Light, Bright and Still Black (Unconventional Wisdom)
Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 11:00AM 
Belton Family PhotoHow the person two shades lighter than you isn't necessarily better off
Roaming among the rubble of hate, field hand's hair and master's face didn't stop me from meeting a noose. (Video)
I didn't know I was "light-skinned."
Or should I say, I'm not light-skinned but people have informed me one way or another of what I am based on what they are. I am, in fact, not lighter than a paper bag. I am not cafe au latte. I'm a rich, reddish brown that's lighter than most black people, but too dark to be truly considered among the what traditionally was viewed as light-skinned -- which for me is damn near white.
All of this though is irrelevant as no matter what you look like, in America, if you're black you are black. This isn't Brazil or some other South American country where there are a billion color based delineations to separate the blue black Wesley Snipes-ish brothers and sisters from the Wentworth Miller-Grady Sizemore's of the world. This is America, where Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an unapologetically black man, is a dead ringer for white man and former Republican Bob Barr. Did Wright get any sort of pass for his negrotude because he was two steps from passing? Or for that matter, does any black person?
There is a color divide in black America that is unpleasant that no one likes to talk about yet it persists. Since we aren't like other countries where the mixed population was allowed to separate and form their own ethnic group, there is a projected united front regardless if you look black or white. As long as you have some fraction of African blood in your veins, you qualify to be a brother or sister and you qualify to get all the garbage that comes with it.
Unfortunately, despite our outward togetherness, internally there are scores of problems. Problems we're all well aware of. Issues of mistrust. Of favoritism. Of disputed loyalties. Of house negro versus field negro talk and the like. Some have even gone so far to argue that if Michelle Obama were Halle Berry light she wouldn't be liked as much by black women (although this theory doesn't explain the love for White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett, who practically has to produce a birth certificate to prove she is, in fact, a Negro).
The perception is if you are lighter you may have had it easier. I'd argue that everyone has their struggles in a country where the standards of beauty are impossibly European and historically racism touched us all, from the light and Liberal Thurgood Marshall to the dark and conservative Clarence Thomas.
If you're darker, you have to deal with the overall preference some have for lighter people. You have to deal with disparaging remarks from uncouth family members who thought it would be "good" for your self-esteem to tell you to stay out of the sun. You had to watch endless music videos and films where the love interest was a light-skinned girl with long hair. You've had Halle Berry crammed down your throat since the 1990s as the ideal of black beauty. You have to deal with discrimination among your own people because no one hates black people more than other black people. We take our self-hate and project it onto the innocent and condemn them for not being able to live up to some standard we can't even live up to ourselves.
If you're lighter, your loyalty is constantly questioned, even if you are "unapologetically black." You have to prove yourself because it is believed that you, no matter your background, surely must have had it easier. It doesn't matter if you're from the Tony suburbs or the rough and tumble inner city. It's just an assumption that light made right for you, even if in the eyes of most racists you were no different from your darker brethren. You deal with the jealousy and suspicion of those who view your skin tone as a personal affront to their own. You deal with the nonsense of other light-skinned people who have bought the garbage that being light skinned has made them "special." You deal with the fact that you cannot hide the legacy of slavery in you because it is obvious that you didn't come from the motherland with hair and eyes like that.
Being what other people saw as light didn't save me, or anyone else I know who is lighter than me, from racism. I wasn't liked more by white people because of how I looked. I routinely ran into teachers who tried to engineer my failure by giving me F's on days I was out sick, hoping I wouldn't notice until it was too late. Racists, quite honestly, don't care about color delineations. They hate us all. We, as black people, sabotage ourselves when we get bogged down into arguments over "who has it easier." I've known light skinned people who longed to be dark so their outside could match how they felt inside. I've known dark skinned people who longed to be light because of the self-hatred. I've had arguments with people who did not believe I could be "fully black" with hair as long as mine. I've dated men who have obsessed over my skin tone, one beguiled with me being light because he thought it made us "special" and one who condemned me for being light because he thought it made me a sell-out.
