Yesterday, a friend of mine showed me a clip from the Tyra Banks show about a young woman who hated her Blackness. She was biracial – Black and White. Yet when she looked in the mirror, she refused to see her Blackness. (She was brown, it was hard to tell by looking that she was biracial). She said she didn’t like Black people because they are dishonest, loud, not good people. She has two confederate flags in her house and one she proudly displays in her car, and goes to rodeos and only associates with White people. She does everything that she sees as “White,” and trys SO hard to show the world that she is not only NOT Black, but against all "Blackness." She honestly equalizes her Blackness and all Blackness with evil.
Though this episode made me want to punch this young lady in the face.. she said something that was so powerful and something that I can empathize with. She said that she wishes she was White because then society would value her more. After hearing her say this, instead of anger I felt pity for this young lady. She has so much inner hate, not because she wants to hate who she is, but because she feels inferior. She feels less than…and the only explanation is SOCIETY.
I think, (here I go again) if we could see the natural beauty in us, we could start changing the view society has of us...has anyone heard the statistic that the Black women is the most undesirable woman compared to other races? Yeah - that feels great to know....
Racism is sometimes so subtle, people don't always verbalize racist conceptions of blackness, but they transmit them nonetheless. Whiteness continues to be treated as the obvious standard of beauty, but hopefully in time that will change.
ReplyDeleteIn this case I have to wonder how she was raised and what was she told her whole life. There has to be a reason other than society that has led her to equate all things bad and evil with Blackness. She clearly lacks any positive Black role models in her life. However, I totally get what you are saying. I off the cuff point out to people how "we" are left out of everything. In school they teach this all encompassing we, but when you get down to it, it only refers to the white people. In my multicultural counseling course the three paragraphs that had to teach future counselors on counseling Black people was all negative. It would lead one to believe that we are all uneducated, drug-addicted and rely on our sickly parents to take care of our many children. It is so past time that we rewrite history!
ReplyDelete@ Krys - Yes...let's rewrite our history! But how? And I feel like the standard of beauty has changed in the past...at least slightly...I have hope too Tina. I do...it starts in our minds. I think we need to change the discourse around beauty and immerse young people in this new ideology! The tough question once again is how do you do this...if it's not happening in schools how do we do this?
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