skinfolk means people who share the same skin color (race) with one another, especially when they are not otherwise closely associated or similar. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 85 out of 100.
Why “skinfolk” is a great word
SKINFOLK — [Noun] People connected by shared race or skin color, a connection that is phenotypic rather than deeply affiliative. From the modern English 'skin' + 'folk', a compound deliberately modelled on 'kinfolk'. Unlike 'kinfolk', which implies a close, familial bond, or 'compatriots', which denotes a shared nationality, 'skinfolk' marks a connection forged solely by the accident of phenotype—a kinship of surface. It is the loaded, complicit glance exchanged with a stranger in a room where you are the only ones of your hue; the forced allegiance to a fellow passenger whose politics you despise; the brittle shelter of a shared label that cannot guarantee a shared heart. A term that names the community you never chose, built on the accident you cannot change.
noun
- People who share the same skin color (race) with one another, especially when they are not otherwise closely associated or similar.“It was, in part, this designation that Zora Neale Hurston sought to clarify with the distinction between "kinfolk" and "skinfolk" where one could imagine that all of one's skinfolk were not one's kinfolk (or lacked a good brain) and gave the skinfolk a bad name (Hurston, 1942).”