who gets to define someone’s blackness? singer halsey says she looks white but identifies as black

Electro-pop singer Halsey has been in the news lately after it’s become more publicly known that she’s biracial. The white passing singer recently spoke with Playboy in a candid interview about everything from suffering a miscarriage to being fetishized by white men for being biracial—two subjects she’s been vocal about in the past.

And while her complaints of white boys asking her what color her nipples are and annoying valid, my personal issue with Halsey’s privileged tears is that, according to Instagram, Halsey chooses to surround herself with thin white people and doesn’t seem to gravitate towards people with shared identities or other people of color at all (outside of her dad and The Weeknd). Which is fine(?) All of that is her choice and it doesn’t diminish her blackness. What it says to me is that the young singer has a long way to go as far as unpacking the complexities of her identity and feeling included in the black community. That can start with people acknowledging who she is as a WOC.