Complexion Protection

Richard Pryor: Black & Proud & White Folks
From: Craps (After Hours) (Laff, 1972)

The Last Poets: Black Woman
From: Right On! (Juggernaut, 1968)

Meet America, anew, not her masquerade:

U.S. Army Recruitment Command at Ft. Knox, Ky., Sergeant Marcia Ramode, assigned to the Brooklyn, N.Y., recruiting office, in an email to Corey Andrew, gay, seeking to enlist:

“…Go back to Africa and do your gay voodoo limbo tango and wango dance and jump around and jump around and prance and run all over the place half naked there...”

Writer and performer, Victor Varnado, Black albino:

"Race and racism is so arbitrary," he says. "Sometimes people see me and they think I'm 'acting black.' Once, I was in a secondhand clothing store with one of my friends and commenting on the fashion, joking: 'I need baggy pants and long T-shirts what rappers might wear.' And this white woman came up to me and said: 'I really find what you're saying offensive.' And then I said, 'I'm black,' and she was like, 'OK. It's fine.' Then she walked away."
"Recently, somebody told me this horrible stereotype, that all Chinese people know kung fu," started a joke he told on Comedy Central's Premium Blend. "And I disempower stereotypes whenever I get the chance, so for the past six weeks I've been fighting the Chinese. And what I've found is that not all Chinese people know kung fu. But most of them will hit you anyway, because, let's face it, Chinese people are very irritable. Irritable people!
"Some people hear that joke and say, 'Victor, I'm disappointed in you, because you said you hate stereotypes, but you made this horrible stereotype.' That's what people have said, but most of those people are Haitians, so whatever! C'mon. Who listens to Haitians, right?"
And then he puts his hand to his forehead and raises two fingers, forming demonic horns, and laughs like Satan.
Commenting on Varnado’s Satanic satire Mike McGowan, president of NOAH, says that since 1960 there have been at least 68 films depicting albino characters as supernatural or evil. McGowan further comments: “To give the devil his due if you're looking to make a character visually stimulating, giving a character albinism is a quick and easy way to do it," he says. "But I think it is an overused literary device, by lazy writers. Research shows that if you look at the '80s, '90s, and first years of 2000, the use of this hackneyed device increases exponentially.”

Lastly, I wish to formally introduce you to the Mandingos

*I've had the fortune of having Abiodun Oyewole, of The Last Poets, as a family friend. He was a frequent visitor to my home when I was a child.