Posted on 03/23/2005 5:20:45 AM PST by FlyLow
"You can call me anything in the book when I was younger. Just don't call me African," Jason Reynolds told me. That, he said, was "the worst insult a dark-skinned boy, as a child, ever got."
"Africa," he explained, "is still equated to savage."
Reynolds, a student at the University of Maryland (UM), was not talking about racist remarks by white people. In fact, many white people don't have a clue that "colorism," the kind of prejudice Reynolds was talking about, even exists. Among black Americans, however, it's an open secret.
"I've benefited from the colorism, because I'm light-skinned, because I've always had the long, straight hair," said another black UM student, Marquita Briscoe. "I thought I was just pretty." In music videos, it often turns out, both light- and dark-skinned African-American women can be sexy — just not in the same way. "The darker the woman is," said Karen Morrison, also of UM, "she takes on what I refer to as . . . a 'ho' complex. She is the prostitute."
"The lighter a woman is, well, she's the goddess," said Morrison, who is dark. "She's the untouchable. She is the woman that all the men in the video aspire to have."
Apparently, a shade close to white is useful if you want to play a successful character in the movies. Mel Jackson, who played a business executive in "Soul Food," says light-skinned men like him tend to get those white-collar roles. "If the character's supposed to be more successful or more, more articulate or have a better background, they'll easily cast me in that character."
The Black Power movement was supposed to change colorist attitudes, and it did change some things in Hollywood. Dark-skinned male stars like Richard Roundtree began to get roles as action heroes.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Same thing in Brazil. In Mexico. In Southeast Asian countries like Japan, Korea, Philippines.
Its no secret that blacks are mor than capable of racism towards whites, asians, hispanics, and those blacks who "aren't dark enough".
Think not? If you're white, trying dating a black female without having your life insurance droppped.
?!
Hmmmm...never happened to me. Maybe my insurance company is color blind.
What?
Wasn't there a Spike Lee movie about this?
Some people are filled with self hatred.
I can't believe this would actually go on in today's society.
Signed,
Red-Headed Step-Child
Reynold's is really uninformed if she thinks there's no such thing as colorism among white people.
This is true. Otherwise why would Denzel be afraid to kiss Julia or why Terri Macmillan's book Waiting to Exhale be so popular? There are some parts of this article that are true. However, this is only one side of the experience of this trend.
Ask the Penn State QB who beat the white cop nearly to death becasue he had a black date. Ask the football players at OSU.
"Its no secret that blacks are mor than capable of racism towards whites, asians, hispanics, and those blacks who "aren't dark enough"."
And when a fair skinned white guy like me puts on a pair of shorts, the insults fly about how pale I am and need to get a tan.
"Reynold's is really uninformed if she thinks there's no such thing as colorism among white people."
See post 13. I have experienced it my whole life.
ping
FYI..sorry I don't have the exact title, or time to find a link for you, but there is a must read article in last Sunday's NY Times magazine about a young consrvative black economist at Harvard who is asking some fascinating questions about these issues, and their impact..Definitely worth reading..It should be on their website..regards..
Who is more obsessed with what color they or others are or what shade of that color they or others are...
For cryin' out loud...
Somebody should fund a nice fat gobmint study...
on paranoia
imo
Yes I saw it. There's a lot of colorism and different cultural oddities among white people. No one has asked. There's brunettes vs. blondes and all the stereotypes that go with it.
Indeed. Among the women I dated when I was young and single were a couple of black girls and, when I as an army officer in Oklahoma, a native american girl. Lovely women, in each case, inside and outside: educated, athletic, funny, and interestted in many of the same things I was. The parents and siblings of the black and native american girls had fits about them dating a white guy. I was threatened a couple of times, and the native american girl's father, a chief of some sort, even made his daughter move back to the reservation from her apartment in town, and had the tribal police bar me from entry.
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