“I feel like she’s black. I’m black and I’m her mother and I believe in the one-drop theory. I’m not going to put a label on it. I had to decide for myself and that’s what she’s going to have to decide – how she identifies herself in the world. And I think, largely, that will be based on how the world identifies her. That’s how I identified myself. But I feel like she’s black.” This is what award winning actress and producer Halle Berry told in the March 2011 issue of Ebony magazine in regards to her two-year-old daughter, Nahla. Suffice to say this has caused an uproar.
Many people believe that she did this tto be a "lightning rod for racial politics" or to garner attention for her benefit to gain full custody of Nahla from her French-Canadian model father, Gabriel Aubry. Some critics have cite that Berry is pulling "The Tragic Mulatto" card, an archetypical mixed race person, who is assumed to be sad or even suicidal because he/she fails to completely fit in the "white society" or the "black society." While Halle Berry may have played Tragic Mulatto characters (most notably the titular role in Alex Haley's Queen), I highly doubt she has held on to those ideas. What Berry has said does not come from any kind of malice, but from the experience she has as a biracial person.
Halle Berry stated early on in her career that her own mother told her she should identify as being Black/African-American, "After having many talks with my mother about the issue, she reinforced what she had always taught me. She said that even though you are half black and half white, you will be discriminated against in this country as a black person. People will not know when they see you that you have a white mother unless you wear a sign on your forehead. And, even if they did, so many people believe that if you have an ounce of black blood in you then you are black. So, therefore, I decided to let folks categorize me however they needed to." She is just trying to save her daughter the hurt and pain that she probably had to deal with growing up. And although we are in the 21st Century with a Black President, that hasn't changed the mindsets of all Americans.
I worked with a White Woman, who had a biracial daughter. Whenever I would say her daughter was "Black" it was almost as if there was a stigma attached to it. From what I saw, she did nothing to help her daughter embrace her Black roots. She then lamented to me one day about how some men get when they find out she had a daughter by a Black Man. I told her what she was doing to her daughter was neither healthy or constructive. That one day she was going to realize that she's different from her mother and her grandmother. And that she wouldn't want her daughter to be resentful towards her, simply because you did not want to accept what she is.
So I applaud Ms. Berry for giving her daughter a strong sense of self worth and pride with her Black Idenity. And for those who are angry at Halle Berry, its admirable for her to brace her daughter for the harsh realities that American Society perpetuates.
Thoughts & Opinions?
