the feminist librarian reads

No matter who becomes white, those defined as black remain at the bottom of America’s racial caste system, even as a select few acquire wealth and power. If you look black, you are black in America, regardless of ethnic background or how you identify; defining himself as biracial did not prevent Tony Robinson from joining the long list of unarmed young black men gunned down by police. But crucially, even those people of African descent who, like Plessy, are racially ambiguous, retain black identity as people whose lives have been shaped by being the targets of white supremacy. Even if a stranger would not identify you as a black person walking down the street, those of us whose families fled racial apartheid, were redlined into ghettos, brutalized by police, and denied admission to colleges and live lives unimaginable without America’s long history of racism. A crucial part of blackness is inheritance of the sacrifices and struggles that were borne so you could be. To paraphrase Alton Scales, a light-skinned black character in Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, as long as the world has a problem with black people, we will make a point out of being black.