Within the Black community many times we don’t want to talk about the divide between dark skinned and light skinned. There continues to be a lot of acrimony today and it is squarely based in the internalization of Whiteness as good. When the media is not promoting a negative image of Blackness it is promoting light skinned Blacks thereby furthering the divide between us. Even in families children of different hues are treated differently as a result of this internalized hate. It is something that is always festering in the background and when I saw singer Steph Jones taking on this very charged subject with a video I simply had to share it with you.
Transcript:
What’s going on world? This is your boy Steph Jones. I wanted to come to y’all today to talk about something that is near and dear and heavy on my heart – and this is dark skinned women. Dark skin in general. But so um basically, Ima just go right into the story. I was at this barbecue and I was having a conversation with this dude and I pointed out how beautiful this girl was that was sitting on the couch. The way he was describing her was as though he has so much hatred and she was clearly a dark skinned woman. And he has so much hatred in his heart for dark skinned women and I’m like why do you sound like that? He was like I can’t stand dark skinned women blase blase blase. He was going on and on and on and my heart started boiling. I like yo yo yo yo I was like this is what I don’t understand. I said you are disrespecting your mama and a lot of your family and half of my family. And what made it even worse, is that he was darker than the girl that I was, that I was pointing at. I was just like how can you have so much self hatred? How can we have so much self hatred in our own race that we start depicting and hating each other and stuff like that. And my question is to y’all is how did this even get to this point?
I know this started with slaves, you had - you had the dark skinned in the filed picking cotton and you had the light skinned in the house – called them the house negroes. And this I wonder if I could actually say something that could get people talking. Why is it that there is such negative connotation when it comes to dark skin when the – in the media everything? So my, the one thing I want to say, dark skinned women, you are beautiful not just for a dark skinned woman. You are beautiful period! Period, point blank! So, the topic is such a hot topic and nobody really talks about it, nobody people professor and study says, ain’t no professor ever gave me no kind of slip to fill out and 1 out of 4 and all this stuff. I’ve never filled out any consensus, any kind of form ever for any kind of study say. SO we down in the street, we down in the gritty and I want to know why are there such negative connotations when it comes to dark skin - dark skinned women anything? And we will never ever beat racism, which probably will never happen anyways but at least we can try. We’ll never beat racism if we are fighting inside our own race. ‘
Light skin pretty boy and I’m just no um uh I’m not negating light skin either because automatically light skin is better; it’s pretty boy. That’s what is included, I’ve been called a pretty boy my whole entire life. I used to get perms when I was little because when I was younger, I was the only light skinned dude in my whole grade that didn’t have a softer grade of hair. Back then I used to call it good hair/bad hair because I didn’t know the difference. I got good hair. I got nappy hair. So um, I used to perm my hair so that I could fit in with all the other light skinned cats and as I got I learned to accept myself just for what I was.
And it’s just crazy how all the other all this stuff goes on and I know that so many people have so many stories. I have stories where a cop pulled me over in Long Beach with he came to my car with a gun pointed at my car. “Do you know why I pulled you over?” I was like I have no idea. “Cause your music was too loud.” There wasn’t even a radio in the car.you know there’s a lot of stuff that you could talk about and no so many people that have so many different stories when it comes to dark skin, light skin being racist inside our own race everything. So, I just wanted to touch upon that, I know it’s a very sensitive subject. I am going to talk about it since no one else with, I’ll talk about it. How about that? You’re boys Steph Jones is bringing up dark skin women, dark skin period whatever. And I know I talked about this on facebook and twitter and I couple people they got, they got really defensive. They was like how can you be light skin and you don’t know what it’s like to be dark skinned. And you don’t know what it’s like to be light skinned how about that. There is racist all over, all across border, but my things is, I’m not trying to, to make it seem like everything is good all over the place. In every single race, there is discrepancies in every single race so basically I just wanna get people talking about it and see what can we do try and make an effort to at least try and make an effort, to at least progress forward as human, as men – mankind at least try and make an effort. So, that’s my thing. Leave your comments at the jump. Subscribe to you boy and again I say, Dark skin women you are not beautiful just for a dark skin woman, you are beautiful period. I have has so many of my dark skin us women friends they’re like, I can’t believe the comments that I get. They’ll be like you’re pretty for a dark skinned girl.
I gotta say it is some great validation to hear a light skinned man speak out in support of dark skinned sisters. I just had to show him so love.
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