Greetings Ayinde
I agree with most of your post. This is more like reasoning than trying to paint all brown skin or light skin blacks with the same brush. Brown and light blacks can not just change their skin color and blend in with the dominant culture like white people can so I dont put brown and light skin blacks in the same category as whites.

I am in no way dismissing skin color privilege. It is evident that it exists. If you black step back, if you brown, stick around, If you white, you right. This is not a new concept.

I still would prefer to listen to where a light skin persons head is at before I dismiss them as not being worthy of being black, i.e. "pure" black.

I still have problems with that designation, "pure" blacks.

You stated:

"I once saw your picture and I thought that you were dark-skinned Black, later on I read you describing yourself in shades of Black (being slightly darker than Haile Selassie). People who see themselves as dark-skinned Black usually do not go into the shades (although there are shades of dark skin Black) to explain how they look. Basically I saw you as a dark-skinned Black who would not generally get privileges, except above women (for another debate). "

I saw your picture too Ayinde. I am probably the same shade as you unless the picture was poor quality. You are not dark skin like Marcus Garvey. You are maybe a dark brown but not coal black. I doubt if you are "pure" black yourself. My mother was black. My father is black. My grandmothers and grandfathers were black. So I dont know where I am of "mixed" heritage (In the last 5-6 generations). If I did, I wouldnt have had any control over that now would I? And I damn sure havent gotten any privileges.

I dont sight Haile Selassie as light skin. Angela Davis is light skin. Haile Selassie is brown in my opinion.

I think the issue with Selassie is his Habesha ancestry, oppossed to his Oromo ancestry.

In my opinion, I think it is fruitless to bicker amongst ourselves about, in a sense, InI birth right as a "real" or a "pure" Afrikan.

Give thanks

PS: Dont tell me that dark black Afrikans dont deal with shades of blackness because if that was the case, then all of the "pure" blacks here would not make a big fuss, acting as if they want to impose the paper brown litmus test.