The Complex Reality of Black Americans' Racial Identity

Learning one's true ethnogenesis can be shocking and force a re-evaluation of one's place in the world.

Feb. 24, 2026 at 12:07am

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The complicated reality of identifying as Black or African American is that the backstories are messy and force us to rethink who we thought we were. Racial identity is complex, and for Black Americans, it is compounded by the fact that 'Black' is a term assigned to the enslaved. Learning and grappling with one's true ethnogenesis can open up a can of worms that is shocking and forces a re-evaluation of one's place in the world.

Why it matters

The government's identification of Black or African Americans is one thing, but understanding one's true ethnic origins can be eye-opening and lead to a reckoning with a complicated history that is often at odds with one's understanding of their identity.

The details

When Africans arrived on America's shores in the 1600s as property, they brought tribal identities reflected in their art, music, languages, and other identifiers. 'Black' is an evolution of 'Negro,' which means black in Spanish and Portuguese. Before birth certificates, plantation owners kept records of births and deaths among their property, using terms like 'Negro,' 'mullatto,' 'creole,' and even 'quadroon' and 'octaroon' to 'other' freed people of color out of mainstream society. Post-civil rights era birth certificates designated children born in the 1970s as Black and later African American, as that term was popularized by academics in the 1990s.

  • Africans arrived on America's shores in the 1600s as property.
  • Birth certificates in the post-civil rights era designated children born in the 1970s as Black and later African American.

The players

Nicka Sewell-Smith

A genealogist and story curator at Ancestry.com who has done extensive research tracing her family tree from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade to Louisiana and the Cherokee Nation.

Mik Barnes

A researcher at LSU Shreveport who was chronicling the region's civil rights history when he made shocking discoveries about his own family tree, including ancestors who fought for both the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War.

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What they’re saying

“It was one of the most eye-opening, sometimes, just hard to reckon with the connection, with my family.”

— Nicka Sewell-Smith, genealogist and story curator

“Learning the uncomfortable truth that I share blood with individuals who actively fought to preserve white supremacist power structures was extraordinarily disheartening and genuinely sickening.”

— Mik Barnes, researcher

The takeaway

The complex reality of Black Americans' racial identity forces a reckoning with a messy history that is often at odds with one's understanding of their identity, highlighting the need to grapple with the nuances of one's true ethnogenesis and the role of systemic racism in shaping that identity.