Are Light-Skinned People the White People of the Black Community?

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

As my readers know, we are color indifferent within my family. No one cared. And the same applied when I was growing up in my family back in Chester, Virginia. I don’t understand people who are so color-struck in the modern age, particularly young women and men.

I came across a different world in this Tik Tok and You Tube video. (I apologize for the profanity as I do not curse.) This featured dark-skinned woman believes light-skinned people are the white people of the black community. These skin color obsessions are so alien to my lived Black American family. If there are over 40 million black Americans, there are over 40 million stories, experiences and perspectives.

I am going to troll this young black woman this evening. How can I resist? I am going to attach images of black Americans who were far more black and proud in self-identity than the woman in this Tik Tok.

Walter White

Walter White was the first black head of the NAACP. He used to go undercover as a white man and investigate lynchings in the Deep South. He risked his life in every investigation as a black man. His skin tone did not make him “white people of the black community.” White understood himself as a Negro. You and I lack standing to question his self-identity. Race is beginning to bore me.

Mordecai Johnson

No man did more to advance Black America before 1954 than Mordecai Johnson, the first black president of Howard University. Was he light-skinned? Absolutely! Was his self-identity as a Black American at level ten? You bet. He was the top black pastor and preacher in the early 1900s before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Did his light skin render Howard University President Johnson part of the white people of the black community? How offensive. President Johnson was more rooted in black American identity than the Tik Tok dark-skinned young woman will ever be.

Norris Wright Cuney

Cuney was the black leader in Texas in Reconstruction. He could have pretended he was not black. He could have chosen an easy life as a white man down South. But that was not his self-identity. Cuney risked his life and survived a race riot as he lived in his blackness. I would suggest Cuney was more black than the young woman on Tok Tok. Why? Cuney had to live true to himself despite his physical appearance. Cuney was not white people of the black community. He was a black man invested in black leadership for black Texas.

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

The Congressman from Harlem, Congressman Powell was known as Mr. Civil Rights. Powell knew he was a black man despite his skin tone identity. It is laughable anyone would suggest Congressman Power was part of the white people of the black community. The young dark-skinned woman should love herself as much as Congressman Powell loved himself. Congressman Powell was comfortable in his skin as a black man and part of the black community.

P.B.S. Pinchback

Despite his sister pleading that he identify as the white man that he was after the Civil War, P.B.S. Pinchback looked in the mirror and saw a black man. He refused to lie and deceive others. He cast his destiny with his people, the people of his manumitted mother. Pinchback became the first black Acting Governor of a state on December 9, 1872. He left his mark in American history as a black man. Why would the young woman in Tik Tok police the identity of light-skinned black people as white people of the black community? Why is this young woman obsessed with skin color of others who are black Americans? I don’t know the answer.

Conclusion: None of these men above had a victim mentality. They chose to be black despite all circumstances. They did not pretend to be white. They identified in public as they self-identified in private. For the life of me, I do not understand the skin color rage thing. Just lighten up (no pun intended) and try color indifference for a change. I give thanks that my parents in my home did not transmit this color virus and that we did not plant this color virus in the consciousness of our children.

No one has the moral right to excommunicate light-skinned black people from the black community with the slur “white people of the black community.” Light-Skinned Woman from San Diego Discriminated Against By Black People in Boise, Idaho This cave man discrimination makes me angry!

Be bigger people, black people.

Good Evening!