I remember, as a child, I thought I was dark because I was treated just as shabbily as the other black kids at my school. I received no perks. I was teased and harassed. I assumed I MUST be dark because I'd heard that light skinned kids caught breaks, that people thought they were pretty and they were popular. Boys liked them and wanted to date them. I wasn't popular, no one coveted my looks and if I caught breaks I didn't know it. I walked around with a target on my back for most of my elementary and junior high years. I couldn't be like the light-skinned girls that everyone wanted to be like. No one was worshipping at my alter.
Then we moved to the so-called "white" end of the school district and the questions began. What are you? Is your father white? How do you get your hair to do that? You can't be all black. You can only imagine how confused I was. Then one day, sitting next to a friend I considered very light, we put our arms next to each other to compare and I was lighter than her. My entire world was turned upside down. What was I if I weren't dark like everyone else? How could I be light? I didn't FEEL like I was treated any nicer. I had few to no friends. Boys were uninterested in me. What good was being "light" if there was no discernable difference between how I was treated and everyone else?
And that's when I realized that these color values were manufactured. That light was relative to the person sitting next to you and that most of the "she must have it easier" was an illusion. There wasn't any "easier," there was only "different." I had it different from kids darker than me. No one ever told me to stay out of the sun or joked about my undesirableness for being darker. But people did mock my nose and lips, tease me for my voice, accuse me of not being black enough and lash out in occasional jealous anger over things I couldn't do anything about, like my hair. I still remember the hate and pain in the voice of one girl who screamed that my hair was going to fall out like hers did from over-perming. That hate wasn't about me, but her own self-loathing. Since then when I was 13, I've met plenty of people who took my existence as a personal affront to their own, coming from a place of insecurity and low self-esteem.
Then there was the racism I couldn't escape. The constant feeling that I was "Anonymous" from Ralph Ellison's tome "Invisible Man" and that somewhere there were dozens of envelopes mailed out with my name on them and letters inside that said, "Keep that nigger girl running." This tape still plays in my head as I run through life, wondering who means me well and who is just there to keep me chasing like a rat in a wheel? Trapped by my own fate of being born black and loathed by some for it. There is no better. There's only different.
I still don't know what color I am, other than brown, but I also don't care anymore. If you think I'm light, fine. If you think I'm not light, that's fine too. I just know I'm black and that has always been fine with me.
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Reader Comments (51)
Be yourself, none of us are pure anything and can take pride in being a "special mix". Honor all of your heritage. I am red, black and white - but I don't label myself as any of those single groups - I'm proud to be a special mix. Sure I have had to hear some garbage - from a teacher who gleefully told my 2nd grade class that he knew my family and I wasn't white, and parents of white girls buggin' out when they figured out who my Dad was, to black people in our own neighborhood telling me to get out of their neighborhood - not to mention cousins who hate me. But get real people - we catch flack at some point for being any color, or for wearing some bo-bo's, or having a fat mama.
None of us are black enough, white enough, etc. to please everybody. Fuck them, be happy.
As a yellow mf myself I'm acutely aware of the pathologies, ironies, weirdness of color. Frankly I think I had a RELATIVELY easier time of it than my sister, or my wife...who were always being counter-harassed for "thinking you better than us and too cute with that light skin and hair and eyes" blah blah. Both of them are sweetest most humble women I know. Again, irony. Pathology.
I knew Michelle Robinson when I was at Princeton (she was a freshman thus persona non grata but I knew her brother Craig); I had drinks after a race panel discussion on campus in the 90s with a student named "Wenty" Miller. Again irony: being fish in the white sea was the great equalizer. Regardless of skin color, your negritude was a personal matter. The color construct these days (outside of the entertainment industry) is something WE are still discussing. White people don't care as much as we think, or at least it's subtle.
Now, with regard to entertainment, advertising/marketing--they DO control. They lighten women's hair and skin in order to sell albums or L'OREAL, they force actresses to be "exotic" or "ethnic" rather than sistas to appeal t Podunk. They turn dark skinned sistas into stereotypical lunatic shrill coarse b-s in the VH-1/Real Housewives of ATL style/BET vein. That is where we need to fight the fight.
My father was from South America and my Mom from good old Southern roots. My family has the rainbow array of light caramel to bittersweet dark. Being on the caramel side of the scale with hair that grows past my shoulders, I'm constantly assailed with "So what are you? Are you Puerto Rican? Where YOU from." (sigh) Just last week at a restaurant, the server kept coming to me for everything. My two darker-skinned friends said, "You have the skin, the hair, and the boobs, he only sees you." I proceeded to get ticked off for having my entire being reduced to skin, hair and boobs. "Maybe I was just more POLITE than you two?" I argued. They weren't having it.
