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 ...
That's not the WORST of what they say about red-heads!
Let's not go there but say we did, okay.
The real 'intraracial' issue that is not discussed significantly in America is social class. Since almost everyone wants to think of themselves as 'middle class' (at least in public), and it represents the American ideal, even more than social security, class is the third rail of American politics. This fact is a major reason why European style socialism, which is based on class analysis and class consciousness, has never caught on in America beyond the limited cirlces of working class immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and an upper/upper middle-class elite who disdained the middle class as they looked for cultural and intellectual self-affirmation to the European upper classes (most of whom find such aping truly ludicrous and mildly amusing).
Also a very classless society. Go to Mexico, the upper class won't talk to or associate with the lower class.
You are spot on with respect to the issue of social class.
Amen to that! LOL
Why is it that total strangers think it is socially appropriate to comment on the whiteness of somebody's legs? I do not want skin cancer or wrinkles. I wear sunblock. I am not the whitest white person I've ever seen, but I'm definately very white. So what? I could tan, but I think it's stupid and dangerous. Total strangers need not comment.
Given that white people and black people can both get comments about being too light or too dark, I think it's just plain old lookism, and not so much racism. Tan is the beauty ideal right now. Not too pale, not too dark.
I prefer to be pale now and not spotty, wrinkled, and cancerous later on in life.
Another interesting angle on the darkness versus lightness issue is that, at least in my area, someone who is of mixed race (what they used to call mulatto) is automatically considered black. I had a uncle who married a black lady. All there mixed race daughter's friends were black. It seems that blacks will accept a mixed race individual as black, but whites will not accept a mixed race individual as white. Maybe it's a cultural leftover from the "one drop rule."
White is an easy color to dilute. If you mix white with another color, you generally get something closer to the color you mixed it with. If you mixed white paint with blue paint and asked a hundred people what color they saw, I would bet none would say white, most would say blue or a off color of blue.
I think she can give a you a great deal of insight into the colorism that blacks have about each other. It is not one sided. Some blacks think you can be too dark or you can be too light. Both sides tend to get a great deal of unnecessary remarks about their color. Many blacks think the lighter the skin the better because you are closer to being white. Then, some blacks think the darker the skin the better because you look black.
The bottom line, in every race people try and find ways to separate themselves. No matter what color people are there's always some need for someone to want to feel superior.
^
I'm guessing, but I think this stems from the ancient times when the most wealthy were able to stay indoors, out of the sun. As a result, it was a sign of affluence to be as pale as possible.
As a nearly transparent person, I can't figure out why I'm not worshipped!
It bothers me when people try to state anecdotal evidence as "fact".
My husband is white and has had not trouble keeping the same life insurance company for the 17 years of our marriage.
LOL!
>>Apparently, a shade close to white is useful if you want to play a successful character in the movies.
Like Wesley Snipes and Danny Glover.
I don't think that's what he meant.
I find that people are very curious (i.e. stare) at my family at times. My husband hardly notices. He floats in a happy cloud most of the time and is just happy to be spending time together.
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