SOUNDS LIKE UNCLE RUCKUS LEE DANIELS PRODUCED ANOTHER HOT MESS FOR FOX

A little birdie told me they saw Lee Daniel's STAR, which has a white woman lead, is a anti-black hot mess. I hear it even features an angry black woman that Queen Latifah talks down to regularly. 

I'm not going to judge the show because I haven't seen it. 

What I have seen is Daniels' body of anti-black-woman work. That means, it's time for a partial repost... since some black and brown folk appear to be surprised by the Daniels' anti-black content. 

FROM
SOMETIMES IT'S BETTER IF YOU SEE UNCLE RUCKUS COMING 



Despite my shameful addictions [to Scandal] I'm still gonna talk trash about "Empire," "The Butler" and especially what Daniels did to the book "Push" when he made it into "Precious" and Uncle Lee Daniels himself.


Hell, I'd watch "Once Upon A Time" before I'd watch "Empire." And that's saying something because I can't stand  "Once Upon A Time When All The World Was White."

Meanwhile
Just outside of the arbitrary lines
drawn to carve out Africa

"Once Upon A Time" has an ensemble cast the size of a football team but, unlike a football team, it's whiter than the 2015 Oscars.  Somehow the producers at OUAT don't think fictional fairy tale characters can be black without ruining the story.  (How many bible story people including Egyptian Kings have been white in Hollywood again?)







The first few episodes of "Once Upon A Time When All Was White With The World" started out with one black person, as a bad guy, that showed up for 2 minutes each episode. I wasn't even sure that the darkish-skinned actor considers himself a "Black American"  But the thing that really offended me is what happened to the show's first black female character

Presenting Cinderella's Black Fairy Godmother. (Get out your stopwatch)

Black Fairy God Mama died in less than a minute, way less.  And I'm not sure you could tell she was black  the entire time she was on screen. (I was steaming mad for another 3 episodes before I realized she really wasn't coming back.)

Fairy Godmother
In case you blinked

Rumor has it other black characters came and went quickly on "Once Upon A Time"---including Rapunzel with a really long weave (I'm not even kidding). Despite all this,  I recently found myself watching a few minutes, on a lark, after a 4 year boycott.  The first thing I see is "Mulan," Disney's Asian female warrior character.

'So far so good,' I thought to myself, 'This episiode isn't yet another snow white episode.'

I never saw "Mulan"  but I saw the previews.  I know Disney's Mulan was a good Asian girl that triumphs over adversity because of her pure heart by the end of the movie because...ya know...it's Disney. That's the formula. Yet 20 minutes into "Once Upon A Time" and it's clear Mulan has lost her way, has become a cynical thief in need of a redheaded white chick for a savior.

By the time 22 minutes had passed the television was off.   However,  I'd watch the mess that is "Once Upon A Time" before I'll watch freaking "Empire" Hell, I'll send money to get the "Once Upon A Time" DVD before I'll watch freaking "Empire."

I won't watch "Empire" because I don't want him putting and subtle anti-black ideas in my head. And I'm going to be careful around anything Daniels produced, created, or directed because I'm pretty sure Lee Daniels doesn't like black people too much. And I'm a little more sure he despises black women (in more ways than one). He might have a mixed-race-people fetish too.

And I promise you the feeling is mutual from here if he doesn't like black folk. Because I can't stand him either.



Part of me almost wishes Uncle Lee Daniels-es of this world were more like Uncle Ruckus. You can see Uncle Ruckus a mile off and you know not to listen to what he's spouting.

So let me count the anti-black ways of Lee Daniels

"PRECIOUS"

I think I hated "Precious," the movie when first saw it. And that's when I thought it was a FUBU movie. I hadn't quite made up my mind if I hated it or not when I found out the white folks loved it.


So I watched sections of it again and thought maybe I was having an respectability-politics-allergic reaction. Then I somebody gave me the book, "Push," which is the basis for the movie.  And I found that I loved Precious when she was in the book "Push" while I wanted to slap her half the time during the movie.


It didn't take much to figure out what Daniels had done to give "Precious" white appeal.

PRECIOUS CAST

On creating white appeal in "Precious," "The Butler," and "Empire" To be continued at the link

http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2015/11/uncle-lee-daniels-aint-uncle-ruckus-but.html

SUCCESSFUL BLACK MEN IN BRAZIL DON'T MARRY BLACK WOMEN

Feeling Rebloggy

PART 3 OF THIS WEEK'S SERIES ON BRAZIL

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF RACE IN BRAZIL

Part 1: http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-social-construction-of-race-in.html

REACT OR DIE: DANGEROUS TO BE BLACK IN BRAZIL 

Part 2  http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2016/03/react-or-die-its-dangerous-to-be-black.html

Black Brazilian actress Polly Marinho, 32, thinks this is a natural outcome in a country that values whiteness on television, in its magazines and in government. 