It's exhausting defending your blackness. I wrote something similar about classism within the black community. It's always something. http://www.blacknbougie.com/2009/07/wbffd-what-bougie-folks-are-forced-to.html?showComment=1247444775480
"This is America, where Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an unapologetically black man, is a dead ringer for white man and former Republican Bob Barr. Did Wright get any sort of pass for his negrotude because he was two steps from passing?"
Honorary half white status is ONLY noticed, remarked upon by whites, when you become POTUS, then its celebrated to demonstrated that a 'fully' black person could never be that smart,special etc. Usually by the types who hate race mixing.
However as we see the racial demographics of the US continue to brown, you will see more Bill O' Reilly types (like the remark about MJ' white children as a sign of non blackness ) noticing the 'not all black' people - its divide and conquer 2.0.
"FGM"'s who have two American parents who go on and on about that special/weird/ UNbelonging/ tragic situations they are forced to face because of their intimate connection to a real live breathing white person... are complicit in perpetuating the color pyramid where white is on top.
All people deserve our consideration/attention and to not be typecast/stereotyped. dilettante refuses to 'let slip' her skin tone,non black ancestry etc until she is ready to post pictures and elucidate on how Grandma X's native tongue of Y, is used in family recipe for Z, from the old country of Unicorn land.
everyone is skinny, rich, smart (light with really long hair) on teh internets ---snark ;-)
So what are you? Are you Puerto Rican? Where YOU from." ?
it was [another] black person asking? Its sad that often we ourselves can't accept that 'pretty' is something we can be without having some nonblack component to it. The logical conclusion would be that 'all black' is 'all ugly'.
I'm speaking only from an AA point of reference here I have a friend about the skin tone of Lauren Hill, who because of her (real) hair length and features/slim body is always asked 'where are you from' ? [answer Detroit]. She's gorgeous, but its like "our own" people cant accept "our own" attractiveness. :-(
This is possibly one of the best articles that I have read on the concept of colorism. Most articles tend to be trite. Others have an undertone of bitterness (depending on the personal experience of the author). Others like to brush the issues under the rug with the, "We're all black" statement. Not that the statement isn't true, but it's tends to read as a dismissive copout.
I am a dark skinned young woman who did not have issues with my skin color until middle school, which is when I transferred to a small Christian middle school where the king & queen of the class were "high yeller" and where I was introduced to the wonderful thing that is modern day hip hop music videos . I guess that makes me a late bloomer and is possibly the reason why I am more open to listening to the experiences of my fellow lighter skinned brethern/sistren without rolling my eyes. On occasion, I have been told that I am in fact BROWN SKINNED by individuals who find me attractive because in their mind dark skin and beauty are mutually exclusive.
I am lucky to never have experienced the [sadly] common treatment by family members who see brown skin as a negative. I am also happy that I spent most of my youngers years with my head in the books instead of my eyes on the TV, because the media is not meant to bolster the self-esteem of people of color. It is meant to keep us in our perceived place.
My eyes glaze over when I read these skin color commentaries. Second verse, same as the first. I don't see any new angle. Maybe I've been around the block too many times. I'm a tired black man and I'm tired of this issue, whether it's discussed by either race.
Do light skin blacks have it easier? Depends on what you call easy.
Halle Berry is always used as the measuring stick of what black women should look like. But if I'm not mistaken Halle Berry has never know her own father, has had a boyfriend beat her till she went half deaf in one ear, had baseballer Dave Justice pulling an Ike 2.0 on her in her first marriage, and had an embarrassing philandering sex addicting husband for the second.
I wouldn't call that easy. Just because she attracts men like bees to honey doesn't mean her life will be apple pie. And Just because your a beautiful woman doesn't mean you'll attract better quality men. I'll even go as far as to say that the more attractive you are the more ass-holey men you attract cause lots of superficial men like superficial beauty. The pool may be larger but quality is quality. Can I get an Amen?
