So. Black Clark Kent.
Being descendants of slavery is a big part of the Black American experience. It's embedded in our DNA, as Black Americans, in our genetics, that trauma. It reflects how we move through life and how we think and while a lot of it is cultural, some of that trauma passed down is genetic.
Clark was raised as a Black boy, a Black American boy. With the Kents having farmland in the North (something notable for a Black family, but not unheard of), I think they'd know exactly where their people migrated from (in the South), and they'd be able to vaguely trace back their enslaved ancestors at least to some degree.
Clark grows up with this familiarity, with these stories, with this knowledge, with this culture, but, as an alien, it's not something he can always specifically connect to. They are his parents' stories, but not exactly his. Still, he finds so much community with Black Americans, and also much with Black immigrants.
His connection to Blackness is different than his connection to ancestry, and it's varied and complicated and complex, but he has such a love for all the ways Blackness appears in the world and he's so grateful to have that be a part of his identity.
So much of Blackness is rooted in ancestry and our ancestors, and Clark may not share the Kents' heritage in his blood, but they are his family, and he is theirs. And, still, there is similarity in him not being able to know his own biological ancestors with Black Americans not being able to know their ancestors from Africa.
Clark has a habit of alienating himself throughout his life. And when he doesn't do that, others do that for him. Alien. Superman. Not Human.
But his Blackness, by default, is something he cannot avoid, something he cannot deny himself, something others cannot deny him either. It is a home he belongs to the moment he lands on Earth, through the color of his skin, and the features on his face, and the curls on his head. He is undeniably Black, no matter his biology, it's how he moves through this world.
He doesn't know his ancestors in the same ways other Black people do, but when he thinks about Krypton, when he thinks about him being one of the only Kryptonians who survived after Krypton was destroyed -- well, perhaps he still is his ancestors' wildest dreams.
