...anything that I have written before. It may, for all who care to view it that way, be seen as my soapbox rant for the week. OK, you know me, for the day. Here we go:
I hate when black folk say "I don't wanna get black."
I live in Florida where for at least 9 months out of the year it is hot and sunny. The operative word here is just that - sunny. Any relatively educated person or even those that are just barnyard dumb, know that if you go out into the sun for any lenght of time that your skin (no matter what complexion you are) will become a bit darker.
I am a black woman with dark skin. When I was a kid way back when it truly was not in fashion to have dark skin. The problem for me was that most of the women that I loved and thought were most beautiful were the women in my family. The majority of which were dark skinned. As a kid it never occur ed to me when I was at home that my dark skin was ugly. In fact, to me it was the color of chocolate and cocoa and all lthe things that make a kid happy. It was not until I got to school that I learned that chocolate was not the color to be.
I guess I started to wonder if my cocoa colored complexion that I thought was just fabulous was really not as fabulous as I believed. Children in school, some barely lighter than me, would tell me that I was too black. For one kid in my class, a boy named James, whose skin was a dark as night, the times were truly tough. Kids did not even want to hold his hand as we played 'red rover, red rover" and of course he was never asked to "come over" all because the light skinned girls said that the "black would rub off on them". Just crazy. (Just as an aside...I saw James around the time that we were going college and he was a midnight delight...on the arm of the same chick that would not allow him to play Red Rover. I bet she is letting him come over all the time now!)
Anyway, I guess from all that I take offense when folk say things about people being dark or that somehow that dark skin is not beautiful. I look at my wedding picture sitting on my desk and remember playing in the sun in Jamaica and watching my skin get what I called Jamaica black. I loved it and felt that my skin only complimented my white wedding gown.
So last night, this negro dislike for dark skin hit my home. My niece who is by no means a light skinned girl, is absolutely beautiful. She spent all day Sunday at the beach with her family and I did not really look at her until Monday evening. Hubby looks at her and says "you got a lot of sun". She says: "I know...I really don't like it. I don't like to be black like that."
I asked her...
"Well what the hell were you when you left home?"
At this point, she was confused and asked, rather shyly what I meant.
"Were you Asian or Scandinavian with you left here?"
She said no.
"Well, then you came back here as Black as you were when you left. If you do not want your skin to be any darker than you should not go in the sun. As a matter of fact, you should never leave the house, or even sit by a window."
She says that she did not think that she would get dark because she wore sunblock.
See how dumb that is. Just sounds foolish rolling off the tongue!
" Dear heart, that only keeps you from burning. Not from the sun changing the color of your skin."
See...if you are that worried about being dark, you should at least know the rules.
Oh well, that is the end of my rant today. I am going to take my students to the playground today and let them play in the sun and watch their beautiful brown complexions tan as they run and laugh.
And yes, they will still be as black when I bring them back into the classroom as they were when I took them out.
(Love my job! My niece, however, may be another story!)
