Staff reports

If you’re light, you’re right! If you’re brown, stick around! If you’re black, get back! That’s the “Color Code,” the William (Willie) Lynch Doctrine that dates to 1712, which used brainwashing, mixed-raced children, and mind control among people of African descent, and pitted lighter-skinned slaves against their darker-skinned counterparts. The color code cemented the idea that light is better than dark and caused a never-ending cycle of envy and resentment.

Truth and…
Today there isn’t a black person in America who doesn’t know the reality that skin color makes a difference.
…Consequences

It makes a difference in job opportunities, education, health care (even for the insured), lending practices, mortgage rates, dating options, social settings, and general acceptance. Even within families (of a “Heinz-57 mix”), light-skinned children are often favored over darker-skinned siblings, by teachers, community leaders, most European-Americans, and sometimes even kin.

The continued availability of skin lighteners, hair straighteners, and long-haired silky tresses is proof enough for the most honest of observers. Remember how corn-rolled braids were not acceptable — until blonde Euro-American Bo Derek wore them in the movie “10”?

Now, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) is quoted as saying that Barack Obama could become the country’s first black president because he was “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Game Change, by John Heileman and Mark Halperin, reports that Reid made the comments in 2006 while privately urging Obama to run for the presidency.

Well, Obama did run, and won. The son of a white mother and Kenyan father, he is relatively light-skinned and sounds like a graduate of Harvard Law School, not a kid from “da ’hood.” And in making history as the first African American president, he won over millions of white voters in the South, Midwest, and other regions that had rejected previous black candidates like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Was it racist for Reid to speak the truth? Or was he right to acknowledge that attributes such as skin color, appearance, and speech patterns influence people’s choices?

Politics Steps in

The political truth of what Reid said is obvious: politicians present themselves in ways they think will get them votes. Successful politicians south of the Mason-Dixon line can “drawl on cue,” however many degrees they have from Columbia, Penn. State, or even Berkeley. Lamar Alexander walked across Tennessee wearing a red plaid shirt when he decided to run for governor.

Even up in Massachusetts, Scott Brown, successful lawyer, graduate of Tufts University, and  former Cosmopolitan centerfold, drove around in a pickup truck to prove he was “just plain folks” and get elected to the Senate.
So it’s okay for Senator Alexander, a former Nixon aide, to pretend he didn’t attend law school at New York University — sometimes called “Jew York U” by anti-Semitic southerners — and it’s just fine for a former nude model to campaign as a moralistic, truck-drivin’ family man?

But here comes a black Democrat who uses his mixed-race heritage to his advantage, who speaks “Ivy League” to some audiences and “Community Organizing” to others, who brings together many strands of the diaspora that America’s racial history fashioned and makes it work for him. And a white guy comes along suggesting that the man’s attributes will be helpful in a campaign for the presidency of the United States, and suddenly it’s racist? Please, give us a break!

Uncomfortable Truths

Put the political truth aside for a moment, though. To most whites, blacks are “black” whatever their color. But what about the racial truth, where the skin color of “black” Americans ranges from pale beige to ebony? The following personal experiences illustrate how it can make a difference.

Maya C. age 25
Dark skinned, University of Florida

I hate that “The Color Code” exists in the African American community. I grew up being told that I wasn’t beautiful because I was darker skinned. I was even told by a young African American male that he didn’t like me because I was dark. I later thought it was true because girls would be just as cruel and said that darker skin wasn’t pretty.

As I’ve matured those issues began to happen in the workplace. Because I was a darker skinned woman, who also had natural hair (no chemicals that would make my hair straight), I was looked at as an outcast. I didn’t receive as much attention as the person who was of a lighter skin tone with straight hair. I had too many odds against me, which made my job harder.

Those are the things that have proved my “paper bag brown” theory. I’m not only being outcast by whites, but also in my own community. I see it more than ever in the dating scene. The question I pose to not only African Americans but to other races, is — why?

