No one would think she was black from looking at her. She’s light skinned. And she can belong to whatever culture, ethnicity, etc she likes, but black to me is a statement about skin tone. And while it can be stretched to mean lighter brown coloured individuals in some cases (I would even dispute that), it certainly doesn’t mean light skinned.
She can talk about issues affecting dark skinned people without feeling obligated to call herself black to do so. In fact, if she does feel obliged to do so, that implies that just because you’re light skinned, you can’t care about dark skinned people and see that racism towards them is wrong. Which is, itself, racism.
If a light skinned person can call themselves black, black loses meaning and we have to create a new word to mean what black used to mean, such as ‘dark skinned’, which I’m sure you’ll also start to use to mean light skinned people that have some relationship to dark skinned people, if I give you time.
Skin color shouldn’t matter. She shouldn’t feel like she had to specify of identify with a skin color, white or black, because it shouldn’t affect anything. Separating us into groups based on physical characteristics in non-medical contexts, or when not specifically talking about discrimination because of that physical characteristic, only serves to divide us and pit us against each other. And we need words to describe those physical characteristics that won’t be used to describe culture rather than actual appearance or genetics.
Using black to mean anyone with any relationship to dark skinned people is misleading, but I’ll put up with it, as language evolves, if you promise to not change the meaning of ‘dark skinned’ too.
This discussion remind me a little of the gender/sex topic. While I don’t see how you can be trans-race in the same way as transgender, if we keep dark and light skinned meaning actual skin color, in much the same way we use biologically male and female, at least we’ll have ways to describe people that actually describe their appearance/genetics.
No one would think she was black from looking at her. She’s light skinned. And she can belong to whatever culture, ethnicity, etc she likes, but black to me is a statement about skin tone. And while it can be stretched to mean lighter brown coloured individuals in some cases (I would even dispute that), it certainly doesn’t mean light skinned.
She can talk about issues affecting dark skinned people without feeling obligated to call herself black to do so. In fact, if she does feel obliged to do so, that implies that just because you’re light skinned, you can’t care about dark skinned people and see that racism towards them is wrong. Which is, itself, racism.
If a light skinned person can call themselves black, black loses meaning and we have to create a new word to mean what black used to mean, such as ‘dark skinned’, which I’m sure you’ll also start to use to mean light skinned people that have some relationship to dark skinned people, if I give you time.
Skin color shouldn’t matter. She shouldn’t feel like she had to specify of identify with a skin color, white or black, because it shouldn’t affect anything. Separating us into groups based on physical characteristics in non-medical contexts, or when not specifically talking about discrimination because of that physical characteristic, only serves to divide us and pit us against each other. And we need words to describe those physical characteristics that won’t be used to describe culture rather than actual appearance or genetics.
Using black to mean anyone with any relationship to dark skinned people is misleading, but I’ll put up with it, as language evolves, if you promise to not change the meaning of ‘dark skinned’ too.
This discussion remind me a little of the gender/sex topic. While I don’t see how you can be trans-race in the same way as transgender, if we keep dark and light skinned meaning actual skin color, in much the same way we use biologically male and female, at least we’ll have ways to describe people that actually describe their appearance/genetics.
sorry can you give me a little about why your opinion should matter here at all