“You’re the whitest black person I’ve ever met.”
I still hear these words, but I couldn’t quite understand them. Their racism is harmful because it indirectly and implicitly reinforces stereotypes about what black people should be: classless, uneducated, and complicit.
Throughout high school, this sentence and others like it made me question my identity. I believed I had to fit certain unspoken standards in order to be accepted by others. Everywhere I turned there seemed to be this pressure.
I had hoped that Harvard, a diverse, intelligent, and liberal university, would provide an escape. I wanted to be unashamedly proud of who I was and not let other people’s opinions hold me back.
I was wrong. At Harvard, especially after the collapse of race-based affirmative action, I face the same impossible dilemma, but this time with the twist that I’m not white enough. My opinions are under intense scrutiny and I must constantly fight to be respected.
I’m stuck in the same place I was in high school.
So, this Black History Month, I set myself a new challenge in hopes of relieving myself of this pressure. This Black History Month, I am challenging myself to own every aspect of my identity.
I came up with this idea while researching great black figures in American history. One man in particular caught my eye: Max C. Robinson.
Robinson was an American broadcaster in the mid-20th century, when the mass media world was overwhelmingly white. In 1959, Robinson took a job as a newscaster, but during his broadcasts he was hidden from public view and forced to sit behind a projection of the news station’s logo.
One day, Robinson broadcast without projection. The next day he was fired.
Although the setback was indefensible, it was only temporary. Ten years later, he became the first black anchor of a local television news program. He will serve as co-anchor on ABC.
Robinson fought to be seen, heard, and appreciated, and he won. His life and legacy taught me many things, but most of all he taught me the value of not hiding your identity and purpose from others. This battle begins with self-acceptance. Only from there can we pursue progress for ourselves and society.
For me, this Black History Month means owning every aspect of my identity. This month, I have taken concrete steps to develop confidence in my identity, from participating in the Harvard Undergraduate Research Journal to chairing the Harvard Model United Nations Conference. But as I took these steps, I also realized that the journey of being proud of one’s identity is never complete without some intense soul searching.
And I have to admit that this journey has been painstakingly slow and I’m still sorting out parts of my identity. What does it mean to be a person of color in a predominantly white organization? How does my Christian background play into my background as a South Floridian and my politics? How can we reconcile these views?
Answering these questions wasn’t easy, but in the process of answering them, I slowly began to understand myself.
After years of being lost in high school, I felt a lot of pressure to speed up the process of finding myself. I forgot to mention that college is exactly the kind of place where you can dismantle the identity imposed on you by others, rebuild a new one, and allow yourself time to fail in the process.
Being more in touch with our identity doesn’t mean changing who we are. And not all changes we make will be obvious to others. By getting in touch with my creative side, I started journaling more often. This process of self-reflection and processing my emotions is not visible to others, but I know how much of an impact it has had on me.
We spend our lives figuring out who we are. There’s no need to rush. In fact, internal research takes time, and this time is an essential part of understanding who we are.
I still don’t understand the racist words that were said to me in high school. But that doesn’t matter now. I no longer try to conform to other people’s stereotypes and impressions of what black people should be like.
I call on each of us to follow in the footsteps of Max Robinson and take this Black History Month as a starting point to begin or continue to take ownership of our own identities. Even if some of them have not yet been discovered.
Dalevyon LJ Knight ’27 is an editor at The Crimson and lives in Canady Hall.