So the question folks should ask themselves is who gains from this conversation where people are pushed out of Blackness and more broadly out of the umbrella of POC? The ability to push people out might feel like real power but it just shrinks our capacity for solidarity.

And as I said a few days ago, that goes both ways. Who gains when folks run around calling themselves half white? Do you think whiteness, as a political identity, works that way? Will you be welcome in the tent of whiteness? Or are you holding it up from the outside?

The fantasy that "light skinned Black person" and "light skinned POC" means "white" has got to go. And so does "unambiguously Black vs. ambiguously ethnic" as a way of describing Black people. The Black Atlantic community comes in a lot of shades. Deal with it.

(This thread is not an invitation to light skinned folks to whine about how you were bullied for being light. No one is being called a bully here. We are talking about a fantasy, why it exists, and why it is a political and historical mistake.)

Last comment: folks act like people just look at skin color to engage in acts of racialization and colorism but they also look at undertone, hair texture, and nose shape and size. They also pay attention to cultural performance cues, which also function as identity markers.

They also look at eye shape.

What I find interesting about nose and eye is that actually but for some melanin, a lot of East Asians and West Africans actually look quite a lot a like. Monolids are not just found in Asia.

I'd like to invite people to learn what folks' political commitments are, rather than just using their physical features as a proxy.

I get in a lot of distinctly Black ass trouble professionally because I do not perform any interest in becoming part of whiteness.

And back to the Marvelverse, my thoughts on why it's important for me as a light skinned person to see dark skinned folks on screen -- the place where we DO fantasize: https://twitter.com/IBJIYONGI/status/1012825452199608320

Anyway, people of any shade can sell us the fuck out

cough cough Clarence cough Thomas

I feel like I need to remind everyone that well-lit photos make *everyone* look paler because camera design was calibrated by and for white people