[Given the history of the KKK, in America, I am not surprised. Since this
is a current event why is it being posted on a Virginia history list?]
You must have missed this earlier posting.
It is very relevant to Virginia history. See, Howard Bodenhorn - The
Mulatto Advantage: The Biological Consequences of Complexion in Rural Antebellum
Virginia - Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33:1 Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 33.1 (2002) 21-46 The Mulatto Advantage: The Biological
Consequences of Complexion in Rural Antebellum Virginia Howard Bodenhorn
For, as the whites have their blond and brunette, so do the blacks have
their chocolate, chocolate-to-the-bone, brown, low-brown, teasing-brown, yellow,
high-yellow and so on. The difference on the black side is so much more
interesting. --Claude McKay, quoted in Joel Williamson, New People: Miscegenation
and Mutattoes in the United States.
Langston Hughes, the most prominent writer of the Harlem Renaissance
emphasized skin color throughout his fiction. At different times, he referred to
African-Americans as brown, light-brown, golden, yellow, high-yellow, almost
white, blond, three-quarters pink, high-toned, coffee with cream, and
cafe-au-lait. In Hughes' fiction, complexion was paramount because it created
interpersonal tensions, reflecting larger social dynamics. African-American men in
Hughes' fiction expressed a preference for light-skinned women, and dark-skinned
women resented both the men who acted on that preference and the women who
benefited from it. Historians of race are quick to note that these tensions
were not just the stuff of fiction.
Basil Forest
In a message dated 11/7/2008 2:34:47 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
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