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Article: IS SKIN COLOR Still An Issue In BLACK AMERICA?
- Article from:
- Ebony
- Article date:
- April 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Johnson Publishing Co. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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HAVE you dug the spill of Sugar Hill?" That's what Langston Hughes asked as he celebrated the varied shades of African-American beauty from "glow of the quince" to "Blackberry cordial" in his poem Harlem Sweeties.
Even before his poem, legendary songwriter Eubie Blake wrote an ode to brown-skinned women with the line, "If you haven't been vamped by a brownskin, you haven't been vamped at all."
Even earlier, the slave poets sang, "the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice."
But unfortunately the childhood poem that resonated in the 20th century for many African-Americans was not of praise, but of venom. "If you're White, you're all right. If ...