“We are educated to think, like, that black is not beautiful. Black is a slave. Black is not good,” said Marinho, who recently starred in a popular television show on Brazil’s largest television network. 

“Let’s take, for example, a very famous black soccer player. When they want money, they want good things. A beautiful house. A Ferrari and a white, white, blue-eyed chick."

When Marinho lived in New York for two years, she was surprised to see well-off African-American men seriously dating black women because it just doesn’t happen in Brazil. Although her acting career is booming in Brazil, she longs to return to New York for the plethora of acting opportunities and the black men. "

Read More:

 http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/03/why_successful_black_men_in_brazil_won_t_marry_black_women.html 

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF RACE IN BRAZIL

Thinking about race identity in the Brazil is hard to wrap my head around.

In the U.S. it's normal for us to observe (even if we don't agree with it) hypodescent, commonly called "the one drop rule"

That is, in the United States, the mostly unwritten rule is if you have one drop of black blood you are considered "black." This is based on centuries old biological racism which is based on a erroneous belief in the biology of race. The belief in the biology of race has been so strong that there was even a court case where a woman went to court to have herself declared white. I believe a state court(?) ruled that a person with 1/32  black black ancestory meant she could not identify herself as white.
(That probably means if one great, great or one great, great, great grandparent is black, you're black. I'll let you do the counting of "greats")

Slavery, that obscure court case that I can't half remember, and everything in between (except maybe Le Dolezal) indicates that the excluding racial identity in the United States is "white."  It is the whiteness of the dominant culture that demands purity. And that kind of discrimination is normal to my brain.

Even though some of us have given up forcing people to identify via the one drop rule, people who have the slightest tinge of color in their skin are allowed to identify themselves as mixed, bi-racial, and even cablinasian. But those who have more than a tinge of color in their skin, whoinsist on identifying as "white" are given major side-eye by dark-skinned folk and greeted with outright shock by white people should they ever say words that mean, "I am white." 

However, in Brazil? They don't do hypodescent.

Whiteness does not nominally exclude in Brazil.

You can be as dark as Tiger Woods and Lupita Nyongo's lovechild and try to identify yourself as "white" so long as you can trace you biology to somebody white and you are pale enough in shade (I think.  It feels so twisted in my head)

You can try. But I think there's a skin shade box you have to check off in order to identify as "white" too. So if you're like Tiger Woods where being identified as "black" bothers you in Brazil, you have options that seem to mean (in U.S. terms) "brown-skinned," "mixed race", and/or "bi-racial"

As I understand it, many darkish-skinned people fear/hate being identified as black will identify as "white" if there is any way possible in Brazil.

And those that are too dark to claim "white" will claim to be in a group called "brown" And if you start earning a lot of money you can try to change your racial category into a paler one (That is you're light brown poor  you're in the brown group but the same person might be able to claim to be white if that person is rich)

This goes a long way in showing just how deep the racism problem is in Brazil, though racism's pattern seems very different from that of the United States.

For a long time, pale folk of Brazil would claim that all this racial ambiguity they've built into their categories means there's no racism or less racism in Brazil.

But you know what?

Most of the CEOs in Brazil are pale, regardless of what words they use for the ethnic/racial identity.

When the models go from there to here in order to compete in the Miss Universe contest etc, the models have been historically been very pale to white. (I hope things have changed in the age of Obama but the story below indicates, things haven't changed much.)

And according to what I'm reading, the government of Brazil deliberately made racial identity complicated, deliberately set out to make race and therefore racism harder to track by making the racial categories difficult to define

"When as the former slave owners set about diluting the country’s blackness, they also went to work on their cover story.

In the Brazilian creation myth – the country’s version of Canada’s “cultural mosaic” or the U.S. “melting pot” – the country is a democracia racial, a racial democracy. This official story was built on the idea that from the day slavery ended, Brazilians of all colours were equal. After all, there was no segregation, no apartheid, no Jim Crow. Glossing over the massive disparities between the former owners and the newly freed slaves – who had no education, land or assets – the Brazilian elite, almost entirely white, declared the country uniquely equal and, in effect, postracial.

