AthenaAwakened
Contributor
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2003
- Messages
- 5,338
- Location
- Right behind you so ... BOO!
- Basic Beliefs
- non-theist, anarcho-socialist
I stand by my statement. It is hysterical.
What do you know about being names like high-yella, and red-bone? Porch monkey or Tar Baby? Or the paper bag test or the ruler test? Are you now or have you ever been color struck?
What do you know of prominent black families like the Proctors, the Newmans, or the Butlers?
Or about the children's rhyme,
If you're light, you're alright.
If you're brown, stick around.
If you're black, get back
These are personal traumas of color, but let's talk more broadly.
Light skinned people are most likely to be hired and promoted than darker skinned people.
If you're an actor, producers would rather higher a light skinned actor for a role and then, if needed, put that actor in black face rather that hire a darker skinned actor.
Women and girls are still sent home from work and school for wearing their hair naturally.
Athletes have had braids cut at sporting events, and been applauded for what for the athletes was a public scalping.
Dark skinned children are more likely to be deemed in need of remedial learning, be labelled problem students and have physical problems like bad eyesight and hearing be written up as behavioral problems and/or "mental retardation."
Black kids aren't dumb, they are targeted. And the darker a child is, the earlier he's targeted, ground down and pushed into a stereotype.
And it's not just white folk who do this.
Black folk can be just as color-struck.
When Hattie McDaniel won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for GWTW, Walter White, president of the NAACP and the whitest looking black man you'll probably ever see, mounted a campaign to stop Hattie McDaniel from working and somehow to replace her with Lena Horne. Lena was lighter, prettier, more desirable and therefore a better representation of black womanhood than the darker, fatter, less lyrically voiced McDaniels.
Roles for McDaniels grew scarce, but no one would believe Lena Horne would be allowed by any white woman to be a maid around a white husband, so she didn't work much either. What roles she did get were usually singing spots that could be and often were cut out movies when shown in the South.
In the sixties when black is beautiful become a rallying cry, light-skinned black people fell out of favor for about ten minutes and were made to spend time and treasure trying to prove to people of all colors they were black enough.
It was and is insanity.
From light skinned slaves working in the big house and dark skinned slaves working in the fields to Zoe Saldana playing Nina Simone in black face and facial prosthetics, colorism has put limits on both the life chances and life expectancy of black people ever since Bacon's Rebellion and even further back.
Now I'm just a brown skinned woman who has lived with being favored or dismissed for no other reason than this pecan tan skin I've got. I've been hearing about, reading about, debating about and crying about colorism for the entire 56 year I've been on this planet.
What could I possibly know about this subject more than any white man?
Colorism is a subject deep and wide. It's political, it's personal, it is both blatant and nuanced.
But like I said
What do I know?
From the Harriet T and Ida B Gun Club and Sewing Circle this is me and I'm jessayin'.
