My brother...is a weird example. Our mother is black, our father is white, but my brother could fit in with the Turkish, Italians, Latin-Americans. Basically his skin seems to fluctuate between very light brown and caramel depending on the weather.

Tropers/MadamShogun: I have a golden brown light caramel complexion under the Los Angeles sun, But I'm very fair skin otherwise. My dad's folks are creole, but most of my fam consists of fair skin blacks. I have loads of stories to tell but I'll keep it brief..

One of my friends from college is used to seeing me with this light honey skin tone. I tell her that I'll be in Savannah Georgia for the winter and she should come visit me since she'll be in Atlanta. Eventually I went to Atlanta to see her instead so we could hang out. We eventually meet up at a restaurant and she see's me and looks at me weird. She asks "What's happening to you??", I said what do you mean? She says my skin has lightened up and that she thought I was "sick". I laughed and told her that my tan had faded and this was my natural skin tone which is damn near white. For the rest of that day she had a very crappy disposition towards me for the rest of the evening. Especially when she started introducing me to her friends, and they started to kinda/sorta like me.. After a very awkward and uncomfortable goodbye I never heard from her again.

UPDATE: I ran into an associate of my wayword ex friend and I explained to her what happened. She told me she's not surprised, as the ex-friend in question had terrible experiences growing up (she's ''VERY'' darkskin, but sexy IMO). According to her friend she was probably befriending me to get over her hatred and resentment of lightskin black girls. but saw that not only was i lighter then what she thought i was, but i was also threatening to take her friends away (in her mind anyway). So she said it was no surprise she started to resent me too.

But wait I can go further back to college, when I was a active model myself. A dark skinned model once told me why was I trying to act black. wasn't that hurting my chances for making it in the field. I'm like...HUH?!...I said I am black both my parents are black. She then said if I was you I would say I was biracial or multiracial (for those who don't know there's a lot of BLACK light skin models who put down biracial, and multiracial down on their resumes so they could get broader casting opportunities). I told her I'm not gonna represent something I'm not. She got visibly frustrated by this... and proceeded to call me a fool.

Something similar happened to me at my business. Years ago at work (I run a modeling agency... but nothing too big), two Black models of mine somehow got into a conversation about family heritage with me. One is also light-skinned. The other model is dark-skinned. The darker model was extremely irritated by the fact that neither I nor the other light-skinned model were claiming White heritage. [You might be familiar with the sickness where Black people are quick to emphasize any non-Black ancestry they might have from 20 generations back. Another part of the denatured person's eternal quest to distance themselves from Blackness.] Anyways it was a bizarre moment when the third coworker angrily told us, "You two know you've got White blood! What's with all this Black stuff?!!" I calmly told this person that I had no interest in claiming or celebrating any connection whatsoever I MIGHT have to rapists and former slave masters. It was interesting that this angry person had just told us all about how she was 1/8th Irish, 1/8th German, 1/16th Cherokee, etc., etc. It occurred to us later that this person was angry because her appearance didn't reflect all this non-Black heritage that she claimed to have. It also seemed that she was annoyed with us because (by embracing total identification with our Black ancestors) we were throwing away the "opportunity" that she didn't have.

I had a white teacher tell me I had "nice good hair" for a black girl (my hair is silky, black, long, and naturally wavy). I was just 7 at the time but I told my mom. The teacher got cussed out 6 ways from Sunday.

Heck, you have nice good hair for ''anyone''. (If it matters, I'm white) and I'm consumed with envy.

My eyes are light green, and a black and white classmate (around 11th grade) thought I was biracial or just white pretending to be black. That argument got pretty heated between us 3.

You think THAT'S bad? I'm blond haired, blue eyed, and dark as night.

I (a black troper who's damn near white with very curly thick hair) have had black friends (and total strangers) tell me I had "good hair" one day, then tell me that I "looked like a slave" and was a "waste of light skin with nappy hair" the next. In the same breath, they'd call me a white girl (using it as an insult), but then say my "nose is too wide" and tell me to get plastic surgery. I don't speak to them anymore. I could go on, but that's a whole different set of tropes.

My sister and I have light skin tones and long hair. The two questions that we frequently hear are A)Are you twins? (which is SO OBVIOUS it's ridiculous) and B)What are you mixed with?. Mother is black (although very light compared to her dark parents) and my father is black (from what I'm told), and I have had to field off many questions as to what other ethnicity I am. I don't exactly know whether to describe myself as light skin or not actually. Most dark skinned friends have considered me light-skinned, one even claiming I looked more like a "dirty Mexican" than a black person, while a light skinned friend said I was too dark to participate in "Michael Jackson Day" (where light skin people take the day off to celebrate the day Michael Jackson turned white-he was joking). I've even had two close friends arguing over whether I was considered dark or light. I've always leaned more towards caramel.

