Shades of blackness: skin tone atters across America

We touched a nerve yesterday when we looked into the significance of Nevada Senator Harry Reid’s comment over President Obama’s dialect and level of skin tone. We received a flood of responses to the discussion; one issue that repeatedly came up was when being too light-skinned or too black is still an issue in the African American community. Raina Kelley, staff writer for Newsweek, and Patrik Henry Bass, books editor for Essence, say the issue has long and deep roots.