white as any 'white' person

'My grandmother, who was white as any 'white' person, had never looked 'white' to me. And when word circulated among the black people of the neighborhood that a 'black' boy had been severely beaten by a 'white' man, I felt that the 'white' man had had a right to beat the 'black' boy, for I naively assumed that the 'white' man must have been the 'black' boy's father. And did not all fathers, like my father, have the right to beat their children' A paternal right was the only right, to my understanding, that a man had to beat a child. But when my mother told me that the 'white' man was not the father of the 'black' boy, was no kin to him at all, I was puzzled.'

'Richard Wright, from Black Boy, 1945.