Actress Apologizes for Not Being ‘Darker Skinned’

Thandiwe Newton, an English actress whose mother is Zimbabwean, broke down in tears during a Sky News interview. She said she wanted to “apologize every day to darker-skinned actresses” for not adequately representing blackness.

“It’s been very painful to have women who look like my mum feel like I’m not representing them — that I’m taking from them, taking their men, taking their work, taking their truth. I didn’t mean to,” she said.

(Newton has been married to a white man since 1998.)

This performative self-flagellation is nonsensical enough when white people do it. That a woman with African heritage would berate herself for being insufficiently black is even more bizarre.