This season, I did something audacious. I applied to three PhD programs in Anthropology with zero formal experience in the field. I have taken notes from the boldness of those who rarely question whether they belong. Audacity, it seems, opens doors. Two rejections arrived. I am still waiting on the third. I planned to share this after a final answer, but growth does not wait for permission.
In 2016, a single realization sparked a platform. Vanilla, so often associated with whiteness, is dark in origin and cultivation, advanced by an enslaved Black boy, Edmond Albius. That truth became both metaphor and mandate. Black Like Vanilla was born as a digital archive confronting the whitewashing and erasure of Black history through research and documentation.
For much of my life, my ancestors were introduced to me only as slaves. That language felt confining. I carried the weight of dispossession and the quiet shame of not knowing where my people began. Yet the melanin in my skin is undeniable proof of connection to the African Diaspora. Over time, my understanding shifted. I am not descended from slaves. I am the descendant of survivors. Their resilience is evidenced by my existence.
That yearning led me to attend a historically Black college and university, Howard University, where I studied Marketing alongside peers who reflected me and my ancestors. Later, I pursued public administration to better understand how policy shapes Black life at every level. Curiosity has always been my compass. As a child I imagined becoming a physician, drawn less to medicine and more to hypothesis and proof. That discipline followed me into a career spanning more than 20 years in nonprofit, consulting, and public service.
On paper, Anthropology may seem like a leap. But my work has always been about inquiry and truth. Black Like Vanilla began as an attempt to decolonize our minds and document the lived reality of Black people. What I lacked in credentials, I built through self taught ethnographic practice, archival research, and cultural analysis. I have discipline, vision, and an unrelenting need to peel back accepted truths. Every pivot, every question, every rejection has clarified the assignment.
Regardless of the outcome of my PhD ambitions, my goal is to formalize this work and establish a research institute dedicated to the ethnographic makeup of Black Americans and our intersections within the African Diaspora. We deserve rigorous data that informs equitable housing, education, health, and economic policy. We deserve scholarship that sees us fully. But first we must answer the hard question, who is us?
What I am sharing is not a bible. It is a foundation, a framework for the arduous task of understanding who we are and why. This is generational work that will require revision and reassessment in perpetuity. What it will not lack is a commitment to self identification, something rarely afforded within the Black American experience.
This is a living document and will be cited and published at a later date.
This is not the end of my PhD journey. It is the beginning.
So without further ado, I present to you:
Defining Black American Identity in the 21st Century – A PhD Proposal
By Bianca Swan aka
“Ta-Neshi P. Henson”
The Gatekeeper – Editor-in-Chief
Defining Black American Identity in the 21st Century: A Proposal
My central research question asks: What are the contributing factors that determine Black American identity in the 21st century? Far too often, “Black” in the American context has been used as a catch-all term, flattening a deeply specific, historically rooted identity into something broad, undefined, and therefore vulnerable to appropriation and erasure. This study will apply rigorous academic principles to properly classify and study those who identify as Black Americans. To do this, a baseline criteria must be established for what that identity entails.
The National Institutes of Health currently defines “African American” as a person with origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa, while “Black” is recognized as a broader, diasporic category. On the surface, this seems inclusive. But consider the complications: does a child born in the United States to a Senegalese parent and an American automatically qualify as “African American”? How do Black Americans whose families descend from chattel slavery in the United States fit under that same label? These broad categories erase the specific experiences of Black Americans who trace their lineage back to slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the ongoing legacies of systemic racism in this country.
Before 1965, identity in America was not a matter of personal choice or cultural affiliation. Instead, it was imposed through law, census classifications, and social perception. In 2025, amid debates around reparations, immigration, and the place of Black Americans within the broader African diaspora, the stakes of defining this identity remain just as high. Without a rigorous, data-driven framework, the risk is that “Black American” will continue to be diluted into a vague umbrella category that fails to reflect the particularities of history, culture, and lived experience.
Historical Context
From the 1600s through the mid-20th century, racial identity in the U.S. was heavily defined by the One-Drop Rule. This legal and social construct declared that anyone with even a trace of African ancestry was considered Black. It originated in colonial Virginia and became codified in state racial statutes and Jim Crow laws, determining everything from who one could marry to where one could live and what schools one’s children could attend. While explicitly oppressive, the rule at least acknowledged Blackness as a specific, bounded category; one enforced through subjugation and exclusion.
Today, the meaning of the One-Drop Rule has shifted. What was once a legal mechanism of exclusion has, in some ways, become a gateway into Blackness. Individuals with limited African ancestry, or even those who have simply grown up in close proximity to Black communities, sometimes claim Black identity to justify their participation in Black culture. While some of these claims may be grounded in genuine lived experience, others veer into appropriation, diluting the meaning of Black American identity and, at times, erasing the voices of those who carry its generational weight.
Terminology and Identity Labels Among Black Americans
The terminology used to describe Black Americans has evolved significantly across centuries, shaped by legal classifications, political movements, migration patterns, and self-determination efforts. This non-comprehensive list provides a structured overview of identity labels historically and contemporarily associated with Black Americans, including broad racial identifiers, lineage-based distinctions, diasporic frameworks, nationalist formulations, and historically outdated terminology. The purpose is documentation and analysis rather than endorsement of any specific term.
