I wish I could ask my grandfather what drove his family to stake such a full claim to their Blackness. Why did they choose to celebrate it when they could have easily hid it?

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2021-09-21 02:09Z by Steven

I wish I could ask my grandfather what drove his family to stake such a full claim to their Blackness. Why did they choose to celebrate it when they could have easily hid it? Not only did they choose to live in a Black world, my family rejected the idea that their proximity to whiteness made them better than their darker brothers and sisters. Even when they could take advantage of the privilege afforded to them by the Black community — joining elite Black organizations because their skin was indeed lighter than a paper bag — they didn’t. This kind of self-determination set the foundation for radical self-determination seen during the Civil Rights and Black power movements, decades before it was fashionable or even accepted.

Elizabeth Wellington, “Choosing Blackness,” The The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 15, 2021. https://www.inquirer.com/life/inq2/black-identity-america-wildest-dreams-20210915.html.

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Choosing Blackness

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Biography, Family/Parenting, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States on 2021-09-20 15:18Z by Steven

Choosing Blackness

The Philadelphia Inquirer
2021-09-15

Elizabeth Wellington, Staff Columnist


Columnist Elizabeth Wellington poses for a photograph with her mother Margaret outside of the family home in New York. MONICA HERNDON / Staff Photographer

Black identity is usually wrapped up in not having choice. My family used their light-skinned privilege to flip that choice and turned Blackness into a celebration of pride and identity and love.

I thought my mother was a white woman until I was about five years old.

So I will never forget the day she told me she was Black. The conversation started simple enough: I described someone on television as white, like she was.

If um, hell to the no was a person, she would have been Margaret Wellington in that moment.

My mother is so fair that whether she styled her hair in a Pam Grier-esque, mega Afro or a blonde-streaked press and curl, she was sometimes mistaken for a white woman. I’m sure she wasn’t surprised by my question given my milk chocolate hue. But she wasn’t angry. She settled into her rocking chair and motioned for me to sit next to her. We were wearing matching green cardigans. I may have been darker, but to her, I was still her toddler-sized replica. She took my chubby little hand into her slender one, and looking me in the eye said, “Beth, I’m Black.”

Clearly I looked confused. Because she said it again. This time with more soul. “I AM BLACK. I do not have the same pretty brown skin that you have. But I AM BLACK. And I am YOUR MOTHER.”

My 5-year-old self was relieved….

Read the entire article here.

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