Entry · catalog no. 2411
skinfolk ain't kinfolk
/ /ˈskɪnfoʊk eɪnt ˈkɪnfoʊk/ /SKIN-fohk aynt KIN-fohk
phrase · Southern in origin; national in current use · 1940s
✓ Verified
1.
A saying that a person of your own race is not automatically your ally: skin is an accident of birth, kinship is a matter of conduct. It is said about a Black person who works against Black interests — who informs, sells out, takes the position that requires betraying the community, or shames it in front of white audiences for advantage. It is also said quietly as a caution, warning someone not to extend trust on the basis of colour alone.
“He took the job because he already knew what the report was supposed to say — all my skinfolk ain't kinfolk.”
Origin & Attribution
Black American folk speech, Southern in root and now national in reach. Zora Neale Hurston set it in print in Dust Tracks on a Road in 1942, in the chapter My People! My People!, where embarrassed middle-class Black passengers in a rail coach mutter of loud strangers that these are their skinfolks but not their kinfolks. Two corrections are needed. Hurston did not write the modern sentence all my skinfolk ain't kinfolk; that is a later compression of her line, and quotation sites present it as verbatim when it is not. And she was reporting speech she heard rather than coining it, which is exactly why she could put it in a stranger's mouth. Henry Louis Gates Jr. reprinted the passage in the New York Times Book Review in 1985, which helped return it to circulation. The compressed modern form is in print by the 2000s, and its heaviest current use is political, aimed at Black public figures serving white-supremacist politics.
1942
Hurston prints my skinfolks but not my kinfolks in Dust Tracks on a Road
1985
Henry Louis Gates Jr. reprints the passage in the New York Times Book Review
2004
The compressed modern form appears in Time, quoted and credited to Hurston
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Southern in origin; national in current use · 1940s
Spoken by
Black Americans across classes and regions; heavily used in Black political commentary
$SKINFOThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising84 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
80/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1942
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography (J. B. Lippincott, 1942), chapter My People! My People!
book
■
Henry Louis Gates Jr., A Negro Way of Saying, The New York Times Book Review, 21 April 1985 — reprints the Dust Tracks passage containing the line
newspaper
■
+ Cite a sourceChristopher John Farley, 10 Questions for Tavis Smiley, Time, 5 December 2004 — prints the compressed modern form attributed to Hurston
newspaper
See also