Identity terminology within Black American communities operates across multiple, often overlapping dimensions rather than within a single fixed category. These identifiers may function as racial classifications (e.g., Black, historically Negro), ethnic lineage designations that distinguish ancestral ties and political claims (e.g., African American, African Descendants of Slavery (ADOS), Foundational Black American (FBA)), expressions of diasporic consciousness that situate identity within a global African framework (e.g., Pan-African, Africana), or affiliations tied to nationalist and sovereignty movements (e.g., New Afrikan, Moorish American). Identity can also be articulated through religious-ethnic formulations and/or shaped by governmental and bureaucratic classifications that standardize categories for administrative purposes. Black American identity terminology is rooted in historical, political, cultural, and institutional nuance rather than a singular definition.
Research Objectives
This study will collect, measure, and analyze data across three core domains:
- Ethnic and cultural identity markers – including traditions, language use, regional cultural expressions, and community practices.
- Biological identity and constructions of race – examining how ancestry, phenotype, and genetic discourse shape identity claims.
- Generational and regional variations – looking at differences in self-identification between the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z, as well as across regions such as the South, Midwest, Great Migration cities, and historically free Black communities.
The overarching goal is to identify patterns that reveal how Black Americans define and negotiate identity today, and to build a data-driven framework that can serve as both a scholarly contribution and a cultural resource.
Research Population and Access
As a graduate of a Historically Black College and University (HBCU), I have cultivated a robust national network of Black Americans. My alumni network, combined with the networks of friends and colleagues from other HBCUs, provides access to the very populations central to this study. This is not only an academic advantage but a methodological strength, as trust and access within Black communities are often barriers for researchers.
In addition, my work through Black Like Vanilla, a digital platform and social media archive dedicated to documenting Black history (with particular emphasis on the Black American story), has further expanded my connections. This work has illuminated what I believe to be a critical void: the absence of a clear, data-driven understanding of who Black Americans are in the 21st century, what that entails, and how such an identity is defined across different contexts. Black Like Vanilla has granted me access to communities, stories, and archives that will help provide both context and direction for this research.
The study population will include:
- Individuals who self-identify as Black American, whether biologically, culturally, or geographically.
- Individuals who can trace ancestry to descendants of chattel slavery in the United States.
- Bi-racial or bi-ethnic individuals with Black American ancestry.
- Black American expatriates living abroad.
Sample research sites will include historically significant states and cities such as Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Detroit, St. Louis, and Cincinnati—locations central to the Great Migration and free Black history.
Data and Analytical Approach
This study will employ a multi-layered approach to data collection and analysis. Core areas of research include:
- Race and ethnicity – as lived categories and as imposed classifications.
- Psychocultural models – exploring how individual psychology interacts with cultural norms in shaping identity.
- Cultural systems models – assessing how communities sustain, reproduce, and transmit cultural practices.
- Intergroup dynamics – analyzing how identity is negotiated in relation to other groups, both within and outside of the African diaspora.
- Cross-cultural competence – examining awareness, sensitivity, and adaptability across cultural contexts.
The analysis will also evaluate race from both historical and ideological perspectives, interrogating how political, social, and economic structures intersect with identity. Specific factors include language, communication patterns, religious affiliation, values, environment, and educational access. Broader considerations such as cultural attributions, stereotypes, ethnocentrism, class stratification, assimilation, multicultural overlaps, and cultural proximity will also be integrated.
Intellectual Foundations
Drawing inspiration from pioneering Black anthropologists and scholars such as Zora Neale Hurston, Carter G. Woodson, and W.E.B. Du Bois, this study positions itself within a long tradition of intellectual work dedicated to understanding the complexities of Black life. Hurston’s ethnographic methods, Woodson’s commitment to historical preservation, and Du Bois’s sociological analyses all provide frameworks for approaching the question of Black American identity with rigor and respect.
This study, however, seeks to bring these traditions into the 21st century by pairing historical and cultural inquiry with data-driven methodology. In doing so, it will fill a gap between narrative accounts of Black American identity and statistical frameworks that often reduce it to broad census categories.
Broader Impacts
The significance of this project extends beyond academia. By clarifying and codifying what it means to be Black American, without reducing that identity to stereotypes or imposed labels, this research can:
- Provide Black Americans with a deeper, more coherent sense of cultural pride and historical rootedness.
- Inform public policy, especially as it relates to reparations, immigration, and racial classification.
- Situate Black American perspectives within broader diasporic dialogues, comparing identity construction across the Caribbean, Central and South America, Europe, and Africa.
- Offer a replicable framework for other ethnic groups whose identities have been historically defined by external forces rather than internal consensus.
Conclusion
Ultimately, this study is about specificity. Terms like “Black” and “African American” may serve bureaucratic or political functions, but they do little to capture the lived realities of Black Americans whose identities are rooted in centuries of enslavement, resilience, migration, struggle, and cultural innovation. By establishing an objective, data-driven framework, this project will ensure that Black American identity is not left to vague generalizations or external misinterpretations.
In a moment where cultural appropriation, political debate, and demographic change are reshaping the terrain of race in America, the need for this clarity could not be greater. The framework developed through this research will not only illuminate what it means to be Black American in the 21st century but also preserve that meaning for generations to come.
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