Ultimately. Being light might help to open doors quicker for you; but nothing will sustain you like the development of personal self confidence and self assuredness that we all have to work on to get from point A to B in this thing called life. Light skin or not. What we as a people have to recognize is that there's more money to be made off of divisiveness than there is to have everyone love and accept themselves for who they are. Ultimately confidence is KING. Either we have dynamite parents that helped in that process or we must do the work for ourselves. So if I can make you desire to look like Halle Berry then my divisive job is done and I can collect a check off of your insecurities.
Ahhhhhh. The good ole US of A.
This is truly a confused country that creates lots of confused people. I've always considered myself plain old brown-skinned. Not light, not dark, but in between. I have a lot of hair but not wavy or fine, the kind that causes so much black girl envy. So I was thrown off when I was informed that I "jjust might be light enough to be hired" for a hotel front desk position when I first got out of college and was searching for a pt job. It never occured to me that people still judged black people on the shade of lightness of their skin. I thought that stuff went out of fashion, or at least admitting it, in the 70s. I sadly discovered that this wasn't the case. I observed white women at my PR job only hiring black secretaries that were light with long hair. When they were given a brown, short-haired temp, they quickly sent her back. I have been given attitude and dirty looks by darker black women who feel that I'm that light, long-haired" sterotype from Chicago to Puerto Rico. It's sad and I don't take it personally anymore but it's way past the time for us to move beyond the silly color consciousness.
My eyes glaze over when I read these skin color commentaries....I don't see any new angle. dukedraven
I totally agree, I've been such a comment hog on thread because of what I do see as a *NEW* angel, from the American POV- is the Bill O'Reilly comment on MJ (his white kids). And because I've just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. It was fascinating. It also explained why its seemed to me, some Afro Caribbeans seem to be inordinately color struck, that's not to say, AfAm, or 'real' Africans aren't. In Jamaica ,the one drop rule was codified, and operated in the reverse during /post slavery there, as it was a way for the minority whites to maintain power by recognizing the 'not all black' descent of some of the larger populace which was majority black.
I contend that logic is behind O'Reillys comment, [when has a white American man, ever implied a black man w/ white/bi-racial children was non black?] and all of the people who feel compelled to point out the presidents white mother in another way I think to demonstrate white superiority/black inferiority. I think this happens now when 'white' may soon become the minority
IT IS RESPONSES AND ATTITUDES LIKE DUKE DRAVEN'S THAT KEEP ISSUES SUCH AS THIS UNRESOLVED (NOT THAT THERE IS A RESOLUTION). WHY WOULD THERE BE A NEW ANGLE IF PEOPLE FAIL TO ACKOWLEDGE THE OLD ONE? I'LL KEEP SINGING THE FIRST VERSE UNTIL IT STICKS INTO PEOPLE'S HEADS ♥
Amen @ Anonymous.
And I agree Anon, even though the issue with colorism, good hair/bad hair and it's connection to superiority/ inferiority can be frustratingly tiring, dialog should remain open.
@ ANON
No need for all caps (overuse of caps are against the commenting rules). We don't have to shout at each other. Duke totally can read.
Dilettante - I just finished Outliers as well. An eye-opener, for sure. And yes, the people who ask me "what I am" are always of color. Sad that we're still having these discussions but I think we have to continue shining the light of these issues or they will never get any better.
I still don't know what color I am, other than brown, but I also don't care anymore. If you think I'm light, fine. If you think I'm not light, that's fine too. I just know I'm black and that has always been fine with me.
Beautifully said.
To those who've acknowleged reading Outliers: kudos to you. May I suggest that everyone read it. And thanks, Danielle.
When you are a special mix, you never get any good songs.
RUN-DMC's "Proud to be Black" wasn't quite on point.
There was no, "I'm proud to be orange y'all - motherfucker I'm lookin' like a basketball"
maybe she/he just liek using all CAPS. chillax you two....................................
and i misspelled *like, MY BAD
i used to mess with blurple babes for the longest. but my girl now is snob's complexion.
It's sad that skin color still rules some things. For instance the entertaiment industry is a good example. Record companies will skin a light skin girl with no talent (i.e. Rhianna)...but make a brown skin girl that can sing (i.e. Jazzmine Sullivan) jump through hoops.
In my opinion it's gotten worse in the entertainment industry than it was 30 or even 40 years ago. Thank God Areatha, and Gladys, even Whitney, came along when they did because if they were young and trying to get signed now even with their voices and presence it would be next to impossible for them to make it.
