Although hypodecent laws and labels such as octroon, quadroon, and mulatto are a thing of the past, their terrific legacy remains in the form of solid and bold racial lines surrounding what is black –and better yet what isn’t—within the black community.

This splintering of blackness only intensifies the marginal space and the associated periphery feelings of being racially mixed. Save the lightest mixed individuals that racially pass as white, attitudes, glares, and several other forms of microaggressions convey a strong message to the mixed race that they are not included within the white or black society.

What remains within the Black community is that the authentic Black experience has been guarded and only claimable by those who are believed to have lived and felt the full brunt of racialization in the United States with no exception by ever having been perceived as anything other than black. Authenticity then becomes more about shared-oppressed experiences and less about how one is perceived from the outside community, given that race is socially constructed, and it is the gaze of the other that dictates our social identities. The marginal space that mixed individuals operate—not because they are unable to intellectually comprehend the race into which they wish to be accepted, rather, hey are marginal because they are emotionally inept to comprehensively identify with singly with either of the two races— is expanded due to authenticity being an either/or decision.

Black-ish is not the first of its kind. Sitcoms such as The Fresh Price of Bel Air and The Cosby Show have spurred conversation of authenticity within the Black community. However, the questioning of black authenticity that Will Smith and Bill Cosby characters raise has more to do with their affluent economic situation, which has been seen to be unlike that of the average middleclass Black. The questions of race that The Cosbys raised were more outside looking in, opposed to inside looking out. Race was secondary and a colorblind approach was taken to feature the humanity of Black people—that we were just like them.

The new show Black-ish overtly uses stereotypes of black authenticity to weave an iron curtain around Blackness, albeit in a comical way. Black-ish places blackness on a spectrum that not only separates whites from blacks, but more so fractures the macro-group of those perceived by society as black.

If the Cosbys were one end of the colorblind pendulum, it would seem that the obvious race talk in blackish would act as a counternarative. As a mixed individual, I am placed in a precarious position: having not seen many mixed actors play the roles that highlight mixed races, I want to like the show, I need to like the show so that it continues and I see more of me on television. On the other hand, watching the mixed character having to justify her blackness which plays into the old faithful story of the tragic mulatto leaves me wishing to not have seen this role. Truth is, not any representation is good representation.