{"id":43407,"date":"2015-10-22T15:58:32","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T15:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=43407"},"modified":"2019-01-27T18:43:03","modified_gmt":"2019-01-27T18:43:03","slug":"hold-fast-to-blackness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=43407","title":{"rendered":"Hold Fast to Blackness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hold Fast to Blackness<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Medium<\/a>
\n2015-07-29<\/p>\n

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy; Core Faculty Member in Women\u2019s Studies
\nUniversity of New Hampshire<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nHet Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, Nederland<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n

This is not another essay about how hard it is to be light skinned in a dark man\u2019s world. Why? Because the suggestion that this is a dark man\u2019s world is ridiculous. Unless you\u2019ve had your head up your butt, we quite clearly do not live in a version of the universe where overall it is better to be dark. The reality is that 2Pac<\/a> was speaking in opposition to mainstream logic when he rapped, \u201cthe darker the berry, the sweeter the juice. I say the darker the flesh, the deeper the roots.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure there are many light skinned people including those with bi- and multiracial\/ethnic families who would complain that 2Pac spoke words of erasure. But to make this complaint is to not acknowledge, plainly, that in fact he is speaking against erasure. To be light skinned, in reality, is to have a choice about what role we play in this process, for or against, constructive or destructive.<\/p>\n

I have a Black Caribbean momma and a white Jewish father. My mom\u2019s family hails from Barbados<\/a>, vaguely of \u201cWest African Origin.\u201d We don\u2019t really know where or if maybe we come from somewhere else because identity and language are one of the many things European slave traders and slave owners stole from kidnapped Africans and their descendents. My dad\u2019s family was chased out of the Ukraine<\/a> and Russia<\/a> by anti-Jewish pogroms<\/a> and were Yiddish<\/a> speaking until it became clear that looking like them and being English speaking was better.<\/p>\n

When I was born, my parents were scared to introduce me to my dad\u2019s maternal grandfather. It wasn\u2019t clear whether he would accept a \u201cnigger baby.\u201d This is the first story I know of that clearly delineates the difference between my white father and me. My white father lives in the tent of whiteness: he is accepted as white and is treated as such on the street, in airports, by the police, by shop clerks, by everyone who speaks to and everyone who sees him. My dad lives in a version of the world where who he is is the default and where no one ever had to ask whether he would be excluded by members of his family simply because of his skin color.<\/p>\n

It is true that my father has a different experience with the tent of whiteness than his father did in his early years. Born in 1917 in Yiddish-speaking Brooklyn<\/a>, my Grandpa Norman would have been a dirty Jew to many white non-Jews. But when he died in 1988 Los Angeles<\/a>, my Grandpa was white with the rest of them. The tent of whiteness expands as people sufficiently European-looking become broadly accepted as, \u201cnot-Black, not heading toward Black or any of the other darker kinds.\u201d This expansion is predicated somewhat on the fundamental belief that the darker people are, the more dangerous, deficient and less human they are.<\/p>\n

I am dark enough to not live within the tent of whiteness, but I am light enough that many people experience significant confusion when trying to class what level of \u201cnot-white, maybe heading toward-Black, deficient\u201d I am. Depending on the year and location, I am a \u201cdirty Arab\/Muslim,\u201d a fellow Latina, a Mulatto<\/a>, a Mizrahi Jew<\/a>, a half-white person who suspiciously may not be down with Black folks…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is not another essay about how hard it is to be light skinned in a dark man\u2019s world. Why? Because the suggestion that this is a dark man\u2019s world is ridiculous. Unless you\u2019ve had your head up your butt, we quite clearly do not live in a version of the universe where overall it is better to be dark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,3601,8,820,20],"tags":[21524,18537],"class_list":["post-43407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-judaism","category-media-archive","category-religion","category-usa","tag-chanda-prescod-weinstein","tag-medium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43407"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57393,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43407\/revisions\/57393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}