“It was ‘invisibilization,’” says Marcelo Paixão, who is black and a professor of economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “The discourse was that we don’t have race in Brazil, so you don’t have race problems in Brazil, and you don’t need to discuss the inequality.” "

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/brazils-colour-bind/article25779474/


White sociologists in the U.S. actually had debates and became confused in the 1980 and 1990s claiming Brazil had a lot less racism than the U.S. 

But anybody with eyes, people who are not bent on to e-racing racism everywhere caqn see the racism every time they look at photos and images of the money-ed and powerful of Brazil.

Some will point to Brazil's habitual bragging about carnival and the variety of shades of people singing and dancing on the streets.

My answer? Yeah, well black people in the United States were oppressed as h*ll in this country during the 1960s and 1970s, Yet you would see black folk on television, in commercials, singing and dancing while they were ordering a burger, under the golden arches hourly.

The happy darkies pushed out front don't fool anybody here or there.  The affluent and powerful are paler here in the U.S. and in Brazil too, and in a lot of places around the world.

But for all Brazil's attempts at "invisiblization" racism, the overt kind, and the attending poverty seem much worse for Blacks in Brazil. 

Street actors recreating "Aladdin"

This photo may seem petty to some. But it's very overt. These actors look like they are walking around out on the street or in a Brazilian Disneyland equivalent or a place very much like Hollywood boulevard. The overt-ness of this street performance should be seen as the tip of an iceberg. You can't see the rest of the iceberg from the deck of the Titanic, but you know it's there.

Brazil, while having the largest black population outside Africa, was the last country to officially outlaw slavery in 1888. That's a little more than 20 years than after slavery was outlawed in the U.S.

And since Brazil didn't go through the same Slavery Part 2, Jim Crow, that we did here in the U.S., it seems like claiming the country of Brazil to be post-racial 100 years (?) before the U.S. did was much more effective in maintaining white supremacy.

That must be why the Queen of Carnival was changed from black to light, in 2013, due to an overtly racist response from a sizeable portion of the population. 

DARK QUEEN REPLACED

Apparently there is a Queen of Carnival in Brazil voted in every year. And Nayara Justino was elected to be that Queen in 2013.

Justino was called everything from a monkey to a darkie, and told she didn’t deserve to be the Globeleza because she was “too Black.” What hurt most, though, were that many Black Brazilians also thought she was unfit for the title because of her dark skin.

“Black people in Brazil are ashamed of being Black,”  Neusa Borges, a Black actress explains in the video. “There are very few who will stand up and say, ‘I am Black.'”

As a result of the backlash, Justino was stripped of her title without...notice.  “They called me and said, ‘You’re not going to be Globeleza anymore. Thanks for your participation, 

Read More

http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2016/02/heres-how-brazilians-treated-its-first-black-globeleza-carnival-queen/

You know what? 

It's one thing to be black in this country and have a smallish portion of black and brown folks that internalize racism and despise themselves. It would be quite another to live in Brazil where many or most of the people WE WOULD identify as black in the U.S. want to identify as anything but black.

Clearly, the white racists there are a lot smarter than the ones here and they have been from the very beginning. The white people in power have the middle class white people hating the light people, and the next shade of light people down hating the brown people, and the brown people hating the black people.

I wonder if this has created a gap between the haves and have-nots is astronomically huge? (<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">
As a result of this higher level of hidden(?) racism, the Brazilian police killing black people make the white racist cops here look like amateur hour. Brazilian police have out-killed the cops here by 100s of folk, despite being 50% smaller and a lot of those dead are black.  

More on the cops of Brazil tomorrow

GABRIELLE UNION CLOWNS STACY DASH

I know Gabrielle Union did this old school who-dat?  mess on purpose. But it was perfectly played. She is a fine actress.

Gabrielle Union Blasts Stacey Dash At Sundance
"Who is Stacey Dash?" BET Gabrielle Union
Posted by ET Canada on Tuesday, January 26, 2016

I promised myself I wasn't saying anything about Stacy Dash. I see her face and click the off switch almost as fast as when I see Anne Coulter. But this was funny.  

INTERNALIZED RACISM and RESPECTABILITY POLITICS

I used to think "internalized racism" and "respectability politics" were the same thing. But now I'm thinking one is a thought process or a belief process while the other is a behavior. 


