Skin color is more than just a broad palette of pigmentation. It’s much more than the melanin that gives my skin its reddish-brown color. I look like I do because of the way my great-grandmother’s Cherokee blood mixed with my paternal grandfather’s yellow-brown skin, my paternal grandmother’s deep-chocolate color, my maternal grandmother’s milk-white German heritage, and my maternal grandfather’s Slovak origins. The part of me that’s descended from African slaves, and which makes my skin anything but white and my hair not totally straight, is what cries out the loudest. It’s those drops of
...more
