Life, Created—a new [old school] blog for modern times. This twice-a-week(ish) dispatch is a space for us to dig deeper, share ideas, recognize microjoys and build community beyond the mindless scroll.
This is a very unpopular thing to say, and I’m going to say it anyway: I will never be Black enough for many Black spaces, and I will never be Jewish enough for many Jewish spaces. Not because I don’t know who I am, but because people often don’t know what to do with someone who falls outside of their own expectations. They don’t say it out loud, but I’ve felt it in the way I’ve been questioned, measured, and occasionally dismissed. People love the idea of intersectionality until it shows up in the room as a living, breathing human being with her own mind. I’ve been measured, questioned, celebrated, dismissed, and misunderstood, all depending on which part of my identity someone chose to fixate on that day.
For the backstory on this image, click here.
My mother was Jewish. My father was Black. I was raised in a home that held both histories at once—not always gracefully, but always fully. It shaped the rhythm of my upbringing, the language of our love, and the layers of my loss. I was raised with challah and cornbread, grief and grits (and grit!), inherited trauma and inherited joy. I come from two cultures who know what it means to survive and still find celebration. I come from complexity, contradiction, and truth. And I have never needed to pick one over the other in order to be whole.
I’ve sat in Black spaces where my Jewishness is treated like a passing curiosity or erased altogether. I’ve been in Jewish spaces where my Blackness is the first thing acknowledged. I’ve been expected to educate while being excluded. I’ve been welcomed conditionally. Sometimes I’m invited in just far enough to be othered. To be asked, “But which parent was Jewish?” Or told, “Yes, but you’re not ‘Black Black’…” Sometimes it’s phrased as curiosity and sometimes it’s something else entirely. I’ve learned to clock the difference. I’ve stood in rooms and felt the expectation to explain myself and offer a backstory; to essentially clarify what I’m doing in certain spaces where others don’t look like me. And I’ve done that. Until I stopped. I no longer explain myself to make other people more comfortable with why I am where I am.
I’ve lived my life shaped by both Black and Jewish traditions, language, humor, and ways of seeing the world. I often say I grew up in a Black household with a Jewish mother because that’s the truth. Nearly everyone around us was Black. We didn’t have relationships with the Jewish side of my family, but I’ve always known exactly who I was. Mama Shelley made sure of that. She didn’t raise me to feel uncertain about my identity, even if the world around me tried to make it confusing.
It’s also important to say this: Black is not a monolith, and neither is Jewish. I grew up culturally shaped by both, but without access to the institutional parts that some people assume are standard. We didn’t belong to a synagogue, and I didn’t have a Bat Mitzvah. There was no version of my childhood where an eight-week Jewish summer camp was even an option, financially or otherwise. I didn’t know anyone who had those kinds of experiences. And I wasn’t raised around elite Black culture either. I hadn’t heard of an HBCU (Historically Black College or University) until I saw A Different World and asked how everyone on the show went to school with only Black folks. I didn’t know what Jack and Jill was. (Google it if you’re curious.) My family wasn’t plugged into any networks or resources that made things easier. But I was raised with love, humor, and clarity. Even when my identity didn’t fit into someone else’s framework, I always knew who I was. But more so now than ever.
So no, I may never be enough for the rooms that need a single narrative. But I don’t walk into rooms to be validated anymore. I walk in as I am. I speak as I am. I lead as I am. Black. Jewish. Woman. Whole. I am not in conflict with myself. I am not confused. I am not undecided. And I’m no longer willing to shrink so others can feel sure.
Also, if this resonated with you—or if you have mixed-race or intersectional folks in your life—please REPOST, SHARE, and COMMENT to help share this essay.
Every essay features a section called “One Fine Microjoy” – an experience, place, or thing that brings me joy, grace, and hope amidst life’s ups and downs. I hope it invites you to recognize and appreciate the delights that ground, inspire, and enrich our journey.
This week’s (brief) microjoy: I recently realized that eating leftovers on fun plates makes the food taste so much better. That, y’all, is a damn microjoy that we can all get behind!
Welcome to Life, Created.
With love, wisdom [and small mercies] from Montclair. xx
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