Unrequited: Whose melanin do you really love? — Cocoa Butter & Hair Grease
**audio available here
You know how people talk about being tired of being Black, because shit out here is rough? Well, like one meme once said, I love this skin I’m in. It’s white supremacy I hate. I am tired of people looking at my skin and believing me to be worthy of violence, hatred, or whatever other vitriol they have decided to spread. I am tired of seeing dark skinned women play the sidekick, be back up, or be left out of the narrative completely. I’m tired of defending myself not just against white folk but also against other POC and, especially, Black folk who want to claim full rights to “the struggle” while hanging on with both hands to their anti-blackness.
**please note that yes I am talking about me, Donna, the person, not just out there concepts. But I am also speaking about what I see happening to darker skinned people, especially women. For example, have y’all seen how folk are STILL flocking to Tory and listening to his opportunist album AFTER he shot Meg Thee Stallion IN BOTH FEET. If you don’t think colorism had anything to do with it, considering the general side eye folk have for dark skinned women who “act light skinned” then, I am sorry to report, you may not have been paying as much attention as you thought. There are always tactics to put darker skinned women “in their place” EVEN after they have tried to protect others [read: Black men] through their silence-from a love that Black women tend to bear for all Black people, especially Black men, even in the face of violence.
I want to feel the sunshine of love on my face. I want to know that not only I, but other dark skinned women are seen as people, not fetishized as objects for sex or hate, not made to be exceptional beauties in the face of your thinking there is something inherently wrong with dark skin. I want the light skinned people in my life and that orbit the lives of dark skinned women and men, to actually see us. To see and know that we are often hurt by the world around us, on its crusade to hate darker skinned people with everything it has in them. To hate us and do so in ways that are both covert and overt.
Confession time: There was a time I LOVED Beyonce and Amanda Seales and Traces Ellis Ross. They were the sunshines of my life. They made us dance, laugh, cry, and feel a full spectrum of emotions with the work they put out there. But, when you ask the Lord for wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, you start to see more shit. So, please be careful with that prayer. That love turned sour. Then for a time, I thought I hated them. I didn’t know it wasn’t that. I was hurt, but I couldn’t understand why. Not just them, though, but what they represented in my dark skinned life. I had to really think about why I have been so profoundly hurt and upset by Beyoncé’s, Amanda Seales’, Tracee Ellis Ross’ and [insert light skinned woman’s name here] of the world. It’s because while I see them, their work contribution, and yes their privilege. They don’t always (or at all) see their their privilege, and that means they can’t see me or the dark skinned life I and others lead.
I love Black people with everything I have in me. You only need to see my other work to know that. However, I have always held a special place in my heart and in my focus of therapy practice, study, and mind for Black women. I just love us. Partly because while we also love Black folk fiercely, we still have to operate under the fist of patriarchy and toxic masculinity that often beats and kills us. Despite this, we remain vigilant in seeking liberation for all of us. We still love Black men while they are absent in speaking about the pain Black Women go through at the intersection of being hated, reviled, and disregarded for not only our race but also our sex. While folk out here tell us to choose a struggle to make our platforms about-that we can either be Black or Women or LGBTQIA. That we have to pick a struggle. As if we are not uniquely harmed in the intersection of our identities. As if, our lives don’t show the love we have for Black people. After all, look at who gave you the word “intersectionality.” Look at who gave us the words “me, too.” Look at who started Black Lives Matter. We love us and it is shown.
However, even within these identities intersecting, folk often STILL forget, neglect, and try to kumbaya to death, the role of colorism in these experiences. That colorism also lives in this space with us. That the very racism we experience is directly correlated with our depth of melanin. Which brings me back to my hurt and disappointment of the Beyoncé’s, Amanda Seales, Tracee Eliss Ross’ and [insert light skinned women here] of the world. The pain and suffering for the darkest among us is often lost in the sauce. There is often a denial or lack of recognition of the role white supremacy and being on the “right” side of the brown paper bag has afforded them. It is dismissed as imaginary like racism or like as with white folk, it (colorism) is being discovered for the first time, in a way that still centers light skinned folk and their light skinned privilege. An
An aside: The centering of light skinned folks feelings also reminds me of how whiteness is centered in discussions of racism. White and light fragility abound and we stop to assuage hurt feeling in the face of lives literally lost. But I digress
It hurts because while we, Black women, defend ourselves from white folk and from Black men, who both are interested in asserting and maintaining their continued rule/dominance through skin color or genitals, I, and others, still have to fight to have folk recognize that colorism is a whole thing with real life consequences for those on the “wrong” side of the color line. So with all my love of Black women, I have to fight them to be seen. For light skinned women to give up the center and know that being a Black woman with light skinned privilege still requires you to do the work in amplifying the voices of dark skinned Black Women. I didn’t know you thought our struggles were exactly the same. I didn’t know I would continue to hear “but we are all Black.” I didn’t know that I could be so easily dismissed, ridiculed, or worse, not even seen.
When colorism is acknowledged vy light skinned folk, it is often done with an air of performance. Centering the light skinned self as the savior of dark skinned people. Or spoken about how it was noticed by you, defended by you, while you dealt with jealous darkened people who “hated on be because I am so pretty.” What are the dark skinned women to do with performative allyship? With fake attempts to remove colorism while still centering the light skinned self and experience? What are we actually supposed to do with that?
Our being silenced among those who are both hyper visible and invisible is violence. Ignoring that dark skinned women’s experiences are not the same as light skinned women’s experiences, is violence. Telling me to fall in line, calling me divisive, saying I’m taking away from the movement based on an anti blackness rooted in my very skin tone is violent. I love Black women, our rhythm and blues, the way we collectively love Black men. We hold Black men accountable to their participation in patriarchy, and the continued seeking of power in a way that is violent toward Black women, with kindness and love. It is my love of Black women that drives me to hold our light skinned and mixed raced sisters accountable to their own seeking or maintaining of power balances through the color line. Telling me that the dark skinned Black experience and the light skinned Black experience is the same is erasure. And that, friend, is still violent as fuck. Telling me to wait my turn is silencing. And saying you don’t see it a display of your privilege.
Love me, love us, like you say you do. Hold accountability in your arms and do better.
Originally published at https://www.cocoabutterandhairgrease.com on October 1, 2020.