I think about a great actress like Cicely Tyson. If she were 20 now trying to break into film would she even be given legitimate auditions or would she just end up on an EBT or VH1 reality show in order to eat.
Now that's not to say that there aren't light skin people that are talented, example Beyonce, but let's be real most of these light skin folks in entertainment are just getting over with their looks and skin color. And sadly this seems to apply only to the women. A black male singer or actor can be pitch black but still find work as long as he's talented.
The woman are the ones that have to be a certain color, what's up with that.
I don't see why as Blacks we still buy into theses fabricated degrading ideals created by Whites to tear us apart. We all know the source, we know the intent and yet and still we choose to act ignorant and perpetuate this stupidity. I do not give one red cent about a persons skin color, hair texture or otherwise. I honestly believe all women are beautiful in their own individual right.
I was the "victim" of color jokes from my family, although I am not a dark skinned woman. It was cute when I identified myself as "lello" (i couldn't say yellow at 3) and brought my Mom the crayola that matched me perfectly, but then as I got older and decided to swim damn near everyday of my 10th grade summer, and I turned into the rich red brown that I am now. That's when the "Uh oh, Rekni got dark" or "Uh oh, you can't pass the paper bag test anymore" comments came. Keep in mind my family is various shades. It wasn't cute after that. Funny enough, my baby sister is a gorgeous chocolate brown (no one ever made comments to her) and from the time she was born I used to beg my Mom to put her into modeling. I knew I was pretty but I thought she was It! I never dwelled on my skintone, but my family and other people did in a manner they thought was joking, but I thought was offensive. Nowadays, I no longer live in my sunny hometown of Long Beach, but in the gloomy Bay Area, and I crave sun to keep my "summer color" and dread it when I start showings the lighter signs of winter.
All this to say, Black women and women of color, get over yourselves and your self hatred. Be dark, be light, be brown, be red... Just be you and love it!
Interesting piece, I'm mixed, but somehow dark enough to be often thought of as perhaps having two "lightskinneded" parents, so I get interesting reactions sometimes.
My girlfriend in high school had two light parents, and we remarked that I had black gums and she didn't.
Perhaps my most interesting incident was when I was a kid. I took the bus downtown to get some comics, then proceeded to wait for the bus to return home. I then noticed this guy arrive at the bus stop that was on the bus when I went into town. He was super-albino black, decked out in punk rock leather. He came and asked me what I was ethnically. I said I was black & white. He spit near my feet. It was my 12th b-day that day, and he was around 20ish, so i was outta there, and went to a different part of the bus stop, and eventually started reading the comics I had bought. A few minutes later I looked up and he was passing by me. As he did this he spit directly in my face. OK.
I wiped off the spit. For some reason I wasn't even mad at the guy, but I was fearful that he might go further.
He did, and when I got on the bus I deliberately sat up front, and he deliberately sat across from me, staring me down and smiling while wrapping a studded leather strap around his knuckles, studs pointing out.
Before the bus left I walked up to the driver and explained the situation. The driver called Metro security and the albino dude got off the bus before security arrived.
Trying to wrap my head around what occurred, it occurred to me that it wasn't about me, but him and his self-loathing, and this is the case for anyone who considers them a white-supremacist. It's really insecurity.
Nevertheless I decided that next time someone asked, I was black, period, for that's all they would see.
Just thought I'd share, and also to implore people to wrap their heads around this correctly. They don't hate us, they hate that they admire us, and value our skin above their own, hence tanning. Only correctly diagnosed, can we deal with the illogical in a logical way.
ummm just trying to understand... and spending w a a y t o o much time on this you wrote "super-albino black," Are you saying he was Afro descent, but had no pigmentation?
"They don't hate us, they hate that they admire us, and value our skin above their own, hence tanning."
If the [they] here is meant to be 'white' or European people, I would disagree. I think many people like having a tan, but its wrong to exaggerate and say that white women/men "wish" they were black when seeking a tan.
Conversely I don't think all AfAm women who relax their hair are always attempting to distance themselves from their race. The super blond weave, is up for debate ;-)
I'm leaving the colorism alone.
Danielle, the photo you used in the post was great. Do you know what year it was taken?