Interfaith Group

She made the case for identifying her child as black because she felt it was imperative to preserve the cultural and historical context. She felt that if she did not do this, her child would be sure to lose her identity as an African-American and that the entire culture could be lost.

I felt she made a good case.

An interesting place to see how the color lines break down is New Orleans. There is a distinct class of people who identify as African American but are fairly light skinned and shun (read: are prejudiced against) darker skinned blacks. They use to have what they called the paper bag test. This class system still exists to some extent.