doll k said:

“for the most part i found the book informative. the author details how she personally dealt with the issue of colorism as a "dark-skinned" black person and how it made her more color conscious. i appreciated the way the author highlighted real issues that light-skinned blacks faced and refrained from reinforcing the tragic mulatto myth. although this book was some what enlightening, the author didn't offer anything new to the colorism conversation. she, like most scholars who write about colorism, wrote within the binary of light-skinned/dark skinned. at times she over-stated problems that dark-skinned people face and failed to included stories of brown-skinned people who fall in the middle (those who are too dark to be light yet too light to be considered dark).

when the author discussed her attempt to inculcate some racial pride in her son, she seemed to load her burdens upon his back. this left me believing the fact that he dated dark-skinned women had more to do with his mother's issues than racial pride.

in the end, the one powerful though that i took from this book was the author's assertion that colorism can end up distributing everything from power to wealth to love.”

posted Wednesday, May 7 2008