In the act of internalizing racism, a black person takes in a criticism of black people and black culture from white supremacy sans any critical analysis because that person is already ashamed of those-black-people-over-there not performing up to their own standards (ala Bill Cosby's Pound Cake Speech and a fair percentage of what comes out of Don Lemon's mouth)

Next, believing that they are "taking responsibility" for the badness in blackness by screaming about "black-on-black crime" louder and in an uglier fashion than any given white racist, that same black person pats themselves on the back for unique/smarter thinking that's contrary to what most other black people think 

They do so:

- without taking the time to think about where their beliefs about the black community are coming from.

-  without realizing white on white crime happens at the very same rates. (FBI UCR data shows that 84 to 85% of murder and other violent crimes are intrarracial every, single, year.  Why? Because people kill and commit crimes against people they live near. And the United States is still fairly defacto segregated. If Chinese people mostly live in Chinese neighborhoods then Chinese-on-Chines crime is probably upwards of 84% as well.  

- without realizing that the absolute number of black crimes are higher because black poverty rates and population densities where blacks live are higher. The sociologists that wrote "The Bell Curve" are infamous for mistaking racist mistake of assuming black skin was a cause of or linked to criminality. Once the statistics were examined and corrected, it became clear that all "The Bell Curve" actually proved was something that was already known: poverty and population density are linked to crime.  White people have the same problems with murder and violent crime when poverty and population density are at the same levels.

In other words, black people are not innately inferior to white people in any way. When circumstances are different, outcomes are different. And when a white researcher actually believes in racial equality, things like poverty and population density being a precursor to higher crime rates will be obvious in the data because that researcher will be willing to look at their own racial history for the answers.

But  all the internalized racism sufferer 'understands' is that white (racist) people are right, however they consider themselves to be superior to most black people or consider themselves as belonging to a certain class of superior black people.




Thinking that the black community can "behave" its way out (negative) blackness rather believe in the natural effects of poverty, this black person spews the very same anti-black racist crap that the white racist does but in milder "taking responsibility" tones.  They execute this "respectability politics" by saying things like 'Yeah, pale person x was bad for doing y but the black person shouldn't have been wearing a hoodie. And what about black on black crime? We need to clean our own stuff up before we complain about white people.'*

I don't know what we should do about some of these internal racism suffering, respectability practicing folk.  Detox is clearly the answer. You would have to stop them from watching and reading anything Fox News might approve of.  But you can't force a person into racial rehab.  So what comes before white supremacy detox?

"I remember when I first caught wind of CNN anchor Don Lemon’s antics. I was living with my mother and younger brother. My mom and I were getting ready for work and talking current events. She brought to my attention Don’s five suggestions to help fix the black and brown community: pull your pants up, stop calling each other "nigga," don’t litter, finish school, and stop having babies."

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2014/06/stop-listening-to-don-lemon

Calling them in rather than calling them out seems like the more dignified approach. But, from where I sit, the black person who considers themselves the superior black person doesn't hear too well.  A little less love and a little more beating about the head may be called for. Black people perpetuating the non-existent "black on black crime" phrase is a pet peeve of mine. 

So please do read more: http://fusion.net/story/143613/a-guide-to-debunking-black-on-black-crime-and-all-of-its-rhetorical-cousins/





(*-If you're still unclear on the execution of respectability politics, find and read Bill Cosby's 'Pound Cake Speech.' If you have time listen to it first, then read it. Without the funny delivery, Cosby's speech reads very differently than it sounds. You could also look up the things Don Lemon said about Trayvon Martin's hoodie) 

LIGHT PRIVILEGE, DARK JEALOUSY, AND DENIAL

In a Huffington Post article Kim Lute talks about the pain she feels because she is unable to befriend other black women as a light-skinned black woman. In one of her few frank moments she says:  

"In all fairness, this "mulatto" (which technically I am not) has led a far easier life simply because I lack darkness. "

- - - - - - - -
Light-skinned women are going to have to get just this honest to have a real conversation. But unlike the writer of this article, they are going to have to spend just as much time on how they have the "easier [black] life"  as they do on the jealousy they experience from darker-skinned females. 

However, I'm not sure honest conversation was Lute's objective. I think maybe venting pain was...if I'm feeling generous.

Regardless of what I think of Lute or her click-baity article, I totally get that light-skinned women get the outsider treatment, the jealousy treatment, and being treated as less than black from darker-skinned females. I haven't experience it, but I've seen it. I've seen it happen to people I care about and love. And it hurt me, so I know it hurt them

photo by Jenn Deering Davis

Again, I don't know how it feels. But I've been a witness multiple times. And from what I've seen? The jealousy from the darker-skinned sister is twice as bitter and vicious in childhood.  But I've seen light-skinned girls defended by dark-skinned girl friends when they were attacked in grade school and junior high too.

