I think we're posing the wrong questions about skin color, belonging, community membership. The question, to me, isn't whether Black light-skinned & mixed-race people are Black [enough]. It's natural to ask these questions...

Instead, we might ask what (and who and why) allows Black light-skinned & mixed-race people to hold sway in certain spaces (especially academia) to the violent exclusion and silencing of darker-skinned Black people, *especially* darker-skinned Black women.

Fundamentally, this about a very visceral hatred for [dark-skinned] Black women, colonial power, & white supremacy-- working in very insidious and, often, imperceptible ways, allowing departments to fill spaces w people who satisfy a need w/o being "too" Black.

We can "gatekeep" all day but I don't believe it gets to the root of a problem that continues to morph.

I think Latin American and Latinx Studies can contribute greatly to this discussion, since it is wrongly *assumed* that Blackness in Latin America is some mystifying space where everyone gets to call themselves Black. Nah.

There ARE darker-skinned Black Latin American/Latinx peoples. Just because they are not seen doesn't mean Blackness in Latin America is some amorphous, free-for-all.