One Drop
author bliss broyard steps forward to reclaim her family's identity
2007-11-09
By Gil Robertson IV

The concept of race is perhaps the most significant social construct that informs a person’s identity. So it’s easy to imagine the dilemma faced by Bliss Broyard, when, at 24, she learned of her father’s African American background. Her dad, New York Times Books critic Anatole Broyard, had rejected his racial background and spent his lifetime grabbling with the implications of that decision. Although today, the concept of multi-culturalism has gained acceptance in American society, the fact remains that the “one-drop rule” still shapes the identity for a majority of Americans. This is especially true for Bliss, who up until her father’s death had lived her life fully identified as an Anglo woman. In her new book, One Drop, she explores her father’s secret, and how discovering her African American origins has transformed her life. 
 
EbonyJet.com: What prompted you to write a book that exposes so much about your dad’s “secret life” and family background?
Bliss Broyard: Well there was a lot of surprise, a lot of anger and a lot of gratification. Finding this out really threw me a curve, so for me it was never an option not to explore this… My mom says that hiding his secret caused him more pain than the cancer at the end of his life. So I really needed to understand what happened, and why did he make this choice.

EJ: In what ways has your identity shifted since learning of your African ancestry?
BB: The revelation that my dad was black changed my sense of myself. Now it didn’t happen overnight, but what did change my sense of myself was learning about my dad’s history and meeting our relatives, which enabled me to see myself as someone who has a mixed racial ancestry. Now I don’t feel it’s right to call myself black because I wasn’t raised that way, and I feel that racial identity is the sum of your experiences and that’s not what people see when they look at me. But it is certainly a part of who I am now.

EJ: Early on in the book you express a great deal of anxiety about being descended from blacks who were slaves; how have you reconciled those feelings?
BB: Well that was what I initially thought about African American history. I thought that if I could trace myself back to a slave ancestor that it would make my own black identity more real. Now I know that black identity is not just about being descended from slaves; it is a lot richer and more beautiful than that, but of course there is that painful history too. But that goes to show how in this country African American history is tied to the legacy of slavery.

EJ: What has writing this book taught you about the issues of race and color within Black America?
BB: Well that it’s not over by a long shot. I came to realize in writing this book how the legacy of slavery has really not been dealt with in this country in the way that we need to. The legacy still persists to this day and it seems very glaring to me that it is still a big stain on our country’s history. As I’ve met more and more people who are descended from people who were really fighting the good fight, it’s just amazing how  discrimination was to force people to feel like they had to pass. For me, being black wasn’t my native country but I’ve adopted it as much as possible.

EJ: Your book attempts to give context to your father’s decision to pass. Do you now have a better understanding of who he was and why he denied his African heritage? 
BB: Well I think that he would say that he didn’t deny anything. From his vantage point, the idea of having a certain set of expectations and stereotypes imposed on you by the outside world was racist and he was rejecting that... He chose to live by his own rules; to live outside racial categories and I think he paid for that and felt guilty about that. Unlike a lot of his friends who in some ways did the same thing, my father was expected to uphold obligations simply because he was black. It was a trickier thing for him and was an obligation that wasn’t expected of his white peers who did the same thing.

What I’ve come to realize is that there is a very thin line between truth, self-preservation and self-denial, and I think he walked that line and felt that he needed to make this choice in order to live that he wanted to live and be the person that he wanted to be. He didn’t feel that he had any obligation to identify himself in any which way – his main affinity was to literature. But at the same time, you can’t live your life in a vacuum, and whether he liked it or not his family considered themselves to be black and so he decided to cut himself away from that, which I consider a shame.  
 
EJ: What would you say to someone today who might consider passing?
BB: Well it doesn’t seem to me that there is much need for that any more. I think that lines between black and white are much more blurred today. You have people like Eminem and others who are sort of culturally passing all the time and I think it’s a good thing that there is more freedom to explore other cultural characteristics. It’s a tricky thing – people are a lot more than black or white and I think that is going to happen more and more.

EJ: Do you think you father would be surprised at the welcoming reception that you’ve received?
BB: I think that he would be gratified. He wrote this essay where he stated that after all these years he was always trying to get back home, so I’ve always taken that as kind  of permission that he wanted me to do this.

EJ: What do you want people to walk away with after reading this book?
BB: I would be really gratified if people thought more about the history of these labels of black and white in this country and understand that a lot of differences that we perceive between them are artificial and were determined by social and political forces as a result of slavery and legalized segregation. At the same time I hope that the color line has had very real and difficult consequences in people’s lives; that being on the black side or the white side made a difference. So it’s a subtle point, but I hope that people can grasp that and also I hope that no matter what your background is that people think about the cultures that people’s parents or grandparent come from and how much that’s part of their identities. 

Gil Robertson IV is an A&E journalist and bestselling author. His work covering the entertainment industry has appeared in numerous publications that include the LA Times, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and Black Enterprise magazine. 

Read a review of One Drop.