>If they wanted to create a
>generic term that wouldn't have
>attachment to color of any
>kind, they could have.

they did- thats what Im saying. None of us had black skin- that was the point. They could have called it brown pride- they didnt- they chose Black specifically to counter the ideology of White.

>The term black in and
>of itself is no different
>than octoroon or quadroon -
>which could've been used to.
>Many biracial children don't feel
>the term "black" fosters unity
>either.

Of course that term is different- none of us have actual black skin- it was meant to signify something beyond the skin. If it wasnt any different then why didnt they use Brown- it would have been more obvious and physically correct.

>Why black? Because at the
>heart of what all this
>is about is the darkest
>skinned black person NOT the
>lightest. Had our culture
>been exactly like those of
>various whites, that distinction still
>remains.

Wait huh? Are you saying blackness is gauged or somehow in regards to the darker pigments of skin?
i dont know if im understanding what you're saying here.

>Everyone else is included because we
>had no choice otherwise, the
>one drop rule is a
>white creation, not a "black"
>one. Across the diaspora, you
>take Mariah Carey around &
>nobody is going to recognize
>her as a black person,
>its preposterous. In various other
>societies (who've had similar slave/oppression
>experience) there is a "mulatto"
>caste, ie South Africa.
>The fact is even in
>America, the darkest skinned among
>us are the majority of
>our numbers. There wouldn't
>have been a "black" movement
>if we all could've passed.
>And whatever movement we developed
>wouldn't been called a "black"
>one if we all could've
>passed. At the heart of
>the term is reference to
>complexion.

SAY WHAT!? Malcom X wasnt dark skinned neither was Huey Newton, Neither was Amiri Baraka, Ron Carenga. Stokely- yes but thats a different story. These are the men that mitigated these philosophies to say they were making reference to complexion is ludicrous cuz they were all yellow.

>And Malcolm X (red) married Betty
>(ebony) in part because he
>wanted to have beautiful "black"
>babies (he said it). Even
>he understood that the most
>basic level it was about
>the skin we're in.

BUT MALCOLM WAS RED! i think we're talking about two different things- im commenting on the sociological term as Black not necessarily the colloquial derivations of it. the nationalist teachings that established the term Black are very much rooted in our history and only colloquially do they regard our skin much less our complexion.

K