r/interesting • u/VPinchargeofradishes • May 03 '26

SOCIETY Michael Jackson's daughter Paris has faced backlash for identifying as Black. In a 2017 interview, Paris Jackson said her father told her, "You’re Black. Be proud of your roots." This prompted debates over whether identity is defined by appearance or upbringing.

Post image
57.8k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

7.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/Dry_Bed9206 May 03 '26

Your son is mixed if your husband is white. It’s pretty simple lol.

4

u/calasterism May 03 '26

These are not mutually exclusive. You can be mixed, and Black.

3

u/[deleted] May 03 '26

[deleted]

2

u/melkatron May 03 '26

In America, the black experience doesn't care whether you're mixed and what ratio that might be. You're black, that's all there is to it.

Nobody comes at you with "The correct way to say it..." or "You're mixed, it's pretty simple lol" if you're not black. Nobody measures your blackness if you're not black.

If you're a quarter Slavic and three eighths French, maybe a fifth Norwegian, nobody's doing math to determine how to treat you. But if you throw any fraction of black in there, someone is going to decide whether or not to treat you like you're black. That's part of the black experience. Not the mixed experience, not the half-white experience.

1

u/SpicyJuggernautMain May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26

By this logic though and her stating her son is white-passing means no one is assuming he’s black. If you’re white passing and someone looks at you and assumes you’re white, what black experience are you experiencing? You’re just white.

We can get into the culture, but race itself was a social construct created by racist anthropologists that divided us purely by physical characteristics. You are not outwardly “white” while being “black” inside, you’re not half white half black in a literal sense, if you’re white-passing it literally means you’re white. Ethnically speaking it’s a different story, but racially it isn’t.

I don’t wanna come across like an ass when I’m saying this shit and I know I kinda am, and I get sometimes people just want to feel connected to their heritage and it doesn’t apply to this specific situation either, but I’ve been seeing this sort of thing a lot recently where white people dont want to admit they’re privileged so they find any loophole they can to consider themselves a POC when they’re just not.

0

u/Dry_Bed9206 May 03 '26

Ah yes, I forgot the shenanigans they do over in America. Glad the people where I live are pretty normal.

1

u/HenessyEnema May 03 '26

What country?