Diana Veiga
Washington, DC
This weekend I was at an event with a roomful of black women. There was this one lady who stood out because she looked “white”, but then she opened her mouth and she sounded “black.”. And then her mother stood up and she was black. I looked at my mom and said, “do you think that people would think…” I couldn’t even finish my question, my mom was already nodding and chuckling. We have family members who tried to pass, could have passed, they were light skinned women with green eyes and red hair, but the hair was nappy and it betrayed them. I though of this the roomful of “obvious’ black women. What stood out, what seemingly makes us this or that, what betrays or tells on us, what keeps us bound to this thing called race.