Overall, though, it seems like being light-skinned preference is virtually no benefit at all when you're a young kid. I also tend to  think the scars left on the light-skinned are there for life.  And those childhood scars lead them  to be quick with the black and brown version of the predominantly white "I'm colorblind!" defense. How many times have I heard "I don't see shade differences" or "We're all black!"  The light fragility sufferer is every bit as shrill as the white person who whispers, practically to themselves, "There's only one race, the human race" over and over again.

It's kinda...well...crazy. How can a light skinned person look at a white person and know that that person is experiencing white fragility then turn around and exhibit the same symptoms seconds later when the subject of colorism comes up? 

But let me be clear. Crazy as light fragility seems to me,  these dark jealousies and light preferences aren't coming from defectiveness or magic.

The white beauty standard has been beating black and brown women over the head since we first set foot here in 17th century. And while black men may have been able to shrug off the light-house-negro and dark-field-hand identity, women are still judged by beauty and looks - not abilities. Even a presidential candidate like Hillary Clinton was judged by hair and her tendency to wear pantsuits.

I'm prissy, but I'm a feminist. I need my make-up, my hair-did, and my heels. And I love clothes. But all these things are icing, not the cake. The best part of me is my empathy and my brain which are connected to my abilities. And it's a fight to keep the beauty thing in its proper place--even for me.

A woman's worth has repeatedly been linked to beauty **ALWAYS** And for black women in the U.S. that means from the 17th century to now that we've been clobbered with the white beauty standard over and over and over. And while many of today's black women seem like they ARE aware that the white media beats into us the idea that white women are gorgeous ones at the top of the ladder - in stores, in magazines, in movies, and in huge all white ensemble casts like "Once Upon A Time" -- it seems like most black women think that they are "smart enough" to be immune. But we're not. We need more reinforcement and support than we're getting. We just do.

But back to the ladder...

If white women are at the top of the ladder or above the ladder, then light women are a rung or two above dark-skinned women. And light women with white features? They are 7 or 8 rungs above us all (dark-skinned, medium-skinned, light-skinned-with-black-features). From what I have observed? Light-women without white features may have fairly limited privilege (maybe intra-racial privilege only). But I don't know for sure.  Light women ain't talkin'. And on the rare occasion they do talk, they sure aren't talking about privilege differences between different flavors of light women when the subject of colorism rears its ugly head.

Actually, neither dark-skinned or light-skinned women want to talk about who echoes white beauty supremacy through our ranks. 

Collectively, black men may have left the resentments of the light-skinned, house-negro, massa-secret-son identity behind. And maybe that's because light-skinned black men readily admit privilege (or so I've heard). And maybe that's because they aren't as afraid of their privilege as light women are because light-skinned-beauty isn't as big a part of who they are. Men are judged by what they do in this society.  Light-skinned and dark-skinned men are not being told their worth is based on (their closeness to white) beauty constantly. However, black men from Booker T Washington to many or most male Civil Rights Heroes to Bill Cosby (and half (?)of the rich and famous black men) thoroughly believe in the white female beauty standard - if their choice of spouse/girlfriends can be believed. 

Forget the rich and black male famous, though.

How many dark-skinned girls have come home from high school crying over having been ignored? That movie "School Daze" by Spike Lee is and was real as far as college goes--even at the predominantly white colleges.  But some black girls that look black don't cry. Most don't, in fact. Strong black women don't cry. They simply get determined to do what they need to do -- get that hair relaxed, get that first long straight weave.

Dark girls are even treated less favorably by parents. Light girls in the same family as a dark girl can bask in the sun of their parents favor or suffer in the hatred of their siblings or both. Oprah Winfrey was the dark girl in her family as I recall (mother and sister lighter?) I think I sort of deduced her sister was a bask-er? Maybe? Either way, that family experience probably left a significant mark on O. Her path to success and failure might be evidence despite the money. But that's another discussion.

20 YEAR CAREER LEFT & COSBYs RIGHT

Still, the thing I wonder about the most about these non-conversations about colorism between black women is this:   

Why do the Kim Lute's of the world open their mouths about being light-skinned at all if they are not going to talk about how white people (male and female) fawn over their tanned-white-person looks in the workplace?

Why not talk about how bad they feel for the dark skinned sister they like to hang with when black men come tripping over themselves to get to them once they hit their teen years --especially if they have white-looks in addition to light-skin?

