Psychological ‘Soul Patrol’ Colors Judgment of Blacks Seeking Identity : Race: A code of behavior binds the community together and keeps its members from becoming too ‘white.’. Some say it goes too far.

If you’re black, prove it.

That’s the challenge issued by the “Soul Patrol,” an invisible force that lurks in the minds of many black Americans, defining what black is and what it isn’t.

It’s a code of behavior that measures blacks against a yardstick of racial conformity. Anything declared “white” is off limits to blacks. Participate in too much “white” behavior and access to the black world will be cut off.

The patrol divides and confuses blacks, leaving many wondering whether they’re “black enough” or if there’s a way they can be even blacker.

To some, the Soul Patrol is a good way of preserving black identity.

“You got to be black first,” said veteran civil rights activist Hosea Williams. “Stay with black people. Do your black thing.”

But to others, including John Blake, the reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution who coined the phrase, the rules go too far.

“The Soul Patrol isn’t content with picking your friends,” he wrote this spring in an op-ed piece. “They want to tell you how to think, where to live, whom to love, how to do your job.”

The Soul Patrol has numerous rules, open to loose interpretation.

If you have more white friends than the patrol thinks you should, you’re an “Oreo”--black outside, white inside, like the cookie.

If you marry or date someone of another race, you’re a “sellout,” or a “wannabe,” as in “wanna be white.”

If you divulge “secrets” that are common knowledge among blacks, or if you don’t automatically side with blacks, you’re an “Uncle Tom.”

These rules can create a dilemma.

“They can leave you in the position of not being accepted by either whites or blacks,” Blake wrote. “Who wants to endure that?”

The Soul Patrol polices all arenas, from public figures in show business and politics--including last year’s confirmation battle over Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas--to the most private aspects of everyday life.

Blacks are aware of these rules. Those who don’t subscribe to them are not considered “down” with, or into, blackness.

“If you’re in the Wall Street district, if a black guy comes up wearing a suit, he’s supposed to speak to you, and you’re supposed to speak to him,” said Antoinette Hightower, 31, of Orange, N.J., who works on Wall Street for an insurance company.

“Proper speech is looked upon like you’re trying to deny your race,” said Jacqueline Brytt, 28, a military officer in Woodbridge, Va. “It can be looked at as a negative. When I’m talking to my black friends, I use my black dialect.”

Brytt says some blacks have rejected her because of her friendships with whites. But she concedes she subscribes to the Soul Patrol philosophy when she sees blacks wearing blue or green contact lenses.

“I’d say, ‘What’s up with the lenses?’ ” she said. “It’s important for us to have a little of that, to keep us in touch with ourselves.”

Sometimes, blacks are victimized for not participating in “black” behavior.

“If you don’t play basketball, you’re not a brother. That’s understood,” said Russell Pittman, 30, a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., teacher. “And if you don’t live in what we call the ‘hood, you’re a sellout, you don’t want to be around your own people.”

Civil rights activist Williams argues that this philosophy prevents blacks from being swallowed up by white society.

“You got to let that white stuff alone,” he said. ‘It’s disbanding our culture, taking on their culture and their ways.”

Others disagree.

“If we tried to enforce a black orthodoxy, then we would fall into the white folks’ trap. They would love for us to all think alike,” said Roger Wilkins, professor of history at George Mason University in Virginia.

Wilkins encountered these attitudes as an assistant U.S. attorney general in the Justice Department in the 1960s, when black nationalists called for a separate culture and clashed with advocates of integration.

“There were those who said, ‘He wasn’t born poor, so he isn’t authentically black,’ ” Wilkins said. “There were others who said, ‘How can they be black if they’re in the government?’ ”

Black journalists, too, are targets. They pick up the “sellout” label “for writing about problems in the black community,” Blake noted.

Many blacks encounter the Soul Patrol philosophy in childhood, when the academically inclined often are bluntly told by black classmates that being studious makes them “white.”

“That gets interpreted as, if you’re smart, you’re white, you’re assimilated,” said Chicago psychologist Samellah Abdullah. “There is a demand on peers to be like the group.”

The Soul Patrol thrives on longstanding divisions between fair-skinned blacks and darker blacks.

Fair blacks, it says, are favored by white society and must be reminded of their blackness, while darker blacks have not been readily accepted and therefore should not embrace it.

Today, the Soul Patrol flourishes among “gangsta” rappers who define blackness through the underbelly of the inner city; those without intimate knowledge of poverty, crime or violence are not black enough.

But it also extends into worlds where blacks have achieved fame.

Actress Whoopi Goldberg was condemned by some blacks as a sellout during the 1980s because she enjoyed success in Hollywood’s white Establishment and wore blue contact lenses. The pressure dissipated after she won NAACP awards.

Andrew Young, former U.N. ambassador and former Atlanta mayor, was booed at the 1984 Democratic National Convention when he favored presidential nominee Walter Mondale over Jesse Jackson.

The issue surfaced last year when some thought Thomas, a political conservative, was too “white” to replace liberal Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court.

Anita Hill, who accused Thomas of sexual harassment, also faced pressure because she was considered to have “tattled” to whites about a fellow black.

The late Rev. Ralph David Abernathy drew heat for stating, in his autobiography, that Martin Luther King Jr. had extramarital relationships. Some said Abernathy would be robbed of his “rightful place in history” if he didn’t retract what he’d written. They also suggested white editors influenced him. Abernathy stood firm.