Caramel skin tone is very polarizing for some reason when it comes to considering whether or not caramel toned people are "light-skin". The real litmus IMO for some one to actually be called light-skin is actually ''honey complected'', not caramel..

Father was kinda caramel by himself, and I'm white to the point of having freckles, but I consider myself to be black, simply because almost everything else in me is inherited from black genes. Hair, eyes, breasts... No, not ass. I'm creepy at this place, because I have large hips, but flat ass.

An interesting addendum to this discussion; it seems ButNotTooBlack also applies to attitudes as well as skin color. For instance, I have noticed people warm up considerably when I'm using ''standard'' jive talk, like "Stop trippin'", or "Holla back". But...once you start getting into Gangsta rap lingo like "Screw these hos" folks tend to stiffen a little.(Personally, I'd stiffen too, but anyway...)

This standard certainly applies to vernacular. While I am fairly dark, they speak with an "Midwestern" accent devoid of the "Urban" or "Ebonics" accent that can be common amongst those sharing their skin tone. People commonly say to me, "Where are you from? You weren't born here, were you?" (because all American blacks speak the same way, of course, and if you don't you're obviously not American-born), and tend to treat them more warmly in comparison to friends with noticeable urban accents. On the flip side, they've been mocked by lighter-complexioned friends for "trying to act white". You just can't please everyone.

I have the tendency to avert this with my dark-skinned characters, mainly because I think really dark skin looks very pretty. Unfortunately, when I try to make art of them, it tends to come out like this trope, because any desired skin tone always come out at least two shades lighter than it should, sometimes more, when I hand-reshade. bases.

Tropers/JackButler: My grandmother, a rather hateful and racist woman who took pride in her northern European heritage, verbally expressed relief that her grandchildren more resembled their pale-skinned Japanese-American mother than their black-and-Scandinavian-mix father.

I have always, always, been TOLD by people that I'm half-white when both of my parents are black. Most people saying that also think my step-father is is real father and white parent, and my mother is my black parent. My mother is far, far, far lighter than my real father.

Tropers/K2Misfit: I firmly believes that I unintentionally and unfairly ''benefitted'' from being ButNotTooBlack in attitude and possibly skin tone in 8th Grade Art Class. The new teacher, fresh from teaching at the high school (our schools consider 6-8th middle and 9-12th high school) with the same mentality delivered DisproportionateRetribution by the tons (ex. detention for not raising one's hand to throw away trash) and things quickly turned into a Jerry Springer-style showdown after a girl (my future ex-girlfriend) pulled the Race Card. Two days after that, because I was the shy wallflower and coincidentally caramel-toned, my C-level work gets A+'s (when my '''This BLACK,''' best friend got the reverse, the teacher'll do my work for me at the drop of a hat, I can chill out pretending to clean the art closet, I'm forced to be the escort for kids going to the principal's office and a tinge of HotForStudent was palpable though she was total Gonk. At the end of the semester, she lauds me as the next Picasso and I feel slightly guilty.

I simply describes myself as beige.

I am a proud aversion (brown toned) and the closest people in my family who could count are my dad and sister (who are a define tan. They, especially with my dad's Spanish ancestor and our present last name, could possibly pass for Hispanic) and my aunt and her daughters (her daughters more so but this is justified as their dad is Colombian-Caucasian; they look more like my white friends than they look like me). Ironically, when an African-American looking classmate of mine expressed for her support for Obama in the presidential election; the 1/2 black 1/2 white Republican insisted that she and all other black people (and by default me and my family) only wanted Obama to win because he was black; This was especially annoying the day after the election when I had class with the boy and he declared that is was Palin's fault that McCain didn't win and that he should have had Colin Powell as his running mate. To be fair, his attitude towards black calmed down a bit through repeated bashings by my classmates and I did find out later, in middle school was picked on by other black kids since he didn't "act" black - similar stuff I had to deal with (he's even the same tone as me, maybe a shade lighter, with brown hair).

I am 100% white, of which 50% is European Spanish. My wife is a self-described “Brown sugar Black”; which is to say coffee-colored with more or less cream depending on how much sun she’s gotten lately. Our daughter is a deep tan verging on light sepia, which, combined with her Hispanic surname, causes a lot of people to ask which part of Latin America her family comes from. Her stock reply is, “I’m half-white, half-black, and half-Spanish.” When it’s pointed out that this adds up to 150%, she will shrug and say, “I’m big-boned. Deal with it.”