Why not talk about the source of the light-skinned benefits as being co-located with the source of the dark-skinned jealousy?  Because feminist or not, I know that the one thing that heterosexual women get heated and competitive about is men.

Speaking of my less than well-formed feminism, I resented the sexist tone of the Huff Post article.

The author of the original article  describes women in this stereotypical way, using words that imply petty, back biting etc.  Maybe that can't be avoided if you're talking about jealousy of dark-skinned women. Maybe. But I also tend to feel the Huff Post piece went off the rails into territory mostly unknown by light-skinned black women when the author said she mostly makes friends with white women because the jealousy of dark-skinned women is so thick. This is something I've never heard from a light-skinned woman. Then again, why would somebody who felt that way tell someone who looks like me?

The title of the piece "The Problem With Black Women") didn't do a thing for me either. It seems to me it deliberately made black women sound defective. Title can probably be said to be click bait-y and click-bate-y



So how about diving into the real description of real negative black female interactions instead of  rehashing the dumb stereotypes applied to all women? Why not talk about the avoidance and wrinkled noses like something stinks every time the subject of colorism comes up between light and dark women. There isn't any yelling and screaming. There's silence and walking away....and festering wounds.

And by the way? Black women of all shades get to say "OUCH!"  That's why I am not ashamed of the colorism conversation AT ALL. It's a white supremacy wound. And we get to get messy while we work it out

Light-skinned women get to say their  "OUCH"  when they are left out, ostracized, and assumed to have a superior attitude. Medium and dark-skinned women also get to say their version of "OUCH" when their beauty is erased by media, mothers, and would be beaus.

However, some or most light skinned women,
especially the white featured,do not get to say "OUCH"
without 
doing the same due diligence
in making the same earnest search
for unseen, unheard, and un-felt privilege
as some anti-racist white people to do
then telling the truth about that privilege


And if some reading this blog are thinking "OMG we're all black!" right now, then think about how similar that sounds to the "stop playing the race card" or "I'm colorblind!" uttered by so many white people when they are made uncomfortable by conversations on race. 

All of us have areas of privilege and oppression. My sources of oppression are my femaleness, my race, and my skin color. I feel, see, and hear these weekly if not daily. I am also middle class and Christian. These are my sources of privilege. My privileges feel like so much nothing to me most of the time. They are as imperceptible, normal, and unnoticeable as the air I breathe -- until or unless they are gone.
 
My oppressions don't excuse me from having to look for my privileges...just like being poor doesn't excuse the white person from looking at how they benefit from white privilege. And being black and suffering real racism doesn't excuse the light-skinned person from seeking out their light privilege either.

So light-skinned girls have the heavy lifting to do, in my opinion -- as far as healing our race of colorism. They have to get out and  hunt down their unfelt, unseen, unheard privilege. Dark-skinned girls have it easy in comparison. Our oppression is easy to see, at least as easy to see as the jealousy. But it might be harder to look at the real reasons for our collective addiction to long, straight, extensions and the creamy crack.

We have to be able to admit our weaknesses in order to work on healing them. When we are stronger for having done the work and suffered the discomfort, those who run or side step their unconscious participation in  colorism will seem pitiful to us --even if we find ourselves looking a mess while we figure ourselves out.

I've been reading a biography about a black woman born more than 100 years ago. I can't believe how much hasn't changed. The silence has been deafening in the name of solidarity since before and after the paper bag test. Colorism is a thing we have to deal with more honestly than we have been. Pretending all is peaceful and well, pretending like you don't see color isn't going e-race colorism  for black people any faster than white people pretending they don't see race is going to e-race racism.




LINK TO HUFFINGTON POST'S "THE PROBLEM WITH BLACK WOMEN" by Kim Lute

PSSSSSST! (Whispering: Other non-white women have the same problems. Asian women have tape to make their eyes look rounder or have surgery like talk show host Julie Chen. Asian women that make the cut for TV and movies are "white-er"    http://nypost.com/2013/09/12/julie-chen-had-plastic-surgery-to-fix-asian-eyes/

*I've been extremely fortunate in my choice of friends. Light-skinned women I've hung with were AWARE and did not let colorism play out at my expense in school or at the club, ever.


I wish there were more rungs on the ladder. Halle's supposed networth is 70 million. Phylicia and Raven's are supposedly 55 Million.Viola's is 3 million. Most of dark skinned women at the bottom don't belong on the ladder at all.  The Gugu Mbatha Raw and Lupita Nyongo are relative newcomers in yellow. Photos in red were the outliers. Angela Bassett was high on the ladder despite being relatively dark skinned