In 1916, Marcus Garvey walked into the NAACP office to meet W.E.B. Du Bois. What he found there — a staff so light-skinned he could not tell it from a white office — crystallized a rivalry that has never really ended.
Du Bois believed the talented tenth would lift the race from within the existing system. Garvey believed that was color caste wearing the language of progress. Then Du Bois called Garvey "ugly" in print. Garvey's response named exactly what that word revealed about where Du Bois's standard of beauty came from.
That single exchange contains the entire colorism debate. And it is still the argument Black communities are having today — in professional spaces, in politics, in who gets built up and who gets written off.
I wrote the full piece over at The Garvey Classroom. Four verified quotes from The Philosophy and Opinions. The whole argument, tight and direct.
Read it here: https://thegarveyclassroom.com/black-history-month/garvey-dubois-rivalry-colorism/
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