Identity

Identity is the foundation of the USBA ecosystem. For Foundational Black Americans (FBAs), the descendants of the formerly enslaved in the United States, identity is not a cultural label. 

It is a lineage, shaped by a specific history, specific harms, and a distinct cultural tradition created on American soil.

USBA 2025 begins with identity because every form of restoration requires clearly defining the harmed group. 

FBAs are:

• descendants of chattel slavery in the U.S. before 1865
• a people shaped by U.S. laws, policies, and institutions
• carriers of a cultural tradition born out of survival & resistance 
• inheritors of generational lineage-specific structural harms 

Our lineage is fixed, historical, and non-transferable. 

It is not interchangeable with “Black,” “African American,” "minority," "POC," or any other pan-diasporic labels. 

For FBAs, identity has often been blurred or absorbed into broad racial categories that hide lineage-specific harms. 

Misclassification leads to:

• inaccurate research and health data
• weakened reparative justice claims
• cultural dilution
• narrative confusion
• loss of political and social clarity

Identity restores accuracy to how FBAs see themselves—and how systems must account for them. 

Within the ISDH framework, identity is understood as a root cause of structural exposure. FBA identity was shaped by the structural harms of enslavement, racial classification, displacement, and erasure. 

This includes:

• access to resources
• patterns of stress and mistrust
• community stability
• health outcomes
• opportunities across generations

Identity is not symbolic; identity determines the conditions a population is born into and must navigate. 

Foundational Black American identity was shaped inside a long arc of policies and conditions that produced unequal exposure to harm. 

These forces were not isolated moments but a continuous pattern that structured where FBAs could live, how we were classified, and what opportunities were made available across generations.

Timeline of Structural Harm

1619 — Lineage origin under slavery
1800s — Resistance, mutual aid, and early terror
1865 — Emancipation without repair
1865–1900 — Black Codes, convict leasing, and targeted violence
1900–1960s — Jim Crow restrictions on health, wealth, and mobility
1915–1970 — Great Migration and nationalized discrimination
1930s–1970s — Redlining, highway construction, and urban renewal
1970s–2000s — Mass incarceration and economic extraction
2000s–Present — Displacement, closures, environmental injustice

These patterns show how identity shaped structural exposure and produced the conditions FBAs inherited and still navigate today. 

Reparative justice requires a clearly defined harmed group. 

Identity clarity ensures:

• correct lineage identification
• proper recognition of harm
• accurate claims for repair
• protection against dilution or misdirection of resources

Without a precise identity framework, any effort toward reparative justice becomes unstable or vulnerable to redefinition. 

Identity is the anchor that makes restoration possible. 

Identity gives FBAs:

• a shared national lineage
• a stable cultural grounding
• a consistent historical frame
• clarity in how structural harms were produced
• the foundation for future restoration and governance

Identity is not the end—it is the beginning.

Identity provides the starting point for the entire USBA ecosystem. 

It provides:

• the lineage definition
• the historical grounding
• the logic for reparative justice
• the explanation of misclassification
• the connection between identity and structural conditions

Everything else in USBA grows from the identity foundation. 

For Foundational Black Americans, freedom was never granted through the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a legal shift without protection, repair, or recognition of our lineage. 

Declaring freedom is different. It is a sovereign act that names who we are, defines our lineage, and affirms our national identity on our own terms. 

The Declaration of Freedom anchors this truth and establishes the USBA ecosystem on identity defined by us and the freedom we inherit as our birthright.