CNN Features 'Team Lightskinned': 'Black Enough to Be a N—–, White Enough to Be a Good One'

On Sunday, December 15, CNN is slated to run a special starring Soledad O’Brien titled “Who Is Black in America?” The goal of the series: to racially polarize the country, push the notion that racism is still the most serious ill paralyzing America, and play on white liberal guilt to forward a racialist agenda. The show will feature various experiences of being black – but you can guarantee that the central, underlying message will be that being black is largely about experiencing racism from whites.

The proof? Just take a look at CNN’s website.

In the lead-up to this event, CNN.com will be covering what it calls its “Black in America” series. The latest episode in their series is titled “Team Lightskinned,” posted at their website. It features teenage slam poets Kai Davis, Hiwot Adilow, and Telia Allmond reciting “a poem about their experience as light skinned women.” Standing on a dark stage, they recite:

You’re worth a little more if you’re golden,

Yellow enough to remind them of precious medals.

They’re blinded by the radiance in our pigment,

The milligrams of melanin spread thin enough to let light through,

The light makes us walk a little softer.

We can pass the paper bag test in the dark,

Can blend easily into any whitewashed backdrop,

Can dodge handcuffs without paying a fine.

The White Man’s Best Friend.

The Face of Every Ad Marketed to Black People.

Black enough to be a n—–.

White enough to be a good one.

Our complexion makes even the most racist politicians comfortable.

They don’t mind sitting next to us, or shaking hands in public,

But won’t hesitate to remind us where we stand.

They never call us equal, yet treat us better than our browner sisters.

It goes on from here, but you get the idea. The video is below.

It’s deeply offensive stuff, suggesting that Americans remain deeply divided by skin color, when it’s really just CNN obsessing about race for its own political purposes. The problem isn’t these girls reading poetry. The problem is CNN featuring these girls as expressions of the “lightskinned” experience, when in fact they’re teenage slam poets cribbing off more radical – and more justified – ancestors.

Who are these three members of “Team Lightskinned”? Kai Davis is a 17-year-old slam poet, and a member of the National Honor Society from Philadelphia. Hiwot Adilow is the 16-year-old Philadelphia-born daughter of Ethiopian immigrants and a slam poet. And Teila Allmond is apparently a student at Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy. But CNN is pushing them as though they’re Rosa Parks’ peers, even though they’re three generations removed from Rosa Parks. Have any of them been told they aren’t equal by a politician? Who has told them that? Can we get names? How have politicians reminded them “where they stand”? Could we get some specifics?

Of course not. CNN doesn’t care about specifics, or about identifying instances of real racism. They just want the American public to believe that we’re all irrepressibly racist, so that we’re silenced in our opposition to the Obama agenda.

That’s what CNN is all about: pushing unending racial polarization in order to job unremitting white liberal guilt. And if they have to drop a few n-words to make that happen, they will.