Black Women with Light Brown Skin; It is the Prejudice in the Eye of the Beholder, Not the Reality of What the Media Tells You

The other day I was watching Just Another Girl On The I.R.T. which was released in 1993. The film subtly addresses color politics as the protagonist is a light skinned, red-bone girl who is smart but too smart for her own good. Basically a really intelligent young woman in the projects who ends up getting pregnant and asks her man to throw her baby away in the trash because it would interfere with her dreams of going to college. We see all of the usual stereotypes; the dark skinned father that is caught up in work and is not there for his family other than monetarily, the dark skinned boyfriend who is broke and doesn't have any money that just happens to be a few pounds overweight, who is pushed aside for a lighter skinned boyfriend who has a Jeep, and a dark skinned best friend, who doesn't understand her friend and whom no one wants to be with romantically.

Had I seen the film in 1993 I would not have realized that any of this was going on, but it is almost impossible to do so today given all the drama we have about light skin. Even the President has gotten caught up in the light skin/dark skin drama; he marries a dark skinned Black woman, but for other politicians they feel safe with him because he is light skinned, insane right? For the record a lot of us marry dark skinned Black woman, a lot of us are attracted to them, a lot of us actively pursue them, but if you were to ever see us with a light skinned woman we are treated as though we were with a White woman, and you are shaking your head, but why? The media does not want to talk about us, and act as though do not exist, as though society does not make Black men like that anymore, so it may be a shock to some, but we are not a rare breed at all.

This is the thing, for one colorism never really want away, and I thought that it had and attempted to argue that point unsuccessfully because the bottom line is that just because I was not aware of it myself does not mean that it does not exist. The other answer is that, to be totally honest, if a Black woman approaches you, flirts with you, befriends you, is comfortable being seen in public with you, chances are she is someone who is light skinned. Black men have to make up their own mind which way they want to go and decide for themselves what they want to do about this. There are some dark skinned women who will do the same, but not many. The irony of this is that I myself am not light skinned, so you answer that question for me or tell me what you would do if the situation were reversed. No one likes to talk about this, but the rhetoric of skin tone in sexual politics in the Black community is a self perpetuating one, everyone knows what it is and no one wants to talk about the real issues, just the symptoms.

We aren't doing enough to make dark skinned Black women feel beautiful ourselves. Light skinned Black women feel beautiful, and go out and conquer this thing for themselves and it is just starts all over again, we say that Black is beautiful, but we only mean that a certain type is beautiful, with manageable hair; I know that wasn't the case at the time but that is what it has turned into. Quite honestly, when those same dark skinned Black women say that they're sick of Black men and want to date White men or men of other races leave them up to their devices because whatever attention they get, and some of them would rather get that negative attention from Black men than nothing at all, it is too little and too late, for Black men or anyone else to convince them otherwise. This is a woman that is fed up, that has had enough, and I can't honestly blame her because I already know what it is as chances are I never would have talked to her either. We may as well be honest about the fact that everyone is stepping over each other to talk to the same women, just as it is with other races; now if that woman goes out of her way to talk to us that is another situation, but a lot of you will take some left over change from a light skinned woman than the type of money that folds from a dark skinned woman let's just call it what it is we are all adults here and we are all grown up now.

Some of you are laughing out loud right now, because you have seen it for yourself; you know someone that put it all out on the line and some light skinned chick he idolizes gave him a little bit of attention and he forgot where his meals come from and he disappeared into the night. This isn't embarrassing I'm not saying anything that we cannot relate to as Black people; no one told him that it all spends the same. At the end of the day you'll end up with a jar of pennies when you could have been rich and left for nothing while those women move on to someone who respects them for who they are, not what they are, but no one hears me anymore. We walk around talking about how Black love is dead but were we ever looking for love? Is it sexual attraction, it is unfinished business or something that you never thought you could have or is this someone that you have really gotten to know that you continue to stay with day after day when times were tough and neither one of you had any money. It is someone you were with when you were both ugly and smelled, your skin was ashy, you couldn't afford to buy the nice clothes or that expensive soap for $20 at the beauty store or the deodorant for $5 when you had to eat preservatives and high fructose corn syrup out of box or you had to resort to cutting potatoes; when you were standing in line at Rally's or Checker's with the rest of us ordering off of the 2 for $3 menu? You found a light skinned woman and were infatuated with what she was but never got to know her for who she was, you were never that interested in the first place. All of the sudden she is loud and obnoxious, a real Black woman some would like to say, and you're thinking about moving on; she was probably like that in the beginning but you conveniently overlooked the fact because she wasn't that way with you. Well no one is when there isn't any end to the money in sight and everything is going well.

