If You Know, You Know

Initiated as Kamala Harris’s biracial identity reignited national discourse, the series If You Know, You Know explores the intersection of identity, race, and ethnicity through a personal and historical lens.

For decades, the U.S. census failed to capture the complexity of multiracial identities. In 1970, an ethnicity checkbox was introduced but was worded as “Hispanic (not White),” forcing those who are both White and Hispanic to choose only one identity. Only in 2000 could individuals select more than one race, though ethnicity remained separate. By 2024, "Some Other Race" had become the second-largest category, exposing the limitations of existing classifications. This year new federal standards introduced a combined race/ethnicity question with seven categories and allowed multiple selections. I can check both White and Hispanic, reflecting my full identity for the first time.

This series channels my frustration with inadequate representation and my anger over Donald Trump’s 2024 attack on Harris’s racial identity at the National Association of Black Journalists convention on July 31, 2024:

“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don't know, is she Indian or is she Black?"

These works explore the intersection of individual and collective identity and how we define ourselves in systems that fail to reflect us.

The title, If You Know, You Know, is inspired by Danzy Senna’s New York Times essay, In Kamala Harris’s Blackness, I See My Own.