On Needing Black Studies

As I was preparing comments for this roundtable toward the end of 2018, I felt a bit like an interloper because I realized I had never-at least in my formal undergraduate and graduate training-taken a proper Black Studies class. Perhaps as a result, I approach Black Studies a bit sideways. Indeed, being relentlessly "thrown against a white background" can certainly make one feel one's color, and can install a sort of feeling of permanent interloper status, a sense of not really fitting anywhere, disciplinarily or otherwise. 1 I have more like what Katherine McKittrick has referred to as a "clandestine degree in Black Studies," which has involved a lot of self-study (both by myself and of myself). 2 As an undergraduate, I was an Anthropology major, with a minor in Spanish and Portuguese, and the bulk of my coursework was actually comprised of Latin American Studies classes. And while I took various courses on "race" in both undergrad and graduate school, where my research focus shifted from Latin America to the United States, none of these courses were about Blackness specifically-they had titles like "The Anthropology of Race," "Mixed Race in the New Millennium," "Interracial America," and "Theories of Race and Ethnicity." Though