Your daughter is awesome.

@/{{Luna87}}: I was often asked if I was biracial growing up. I think it had to do with my beige skin and the fact that I don't speak with what people consider to be a "black accent." Both my parents identify as black, but I do have a mixed ancestry (African/English/Scottish/Native American).

But then again, I naturally have the very coarse, kinky hair that most black women naturally have. In my preteen years, I would rarely allow my mom to chemically straighten it, and thus was picked on for having "ugly hair". Little bastards....

I have Dutch, German, French, African, and Native American roots. My grandmother brought it to the extreme, because her skin is so light people think she's white.

I have a lot of difficulty convincing people that I have Aboriginal heritage due to my extremely pale skin.

When I'm not playing sports, I'm extremely light skinned, a High yellow with gold undertones but both my parents are dark. I also have natural Light brown hair with blonde streaks. It's always been a sore point with me that people assume I'm half white. In fact, once some people find out, they treated me differently. A lot of times people assume that I'm anything BUT black. I've been listed as half-white, Uruguayan, Spanish, and my favorite one to date has been being called an Indian. While most blacks would want to claim white heritage I absolutely HATE the assumption. High school was especially bad and I remember getting into many arguments where dark skinned girls would tell me to stop lying to them and tell them which one of my parents was white. Apparently, I don't talk black and I act too smart to not have some white in me.

I have recently been described as "Black enough to be the TokenBlack, but ambiguous enough to be interesting." I'm not sure whether or not I should have taken offense.

Tropers/DeathToSquishies: I am half-Mexican, but look ''nothing'' like one. My skin is about as pale as a ghost. from staying inside being a nerd all the time Sometimes people, myself included, wonder what I'd look like if I was 100% white.

There are white hispanics.

To the original troper: A lot of people in Mexico have Spanish blood in them, due to their history. It is normal for quite a few people from Mexico to look 'white' (more or less) because of this.

I go to a small school, only around 30 kids. There are only two white kids, and a few biracial kids (but they look black). The oldest kid in the school is black, but is 'brown' due to the fact one of his grandparents were white. He gets mocked about this and told he's not black, though it's just teasing.

Hilariously {{Lampshaded}} in my science class one day: #QUOTE# '''Joe:''' Me, Ashley and Jason have been working all period. ''(turns to Silas)'' And what did ''you'' do?\\ '''Silas:''' Nothing. You tryna call me out?\\ (J and S bicker)\\ '''Jason:''' Come on fellas, stop this fighting! We're all light-skinned, we need to stick together!\\ '''Joe:''' He's right. ''(Nazi/KKK hand gesture)'' Light power!

@/FarseerLolotea: I double-subvert this: I'm multiracial and quite pale, but grew up in a rural area that was white-bread enough for me to be on the receiving end of quite a bit of racism anyway.

This didn't affect me directly, but one of my best friends in college told me that when she and her sister were little, their parents bought them some presents for good grades and gave them a choice between two black Barbie dolls. Since my friend's sister was younger, she got to pick first. My friend said that she didn't realize why until much later in life, but she felt incredibly mad that her little sister picked the lighter skinned doll, whereas she felt that she got stuck with the darker -- in her mind, uglier -- doll. Cue sad whimpers from yours truly.

Ooh boy. This troper's family regularly has to deal with this, because we don't have stereotypical features, are upper-income, and educated. Apparently this makes us liable to be questioned at every point on our ethnic heritage. I lost this "privilege" when I cut my waist length hair short, but my sister still gets it all the line. Some context: My father has very light skin and light eyes with blond hair, and my mother has very dark skin with very East Asian "features". Cue looks of horror when my dad gets too "ethnic" and they realize he's now "too-black". Oddly enough, they want us to say we're half Hispanic or half-White, so when we don't they get offended. Apparently, not only do they know better than us what we are, but we're only allowed to be "not-too-black" if we attribute our every positive to white people, heh.

This Troper is "black enough to leave fingerprints on your very soul" with a head full of lovely afro textured hair. Why this trope hasn't effected her self-esteem or the way more enlighten folks view her beauty and self worth. Oddly enough this troper has received more positive attention from whites and well-educated minorities than she has from her classmates, who like her are black and come from a lower class background.

It is not uncommon for me to receive a detailed explaination on why a fellow classmate is better than said Troper because of their lighter skin. Most are TooDumbTooLive. One of these "philosophers" is WELL over 300 pounds.