Meus Renaissance said:
I wanted to bring this subject up, probably in a thread but I thought it was too risky so I'll air it here.
There is a taboo within the non-black communities that you can't raise, in complaint, the misuse of the N word by black people. Well, there seems to be a similarly sensitive topic within black communities that isn't often raised but - in my opinion - known and that is the issue of beauty and skin colour, or shall I say skin tone.
I'm not sure if anyone here has come across it to this extent, but I'm pretty convinced now that black women who seem to have more 'Caucasian' facial features are interpreted to be prettier than those not. This is in contradiction to the fact that the current Miss World is West African herself. This observation came about in previous debates and conversations, and from judging the Net, it's been discussed before in photo comparisons. Most seem to prefer East African women to West African. There are some distinct differences in appearance between the two groups in some areas, but the implication of this goes beyond just East and West (or Sub-Saharan). The description given of West African women, for example, was particularly controversial - West Africans in general were seen as the stereotypical 'black' in terms of appearance.
In my parents culture, lighter skinned people are considered more attractive. There is a group of people there in that country, that originated from the West, but they speak the same language and everything. They're ostracised, from the comments I've gathered, mainly for their appearance. It's actually quite hurtful to hear Africans cussing another black African group for 'looking more black'. Those comments belonged in 50's America. Since then I've had this question in my mind, do people generally feel the lighter skin features are more attractive? In Africa, I would say yes for some groups. I've come across similar examples in some Indian South-Asian communities as well.
Has anyone come across this at home or with others?
RE: the "misuse" of the N-word by black people? We can't misuse it. Ever.
It was used to cut us down for a jillion years, and it was decided that we're using it to NOT cut ourselves down anymore. So non-black people sort of have to deal with the fact that their usage of the word will almost never be colloquial, and ours almost always will be. It's just like that, and will be like that until the almost 400 years of subjugating black people in America can be ignored/forgotten/disavowed.
RE: looking more/less black and light-skinned v. dark-skinned...it's a complicated thing. Since the dawn of time, "black" has always had a negative connotation. I don't mean that simply from a racial/ethnic point of view - I mean that in a straight-up, literal etymological sense. "Black" has always implied things like evil, or the unknown, or darkness, and things like that.
Black magic.
Black flags.
The dark side of the moon.
Calling Africa the "dark continent" (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Continent)
Heart of Darkness.
Black ops.
and so on. The idea of "black" isn't just the absence of color/light like it is supposed to be. There is a negativity associated with it too...and naturally, over centuries of time and countless generations of people that negativity was tied in with skin tone too - people with darker features are of lesser worth, or are potentially nefarious/evil/mysterious. As society became more keyed in on the "differences" between people, things associated with being "black" or "more black" acquired that negativity too. Bigger noses, plumper lips, wider hips, kinkier hair, and more prominent facial features became less desirable characteristics given that the people that generally DIDN'T have those features (white people) were those who ran shit in the world...so naturally, the societal thinking became "well, I'll have an easier go of life and people will like me more if I resemble the ruling class".
Can't fault people for thinking that way either...it makes sense, right? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. If you can't join 'em, look the part at least.
And of course, over time this idea became built into society - and it creates a schism in the minority subsections of society about what "beauty" is. It's easy for people who have been fucked up for years by the ruling class to beat themselves up over things they perceive about themselves as wrong - especially when the society at large has collectively decided that those things are wrong in the first place. Why would you dig kinky hair if nobody else did? Why would you think dark skin was awesome if everyone else was trying to be less dark? This sort of thing plays right into the self-hatred that almost 400 years of non-white people getting shit on by white people caused...but what can you do really, except deal with it and move forward?J ust gotta start digging yourself for whatever you have, is all. I'm happy I'm nappy, and I got a nice-sized nose to breathe up all the white man's air. :lol
And I love my women with nice lips for easy kissing, and nice hips for that killer walk, and dangerous curves to get lost following. So sue me.
In the black community, there is that light-skinned v. dark-skinned thing...but it's not really a big thing, because we've got way too many issues just being black to begin with. So there are many beautiful people of all shades of color - and generally, we think of it that way. I'd like to believe in the other minority ethnic groups, things are more along those lines than not as well.
