Honestly, academically speaking, that is an interesting question. It probes at the heart of what race really is.
Is race how you are perceived? Then if someone darkened their skin and had surgery to take on certain facial features, sufficient to the point that people read and treat them as black, are they then black?
Is race genetic? What if a white person used hypothetical generic engineering to give themselves a genotype of someone with largely African ancestry? Their phenotype is still white, but their genotype is black. They aren’t read as white, but any children they have will be. Are they black? Will their children be? What if the genetic treatment also changes their phenotype? They now have the genes and a visual appearance that most would identify as black, but they know nothing of black culture and have lived in predominantly white communities their whole life. Are they now black?
Is race more about culture? Do you have to be raised as part of a black community to be black? If a white person adopts a black infant and raises them to adulthood in an entirely white rural town, is that child black? What if the parents are super racist and try to turn their adopted kid visibly white by lightening their skin, and they do this to the kid from birth? Is the kid still black? What about the opposite? What if it’s a white baby adopted by black parents and raised in a predominantly black community? Is that child black? What if the parents alter the child’s appearance to be visibly black, and do so from birth?
It’s honestly a really interesting question, and countless dissertations and books have been written on the subject of what exactly race is. So I’m not really qualified to answer this question. I frankly don’t know what precisely defines a person’s race. My impression is that ultimately race is a very squishy, poorly defined concept. The questions above probe the definition by investigating its edges. Another way to do so would be to consider the concept of passing (in a racial sense.)
I don’t really have any answers here, only questions. But your question, “how do you become black?” really sent me down a rabbit hole. When you take the question seriously, it really starts getting to the heart of just what this thing we call "race* really is.
Honestly, academically speaking, that is an interesting question. It probes at the heart of what race really is.
Is race how you are perceived? Then if someone darkened their skin and had surgery to take on certain facial features, sufficient to the point that people read and treat them as black, are they then black?
Is race genetic? What if a white person used hypothetical generic engineering to give themselves a genotype of someone with largely African ancestry? Their phenotype is still white, but their genotype is black. They aren’t read as white, but any children they have will be. Are they black? Will their children be? What if the genetic treatment also changes their phenotype? They now have the genes and a visual appearance that most would identify as black, but they know nothing of black culture and have lived in predominantly white communities their whole life. Are they now black?
Is race more about culture? Do you have to be raised as part of a black community to be black? If a white person adopts a black infant and raises them to adulthood in an entirely white rural town, is that child black? What if the parents are super racist and try to turn their adopted kid visibly white by lightening their skin, and they do this to the kid from birth? Is the kid still black? What about the opposite? What if it’s a white baby adopted by black parents and raised in a predominantly black community? Is that child black? What if the parents alter the child’s appearance to be visibly black, and do so from birth?
It’s honestly a really interesting question, and countless dissertations and books have been written on the subject of what exactly race is. So I’m not really qualified to answer this question. I frankly don’t know what precisely defines a person’s race. My impression is that ultimately race is a very squishy, poorly defined concept. The questions above probe the definition by investigating its edges. Another way to do so would be to consider the concept of passing (in a racial sense.)
I don’t really have any answers here, only questions. But your question, “how do you become black?” really sent me down a rabbit hole. When you take the question seriously, it really starts getting to the heart of just what this thing we call "race* really is.