When I was young, growing up in Africa in a country where lighter
skinned women are the epitome of beauty, I once asked a woman whom I
looked up to why women with light skin were considered more beautiful
than women with dark skin. Her answer was straightforward, “Because men
like women with lighter skin, if you are dark, men won’t find you
attractive”. I remember looking at this woman confused because that is
when I learned that it was the black man who determined what was
considered the beauty of a black woman. I grew up to witness this harsh
reality, I saw dark-skinned women being called all sorts of hurtful
names not by white men, but by black African men. I saw light skinned
women being sought after and exalted as the most beautiful.
But the reality is more black women have darker skin tones. The
lighter black women are in the minority, meaning in the eyes of most
black men, black women are not beautiful.
So I believe when it comes to black people hating their own skin,
it’s now time to shift the blame game and leave white people out of this
twisted sickness of the mind. If black people have woken up to how
white people mistreated them, why can’t they wake up to the fact that
their very dark skin is beautiful too? If slavery was abolished, why can
they not abolish hating their own brothers and sisters for having
darker skin? I find black people to be the most self-hating and
self-destructive people on this planet.
If I call my own child ugly, then she goes to school and gets bullied
for the way she looks, why would I dare complain about my child being
bullied? Is that not being a hypocrite? The name calling that comes from
me as the mother is obviously more hurting and damaging to my child
than the name calling she gets at school from strangers.
Why is it that it’s mostly black people who torment other black
people for having more pigment in their skin? Why is it that in the
black community people with lighter skin have more privileges than those
with darker skin? Light skinned black women have grown to feel more
beautiful and superior to darker skinned black women, causing them to
mock women with darker skin.
Dark skinned black women bleach their skin because they are made to feel ugly not by the white man but by their own people.
Last week dark skinned model Porsche Thomas posted her pregnancy
belly on social media and she was slated by mostly black people for
having very dark skin. Black people simply found her rich melanin skin
disgusting and not worth displaying on social media. Porsche Thomas was
bold enough to address her black critics who had savaged her on social
media for being too black.
“While some of y’all been in my comments criticising the
blackness that is my belly, I (have) been over here enjoying life,
growing tiny humans, performing miracles and hopefully getting even
blacker,” she wrote.
Porsche Thomas was criticised by black people for being too dark
“I don’t think there’s a lot of self-love in the black community.
We’re so quick to say, ‘black lives matter’ but we’re so quick to turn
on each other. I just don’t think there’s a lot of support in the black
community. I think the reaction to my photo is evident of that. Most of
the negative comments I received were from black people, a lot of
dark-skinned black people, a lot of young black people, which is crazy
to me,” Porsche Thomas said.
It wasn’t white people who found her dark skin disgusting, it was
black people who hated the way God created her, which she has no control
over. In my own experience, I have found white people to admire very
dark skinned black people, often complementing dark skin as being
strikingly beautiful. I can’t speak for all white people, but the few I
have known in my life do find very dark skin beautiful.
When I watch black movies, I hardly see very dark-skinned women being portrayed as beautiful.
I can not help but blame black men for shunning dark skinned women,
causing them to resort to bleaching their skin to feel accepted in the
black community. Last week on a Facebook page of a Zimbabwean male
socialite Mike Tashaya, a Ghanaian woman with dark skin was called
disgusting and told that in Zimbabwe men do not go near “a thing” that
had such black skin. After such hatred from Africans to an African woman
with dark skin, can women who bleach their skin be blamed, when they
are made to feel disgusting and insulted by their own fellow men, who
are supposed to find them attractive. Not all women are strong enough to
withstand such hate and stay true to who they are.
Former model Irene Major bleached her skin so she could
feel prettier. “Being lighter shows you belong to a different place on
the social ladder. All the rich, successful black African men marry
either a white or a very light-skinned girls because they too grew up
thinking lighter is the more pretty. It doesn’t matter how dark a man
is, of course — the pressure is all on women,” Irene Major said.
Irene Major bleached because she feels successful black men prefer white women or very light skinned black women
American rapper Little Kim reports to have been insulted
by her own father for being too dark, and that men often left her for
lighter skinned women. She explained how her looks always haunted her as
a child, and her own way of dealing with her insecurities was bleaching
her skin so she would not look “black” anymore. Who can blame her when
her own father who was supposed to make her feel like a princess found
her dark skin ugly?
Little Kim does not want to look black anymore
When black people see a very dark black person, their first reaction
is normally to mock, laugh, scoff, followed by utter disgust. I often
see this behaviour online and in my Zimbabwean and UK black community
and wonder why I always seem to be the only person disturbed by the
amount of black self-hate.
Not all dark skinned black women are as bold and brave
as Khoudia Diop who has stood firm against the cruel name calling and
colourism and was able to become a successful dark skinned model full of
self-love, grace and acceptance.
Not all dark skinned women like model Khoudia Diop are able to stand the hate from black people
So when I see black people complain and mourn that they are treated
differently by white people because of the colour of their skin, I can’t
help but shudder at the hypocrisy. Charity begins at home, maybe for
the world to stop “looking down” on the colour of our skin as we claim,
we have to start the movement ourselves by loving our own dark skin.
I dream of that day where black people will stop blaming white people
for their own self-hatred and begin to ask themselves why they hate
their own skin.
I dream of that day when black men will stop hating and mocking women
with dark skin. I dream of that day where black people will stop
tormenting each other because of the amount of melanin in our skin.
I can no longer blame colonisation and slavery for black
people’s self-hate. I refuse to believe that lie. The self-hate surely
is something that comes from the black man himself, something within his
own soul that causes him to loathe the beauty and richness of his own
skin.
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