Why do we get consumed with color? Why does someone of lighter or mixed race seemed to automatically be deemed pretty in American society? I have had this debate with my friends, who are a rainbow of light, brown, and dark brown colors. We never come to a conclusion, because, sadly, mindsets haven’t changed. We can’t control other people’s actions, but we can control our own.

SiseneG M., age 25
Fair-skinned, University of Florida

“Are you mixed?” Since grade school I’ve been asked this question.

I am a light-skinned African American woman, sometimes lighter than most biracial people I know. My experiences of being light-skinned have consisted of constantly having to explain that black people come in all shades and I’m not biracial — [I have to explain it] not only to Caucasian people, but to my own.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was asked by a person I had just met if most people in my family were fair. I replied, “No” and asked why. The answer was that was a way to figure out if I was mixed.

In high school I had all AP and honors classes. I was often the only African American, or one of two or three, in class. My black peers who weren’t in those classes would sometimes say I got along well with my white peers and it was easier because I was light skinned. I don’t agree. I’m intelligent, confident, personable, and was raised that I should feel comfortable with my identity, and be comfortable around anyone, no matter what ethnicity.

In class one day we were reading an excerpt from Their Eyes Were Watching God. My teacher and classmates began to ask the only other African American student in class, who was dark-skinned, questions about our heritage and how she felt. I was disregarded. We both looked at each other like “why aren’t they asking both of us,” so I began to speak as well. After class we asked why and learned that it was because they knew she was black. I was shocked. I guess because I’m light they assumed I couldn’t possibly know what it means to be me — black.

Robert B., age 60-something
Asheville, NC

Color was a problem for many of us who were not light-skinned when I attended elementary school. Teachers didn’t pay much attention to those of us who had color. They didn’t seem to want to be bothered if our parents weren’t professionals. We noticed adults’ behavior as children, but we didn’t know how to explain or respond to the way they treated most of us. If a student was dark-skinned he or she had to be very smart in order to get positive attention or their parents had to be certified in some profession.

When I entered high school I played three sports and was good in them. When I became an athlete I received very positive response from teachers and people here in Asheville in general. African Americans in Asheville loved sports and people who excelled in them.

Zettler C.,
University of Maryland

Throughout my life, I’ve seen from the “back seat” how people react to those who were dark skinned. They were picked on more. They received less preference. In even the subtlest ways, dark-skinned people carried themselves as inferior to fairer-skinned blacks. Of course there were exceptions. I’m not light skinned, so I’m unsure about how people perceive me. I never felt threatening or inferior, and I’ve always escaped the “dark-skinned” label. I would be naive and irresponsible if I thought that my skin color didn’t grant me favor around other blacks. But how exactly? I really couldn’t explain it.

It’s obvious that lighter-skinned people are treated better and thus more likely to be successful. Images affect us on deep level. When we see images that depict dark and black as bad and white as pure and angelic, then this will undoubtedly guide our subconscious.

Many people don’t even realize how skin color affects perception on the subconscious level, which is what makes the “color code” more insidious and harder to stamp out.

Retiree, age 60-something

My family came from a small rural area, where everybody knew each other and their families, on both our mother’s and fathers’ side. I’m very light-skinned, but we were all accepting of each other. But when I started elementary school in a much larger town — a segregated, all-black school — the teacher made me sit at a table by myself and told the other children not to sit with me, that I was white and thought I was better than anybody else! This was a great shock to me, because it had been so different back at home.

In high school, when classmates asked me why I didn’t go to the white high school, I would reply, “It is against the law.” My school records said that I was black, and I knew I was black, and if you were black you could not go to a white school. I didn’t know if they were saying this to be mean to me or if they really thought I was white.

For college I chose to go back to my hometown. Integration was not widespread then, and when I got there, I was discriminated against by white people — not because I was too light-skinned but because I was black!

It’s hard to be black in a white culture, but it was also very difficult to be so light-skinned in the black community. I don’t think people realized how deeply they were hurting my feelings. That’s one reason what Dr. King said was so important to me — to be judged for the content of my character and not the color of my skin.