The
key to life is being comfortable 'in and out' of your own skin... 'In' your
skin enough to truly like who you are, 'out' of it enough to get over yourself.
~BJ Morin
Dark Skinned documentary... My surrogate niece asked me today thru a Facebook post what I thought about the subject. I have been seating on it for a big part of the day
and my thoughts have gone 100 different ways…
I felt upset, then just as fast I felt annoyed at the
ignorance...
I felt offended but again quickly, I felt amused at the
stupidity…
Black people talk about “shaming” of our ethnicity and
racism against our race as if it was other races’ (especially Caucasian’)
guilty pleasure. And while that might be as true as me saying the sun will rise
tomorrow morning, we can’t ignore the self-hatred (which use to be covert) we
now openly and brashly practice customarily against ourselves!
A few years ago I opened a conversation on what I found
factual when talking about Self-Hatred. The question was “Self-Hatred is really implemented at an early age... And who is
really responsible? The media (All forms of it) or the ones who shaped us
(parents, family members, teachers...)?”
Black women, we carry so much luggage. History, past
experiences have created -bloodshed, tear drenched- manuals which map ways to a
life we should aspire to live by, be appreciated and respected in. Where we should’ve
learned from past circumstances and the degrading treatments we endured from
others because of our full lips, our wide hips, our luscious curves, our unruly
hair but mostly because of the color of our skin, some idiotically chose to
validate and perpetrate the behavior. They perpetrate the behavior because the
light shade of their skins made them believes they were superior or because the
darkness of their skin kept their self-esteem on the low, dark side…
We can’t blame all of it on media. Our direct entourage, the
family unit has to take partial responsibility as we engrain behavior from our
own behavior.
Now mainstream media is definitely not off the hook… Who in
this day and age is invulnerable to social influence?
I could go on about the music business glamourizing the light
skinned girls…
I could continue on with the movie business idolizing the
light skinned girls…
I could finish with the publishing business that uses the
glamourized light skinned singers, the idolized light skinned actress and alter
them even more to make them as close as possible to the image of what is viewed
as the ultimate beauty (Caucasian beauty) while maintaining a political correct level of “exoticism”…
My mind has settled as I felt pity for the beautiful black
woman (or man) who doesn’t know, who doesn’t see, who doesn’t realize
and doesn’t appreciate how beautiful she/he is.
My heart is at peace because I have a beautiful (inside AND
out), confident, self-assured and unafraid little girl who EVERY day knows that
she is loved. She knows it because she can feel and hear it, and every day she is told how
beautiful she is. It's sad to me that there are many many many girls out
there that don't feel, hear or know their self-worth...
So you want to know my point of view… Well here it is
Where our similarities should have made us stronger, it made
us weaker. Diversity, which is part of the world DNA, instead of being
cherished, brought discernment against our differences, ultimately brought racial
discrimination and this amongst us!
Why is it that birds of feather will sometimes
congregate together but can’t pledge to look out for one another? Uh?
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” So what happens when
you can’t appreciate the basis of who you are? How would you appreciate the
similarity of you in someone else? Remember the black in you, that makes you who you are will not go away if and when you put down or take away from your "sister"
Start with loving yourself and you’ll see it is deeper than
the color of one’s skin!
RosieSandz
