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
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