SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – The complicated reality of identifying as Black or African American is that the back stories are messy and force us to rethink who we thought we were.
Racial identity is complex, and for Black Americans, it is compounded for a variety of reasons, the first of which is that “Black” is a term assigned to the enslaved. When Africans arrived on America’s shores in the 1600s as property, they brought tribal identities reflected in their art, music, languages, and other identifiers. “Black” is an evolution of “Negro,” which means black in Spanish and Portuguese.
The birth certificates of Black elders tell a story of people whose narrative identity was dictated by a government grappling with what to do with newly freed but unwanted people. Before birth certificates, plantation owners kept records of births and deaths among their property. Negro, mullatto, creole, and even more ridiculous terms like quadroon and octaroon were used to “other” freed people of color out of mainstream society.
Second-class citizenship and the case to be recognized as white
Post-civil rights era birth certificates designated children born in the 1970s as Black and later African American, as that term was popularized by academics in the 1990s to today…