Careful Remarks about “When Is Black ‘Black?’”
The Black Snob: “I had a Great Great Aunt Josephine, and she, like many members of my father’s mother’s family were light enough to pass for white. Yet my great great aunt and her sisters and her nieces were vehement about their blackness. They would curse you out in an instant if you doubted who and what they were. They married the blackest men they could find. As did my father’s mother, explaining why the light-bright-and-almost-white lineage ended with him and his brothers.” This comment documents a color-code phenomenon that is not talked about enough in the chatty “black” circles—on the Web and off—it is very rare to find a self-described “black” North American couple who are not the same very dark complexion. Just look at the photos of me and the mother of my third child in my infamous, previous post.
I’ve been inching my way toward this very touchy subject and The Black Snob just outright rams right into it. You see, kids, the accusation is that a brother like me would prefer a woman with light skin—or not. Dr. Margo Natalie Crawford accused me of having a “skin fetish” because she was writing a dissertation partly about this fetishism and I was nowhere near the level of articulation back when the Doctor and my authentic self were buddies.
You see, kids, I prefer a woman who at least comfortable with herself—approving of herself. I have been fooled three times by three different women of all the major melanized complexions, producing three different children. So I am more than “a little” concerned about this subject. It seems that women—especially the ones here in the most powerful empire on Earth—are too often looking for ways to disapprove of themselves. Check out this YouTube.com video on childhood obesity, find its relevance to what is written here and get back to me. The game a dude in the “real world” is supposed to have is based on the knowledge of a woman’s insecurities and how not to talk about it openly either for serious love interest or mack-daddy playing (often both to keep her “love life” interesting).
So one very ‘easy’ American way a woman with dark complexion can disapprove of herself is to find her skin color repulsive. This is awareness can be regarded as knowledge by her so when anyone else comes to her—say some guy like me telling her how much beyond beauty she is—all she hears is the unknowledgeable speaking to her. She wants lose herself with a “smart” guy. Every time she peers out of her own eyes she does not want to be reminded of what is “ugly”—a light-skinned brother who wants to lose himself in some silky dark chocolate is just the trick. It’s a match made in honkey heaven—and these relationships last too… longer than mine…
I know this from very, very, very personal experience that light-skinned brothers and sisters are often very violently militant about declaring their Blackness while we chocolate drops are just so sweet and slow. The honest writing of The Black Snob goes a long way toward shedding some light across this vast and complex issue.