The Message

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

And what of me. “You’re mixed, Ta-Nehisi,” Khanata replied, laughing. “Look, I understand what Black is in America. I get that you’re Black there, but here you are mixed. That’s how we see most Black Americans.” I don’t know what it says about me that I just sipped my beer and laughed. Maybe it was seeing my own gospel—the social construction of race—so dispassionately preached back at me. Maybe it was thinking back to my Black American friends and all our jokes about DNA tests and who is 100 percent African (none of us) and who is not. And then the humor faded. Khanata pointed out that in Senegal this “mixed” look is treasured. Black Americans are seen as cool, glamorous, and even beautiful because we are mixed. And many of the Senegalese women take steps—from straightening hair to lightening skin—to get that “Black American/mixed” look. This did surprise me. The one-drop rule had shaped us and then reached across the ocean to shape them, so that even here in Senegal, Pauline was pining for Jean Harlow. Except the Jean Harlow was us.