I so hate when people make ignorant comments like the one you mentioned. I especially hate the one "You know black people attract a lot of heat." I understand that it's supposed to be a joke but a lot of people actually think it's true. I mean really, if you stood in a big group with a bunch of white people it would be hot too. But I can on and on about that.
I wrote an article for my campus newspaper 2 years ago on comments that black people make. Like I've been told a few times that I have "nice features". I asked what they meant by that and they'll be like "You know, for a dark-skinned person." What makes these people think that everyone that is dark-skinned is straight from Africa? I don't understand. I remember when a fairly dark-skinned friend of mine saw this guy that she thought was cute. She said, "He's too cute to be dark-skinned." Do you know I was too shocked by what this girl said. First of all she is about 1/2 a shade lighter than him and why does it have to be an issue, why couldn't she just say he was cute and leave it at that.
And another thing the whole "good"/"pretty" hair thing is so old. What makes someone with naturally straight hair that wears it in a ponytail everyday so pretty? When I say someone hair is pretty it's because it looks healthy and has a cute style, not because of its texture. When I would question my friends about the issue they wouldn't know what to say, only thing they could say was "you know what I mean..." I'm like no I don't know. After a while my friends stopped making the comments and I felt a sense of pride because I helped to change the way they viewed things.
It's sad that hundreds of years after slavery, many black peoples minds are still enslaved. Whether it's the way someone looks, talks, their body type, whatever, blacks are always trying to separate other blacks. Until we understand that self-hatred has been embedded into our minds, hundreds of years ago by white slave owners to keep us divided we'll never become united as a race.
The only thing we can do is to teach our children to love each other and not to try to distinguish light skinned vs dark-skinned. Sorry this is so long but I wish people would try to escape the ignorance.We really need to move on, but that won't happen until we accept our past ignorance.
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