Quote:
Originally posted by candela
I'm so sorry hun, but as a light skinned woman who is tired of being targeted because of my skin color I have to say...this is the tiredest subject ever..
To all: I wish we could all just love each other for being black.. I'm translucent I'm so pale and my boyfriend loves dark skinned women, he always says he thought the woman he would marry would be brown not d@mn near white as I am, we laugh but even that hurts. I've been teased all my life about my color and pressed to get a tan at every opportunity so it goes both ways... our children are only indoctrinated with what we allow them to be. Teach them differently make them question themselves, dissonance is painful so they may buck, but with persistence they may come to see the error of their ways, and THE MISEDUCATION OF THE NEGRO is ever relevant every black child in america should be required to read it.
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Boy do I feel you on this!!! I, too, am d@mn near translucent. As a child of the 70's, the "Black is Beautiful" movement was actually one source of my childhood trauma. The message all around me was not that we are beautiful in all our shades but, just like the message the movement was trying to rail against, only certain shades were beautiful- brown and deeper. And even when “light skin is in” I am still too light. I have spent most of my life feeling like I had to fight to assert my blackness to everyone, black, white, etc. And I have experienced being rejected by white people for being black and black people for not being "black enough." As a child I used to pray EVERY NIGHT that I would wake up dark skinned. It is hurtful to have sistas tell their sons there is something wrong with them because they find someone who looks like me- a Black woman- attractive. I agree that there is something pathological about a person who finds people their same complexion unattractive. But as the awful tide of "in fashion complexions" ebbs and flows in the Black community, we lose sight of the fact that it is equally wrong to down light skinned people who also had no control over their complexion because of the perceived benefit to it. We justify it in its own way and, as result, guarantee that the whole color complex issue continues on.