Questioning binaries

Hello all,
I am still attempting to gain access to post my comment on the actual blog. There are several comments on it already, so I suspect they might have closed comments at some point, perhaps due to the age of the post.

http://www.crunkfeministcollective.com/2010/08/23/huey-newton-complexes/

Thank you for your thoughts on this and for the various shared personal experience expressed throughout the comments. I will admit to also being fed up with the overdone Tragic Mulatto trope. However, what's disconcerting to me about the similar sentiment expressed here is the inherent assumptions of what it means to be dark-skinned and light-skinned. I find the tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of light-skinned women who are willing to "claim their blackness" alarming. What underscores that statement is a flippant dismissal of the fact that this particular color binary is created by those outside of it.

The act of classification itself is the tool for persecution. Focusing on the differences within a marginalized group and a continued insistence on the hierarchical stereotypes [particularly when they're destructive tropes created to classify and divide "people of color"] merely serves to instantiate the violence perpetrated by the hegemony. Though I can understand a need to acknowledge complex subjectivities within those amassed under the heading of "people of color," overemphasis on partial privilege eclipses shared marginalization I question the idea that casting those particularities in a negative light can somehow help to improve the lot of the whole.

Facilitating a nuanced discourse of blackness must certainly include an honest discussion of the stratifying privileges experienced by black women with lighter skin and the stereotypes saddling dark-skinned women. [To be clear, I agree that all the privileges listed on your checklist are realities.] Yet, that discourse should unite rather than divide. However differently it may be experienced under certain circumstances, the unbearable weight of white patriarchy is felt by all women [and people] of color.   Arguing over whether or not it is to the same degree in every arena distracts from resisting the monolithic and oppressive categories of "blackness."

The thing that every person of color has in common, and I would argue the most important thing to keep in mind if we ever hope to gain ground in fighting this mindset, is that we are all Other. Whatever superficial affordances a light-skinned person might experience, it is ultimately only that — superficial.     

* Tara-Lynne Pixley