People get over it. You can have three siblings in one family and all three will have a different skin color. Hell my left arm is darker than my right because of driving in my car with my arm out the window. (Trucker's tan)
I've never been obsessed with color. My mom is ebony and my dad's the color of a banana. And they are both Creole. We have so many shades in my family it's not even funny and no one has ever said one tone is better than another. Actually that's a lie, I've always been told that darker skin is better because it doesn't show blemishes as easily. Which is true.
Every little think marks my skin and face and I hate it. And fade cream does not work! I've tried it on my shins and knees from my clumsy childhood scars and they haven't gone away not one bit.
One thing that I can say negative about GH vs. BH and LS vs. DS was the reaction I received when I was pregnant with my son. My son is half Filipino and the whole time I was pregs everyone kept saying how beautiful he was going to be because mixed babies are so beautiful. And black babies are What? Chopped liver? I was having a mixed baby but I wasn't having a mixed baby just to have a mixed baby if that makes sense.
The lady on the Tyra show was saying she refuses to date black men because she wants a mixed a baby with "good hair' then her daughter comes out and has the worst hair on the stage! I fell over laughing. DUMB ASS!
I will admit that I was curious what my baby would look like but I think that's natural of any expecting mom. We want to see their little faces. My son was born looking very asian and it scared me that he didn't look more black. I don't know why. He had slanted eyes and bone straight hair and very pale skin. I was like, I'm going to look like his nanny!
His hair started to wave up a little when he became about two and now if I keep his hair short the ends will curl. If I let it grow out a little his hair turns back straight. So he has what I would consider european hair. I was hoping for a little texture like lenny kravitz or cree summer. That would have been cool. but it is what it is. (he's darker now too) I still get the what is he? question at the super market and I say he's bi-racial and I turn around. I don't have to go into my son's genealogy with a total stranger and it's not good for my kids to see me giving out personal information to strangers anyway.
I don't understand why dark people feel persecuted by their dark ebony skin. And I equally don't understand the misconception that dark skin = more black.
How much european is mixed into your blood has nothing to do with your skin color per se. My nephew is half white and half black and he's darker than me. My daughter's dad is half mexican and half black and he's way darker than me. Even my daughter is darker than me. My really good friend has a mom my color and a dad the color of wesley snipes and he is lighter than both of them and has red hair and green eyes.
Black people need to wake up. We are diverse, beautiful, and unique. That's what makes us special. I love the fact that we come in so many shades and tones. It does make it harder for us women to find makeup that matches perfectly but I don't want to look like the girl next door. I don't want to have the same hair, skin color, and swagger as anyone else.
Why do black people always feel like we don't measure up? We are just as smart, beautiful, talented, and driven as any other race. Don't let your own ignorance be your own limitation.
You can't blame white people anymore for not understanding your culture and heritage. They may not have taught you more than "you were a slave then martin luther king came along and now you're free" in High school history but now you have unlimited resources to find out who you really are.
Just like you found this blog there are so many internet tools available to find out about your heritage and where your people came from. Read some slave journals, learn about how people of the time thought of slavery as a business, and a way of trade not just a way to degrade people.
Understand how that reflects on how your company treats you now. It's all about the almighty dollar, that bottom line. Why pay people to do something when I can make them work for free? Which is why many companies today ship our jobs over seas because they can pay them less and make them work 18 hours days for $5 a day.
Watch African American Lives. This originally aired on PBS and it is the study of a man that did DNA sampling to trace back black people's origins. He also told them what percentage of what each of them were. It's available now on netflix. This was really fascinating to me. There were white people on there that turned out to be actually black. And black people saying they had "indian in they family" that turned out not to have not one drop of indian in them. I wish I had the money to have this done. I would like to know what part of Africa my ancestors were from.
I have spoken to my grandmother in depth about my heritage and learned that her grandfather was their slave owner. She remembers living on his plantation to a share cropper father. When her grandfather died they were forced to leave the plantation. She of course never called him grandfather, but she knew who he was. Her grandmother was his slave and house woman and she worked in the house with him. he was never married and he kept her on as his servant even after slavery ended. It's amazing the stories your grandparents and elders can tell you about the "bad ol' days" as my grandma says.
Now that I know who I am and where I come from topics like this doesn't matter to me anymore. I don't care what skin color or hair texture I have. I'm just happy to be a strong black woman!
