Any successful black person will have to face suspicion within his or her own community about his or her loyalty to other blacks.
Category Archive: Randall Kennedy
Although skin color is undoubtedly the most salient signal of racial identity in America, other actual or imagined bodily features have also been seen as distinctive markers of Negritude. These include the shapes of heads, feet, lips, and noses as well as the texture of hair.
I was born in Columbia in 1954, the year the Supreme Court invalidated racial segregation in public schools. I visited frequently but did not live there.
The idea of the mulatto has been a gathering point for a wide variety of racial prejudices, fears, myths, and speculations.
I champion sensibly designed racial affirmative action, not because I have benefited from it personally – though I have. I support it because, on balance, it is conducive to the public good.
All white people in the United States have benefited from a white supremacy. But does that mean that a white person should be viewed badly because they turn against a white supremacist policy? Just because you’ve benefited from something shouldn’t disable you from repudiating it.
As soon as you say that there is a community called, let’s say, black Americans, you’ve immediately created a boundary line – who’s in that group, who’s outside that group.
If you are socially isolated, you are more vulnerable to stereotypes and myths; you won’t have the opportunity to have conversations with someone who has a different social background than you.
Many people believe that determining who is ‘black’ is rather easy, a task simplified by the administration of the one-drop rule. Under the one-drop rule, any discernible African ancestry stamps a person as ‘black.’
We know that we’re not supposed to be racially biased, and we don’t want to think of ourselves as racially biased, so we tell ourselves a different story.