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Maybe she is black in some way.
My first speculation is similar to yours.
My own heritage is uncertain. In nineteenth century wild west U.S.A. if you burned your bridges and identity behind you, you could move on to another place and create a new identity.
One of my grandfather's father was not his father, a family secret passed down to the next matriarch. His biological father was a prominent Mormon. His father, on official documents, and still in the Mormon databases, was an immigrant from Denmark.
Our strongly matriarchal family's religion on both sides was not-Mormon, and It still is. One of my biological ancestors was a mail-order bride from Scandinavia to Salt Lake City but she didn't like sharing a husband so she ran away with a U.S. Government surveyor. I don't think the Mormons have ever forgiven us for that. Their young nicely dressed elders riding bicycles never knock on our doors. They know where we live. If we wanted to be Mormon we'd have to pay up with interest for the runaway bride. They know we won't, and maybe they are a little afraid of a few true stories.
My mom's family are pacifists because, like myself, they have to be. The berserker genes are strong in us.
One of my great grandfathers, the one of my surname, is a mystery. Some of the family sticks faithfully to his fabricated genealogy, and have even "returned" to the Protestant religion he claimed when they resettled in places with churches. He stayed far away from any places with churches. But it's pretty clear to me this guy's Catholic family had escaped to America just ahead of starvation and/or the English hangman. The Irish were not getting the good jobs, so magically, maybe his dad, become a Protestant mining engineer with a Scots accent, and he got away with it because he could do the math. Maybe he found a trigonometry book and it resonated with him.
Like a self-educated Jewish heritage Abraham Lincoln and the law.
When my crazy grandma passed away she'd left some very specific instructions. The funeral director asked, "She's Jewish?" Not so far as my mom had ever heard. But my grandma was buried quickly in a plain wooden box with a Star of David on it, and I couldn't drop everything and fly out in time to be there when they buried her.
My wife has documented Catholic Scots and Irish ancestors who left the British Isles when things got too hot for them there, and then later left the U.S.A. for Canada and Mexico when things got too hot for them here, as did her Native U.S. American ancestors. They later returned as "immigrants," some of them having served in World War II, fighting in Europe. My wife has an uncle buried at Arlington, killed in action in the last days of the war, and another close relative who flew for the Royal Air Force via Canada.
I've always marveled at the fluidity of names in my family. It's perfectly okay for anyone of any age to go by any name they choose. Three year olds can declare new names, and change them when they are four. I just go by Hunter here and in most public places. It's one of the names my parents gave me and I'm okay with that.
I have two siblings with Hollywood screen credits. As a weird autistic kid I flunked out of grandma's dreams for us. My siblings don't go by those names now in their post Hollywood "real life." Nor do they go by their childhood names.
I can't condemn anyone for being the person they want to be, even if they are a little crazy.
