'I am not White': for many light-skinned Blacks, identity is more than skin deep

IT WAS THE NCAA TRACK CHAMPIONSHIPS in Boise, Idaho. Keri Lowder, a green-eyed, blond-haired woman of African-American and Norwegian heritage, was running with her team. But each time she stepped on the track, the crowd would erupt in thunderous applause. "It was very strange, because they weren't clapping for anyone else," she recalls. It didn't make much sense until she was injured and found herself alone with a White trainer. "Have you ever seen so many [N-word] in your life," the woman casually remarked. "She thought I was White," Lowder says. As for the crowd's cheers: "They thought I was some Great White Hope," adds Lowder, who proclaimed she was in fact Black, and told the trainer how she felt about her comments.

It was one of countless incidents in which Lowder, now 33, was mistaken for being White. "I've been pulled over with my boyfriends because I looked like a little teenage White girl in a car with a Black man," says Lowder, who is the fairest of her siblings. The reaction she gets from White Americans who discover that she's Black and biracial ranges from intense anger to firecracker curiosity. "I become the great interpreter," says Lowder, who is flooded with questions. "Why do Black people steal? Can Black people tan? Why are the bottoms of their hands and feet pink?" she's been asked. "But if I tell a Black person about my White father, they don't ask me to explain White people to them."

'LIGHT, BRIGHT AND DAMN NEAR WHITE'

More than half a century has passed since EBONY first broached the issue of Blacks who are mistaken for being White. While there is no hard data, their stories are entrenched in the African-American experience.

The explosive films Pinky and Imitation of Life first explored the controversial issue of fair-complexioned Blacks passing for White in the early '50s. The horrors of racism compelled some to pass for White to escape the limitations their darker peers could not.

Immersed in a racist society that valued White skin, lighter Blacks with straight hair were afforded more access than other Blacks. In the early 20th century, Black society life--particularly in Atlanta, New Orleans and Washington D.C.--modeled the "lighter is better" mantra with a flurry of social clubs created by lighter Blacks who excluded their brown-skinned brethren. While the history of segments of the Black middle class wielding light skin for status is well-documented, the practice was largely shunned with the dawning of the "Black is Beautiful" and Civil Rights movements of the '60s and '70s.

So being Black and looking White isn't a big deal anymore, right? Wrong. Many "near White" Blacks have to not only defend themselves against racism among Whites, who malign Blacks in private circles they are assumed to be part of, but also must prove their own Blackness to those who feel they're benefiting from the privileges of White or fair skin.

"Racism and colorism is still an issue," says Sandra E. Taylor, professor of sociology at Clark Atlanta University, who adds that studies link beauty and power with lighter skin in America. "[Light-skinned Blacks] get tired of not being able to be seen for who they really are. Even if they're not mistaken for White, they're tired of people saying they feel they're being better than others because of the history and realities of color discrimination."

Wendell Freeland, an 82-year-old civil rights attorney in Pittsburgh, has witnessed the shifts in racism and colorism over the years and found himself as the unwitting victim of both. A blue-eyed man who "used to have light brown hair," Freeland was raised to be proud of his African-American heritage and was largely unaware of his light complexion as a boy in Baltimore. "We were just poor and Black," he says. When he attended Howard University in the early '40s, he was suddenly forced to address the long-held preference for light skin among the elite Black middle class, with a flurry of fraternities fighting to recruit him. "I was told they wanted me because I looked White and was an A-student," recalls Freeland. A student of African history, be frequently spoke out against the color caste system that defined Black social clubs of that era. But as the Civil Rights Movement emerged, he was criticized for not being "Black enough" by his African-American peers, despite his strong identity and the years of dedicated work in the Movement.

INCOGNEGRO

"Any Black person who looks White cannot deny that there are advantages to that. Whites are more comfortable," says George C. Fraser, 62, who acknowledges that he is often mistaken for White. "We can operate in two worlds without being stereotyped and prejudged, whereas our African-American Sisters with African features are prejudged, and 95 percent wrongly."

A New York native, Fraser is the youngest and fairest of of his 11 siblings. "My father is a dark brown man from Guinea and my mother is from Lumpkin, Ga. Her light skin comes from the misogyny of our people back in the day." Author of the best-seller Success Rum In Our Race; The Complete Guide to Effective Networking in the African American Community, Fraser's work covers Black empowerment and wealth-building. But many people assume he is Jewish or Italian, which is why he announces "and yes, I'm Black" before workshops to his largely African-American audiences.