If you have to get into the racial politics of it, the women are still African-American women. Black men like to say that White women approach them and do the same but that was never my experience. If I were in a situation where I was approachable and fit into the crowd easily and it would appear as though I was someone who was receptive to that attention and someone who would reciprocate that interest then yes, of course, but for the most part I am not. We need to be honest; if you fit the stereotypes of what they are looking for, keep your mouth shut and for the most part, marginalize yourself as a Black man and are willing to play out those fantasies then yes, you can get those White women. If they have never been with a Black man before than you need to be "safe", and someone that makes them feel good about themselves and strokes their ego. Somewhere, somehow, later on down the line after you have both gotten the rhetoric out of your systems you two may fall in love with each other and have a real relationship but those relationships typically start out from a different place. Of course some of them only date Black men, and that is something totally different because what you often have is a Black woman that just happens to be White but again these women, just like what I have been saying about light skinned women, already know what it is and find a way to approach you first before you ever think about them. Women a lot of you already know how this unfolds, if the guy likes to go with the flow leave that man up to his own devices and find yourself a real man that wants what he wants, not what some woman tells him that he should have.

What Hollywood has done going all the way back into the twenties where you could be a movie star if you were light skinned but you could sing if you were dark but were only good enough to be a maid on the big screen is one thing; that happened, and we are just doing the same ourselves in a more sophisticated and complex manner. You rarely see a heroine or a sex object that is truly dark, brown perhaps, or somewhere in-between, but as dark as I am or as dark as some of the Black women that I've known over the years, it is not going to happen. At times it does, clearly Precious had a story to tell, but then again, we felt the politics of her colorism and her pain but we did not get to see the true expression of her sexuality; given the context perhaps we did not want to see this but then again should the message is reinforced that when it comes to a dark skinned woman, one can only explore an expression of the hostility that is often a component of our sexuality.

So why is this; are we programmed to take out our hostility on dark skinned women when we are in sexual situations with them or if we are taking out that hostility on a light skinned woman can one safely assume that the man is dark skinned and is only doing so because of how he feels about his own condition? Such topics were explored in the movie School Daze by Spike Lee; in fact the reverse was true. At the same time, what hostility needs to be explored, because again, light skinned women have never done anything to me that I did not want to have done and were always around. As far as a relationship, it develops and unfolds whichever way that you want for it to develop because again, it is not as though this is someone of another race that you have to explain yourself to this is another African-American woman so why would Hollywood suggest that the opposite is true. Movies do not show you, what truly happens between light skinned women and dark skinned men in real life, but this could be someone else's reality, not mine.

In real life people of various hues attract, reject, pursue, run away from, find attractive, are abhorred by, people of a different hue than they are all the time this is just the way that it is. If you were told that you were sexy, told that you were attractive, made to feel like a real woman, built up, and treated like the princess that you are then chances are you are easier to get along with, and are more comfortable expressing yourself sexually than someone who is not. This has nothing to do with the myth that plays out on the big screen that it is only light skinned women who do, who can, who have the opportunities to, and that dark skinned women have to fight for theirs as though we were talking about scraps from the big table of sexuality that no one allows her to sit at. This has nothing at all to do with real life. Too many of us are stuck in the forties; where light skinned people were the representative of the organization that faced the consumer and were shown to the public and dark skinned people were in the back in a dimly lit room that no one ever saw and may as well not even exist. Does that still play out today, yes in many ways it does, is it the exception and not the rule, probably not.

In fact at the end of the day with all of that attention you still have to win over that woman, you still have to talk to her you still have to prove that you are worthy of being there. Just because someone cracks the door open does not mean that you can easily walk through it. Some Black men want to walk through that door just because she is light skinned, and God bless them that is their main objective their prerogative to do so it is not any business of mine. However there are women that are attractive and women that are ugly of all colors, all hues, all races. You may not want to be there, you may have a change of heart, you may have come to the conclusion that this is not all that it is cracked up to be, you might even get scared. So another day passes and you start all over again today. This is really all that it is about; yeah a lot of us do obsess or show prejudice where someone's tone or hue is involved and a lot of us do not. I think those of us that do not are those that are comfortable receiving the attention and dealing with it because we have gotten that attention from everyone and are equal opportunity offenders. Black men that do have their own issues to address and were probably hurt, a lot, from a certain type of Black woman that looks or acts a certain way, and they cannot let go of it and can never forget it.

If you do not know who you are as a Black man this media will try to force your hand in hopes that you will only pursue some light skinned girl and play into whatever master plan they have for your life. This message is reinforced by the fact that light skinned women are feeling very good about themselves in this day and age, quite honestly think that they are the ... and are expecting for you to come around, if they don't get to you first. However, it is a question of what you want to do with yourself as a man, not what people want for you. We used to be strong and had our own mind and went about our own business knowing that this media was not in our best interests and determined to either change the status quo or find our own solutions to the problems it presented us with. These days we are supposed to be in charge, yet we maintain the status quo; it is something to think about ...