Last night I was with my people. We were celebrating Oronde's sister's Graduate School graduation. Talk about being in heaven. I was surrounded by successful Caribbean people listening to soca and calypso while slurping up macaroni pie and channa. There is something about being around other Caribbean people that warms my heart and brings me home. It is the one time I feel like I am fully in my skin and myself. I am sure other people can relate in the same way when they visit their home countries or research their biological roots. It makes you grounded and brings you to your plot of earth.
In between dancing, drinking, and laughing, we got into a conversation about skin complexion. I was told I was light skinned. Not just by dark skinned people, but by a girl, who is extremely light skinned. This was news to my ears. I am still in shock as I write this.
Why does it matter? It matters because if I had been born during slavery I would have been working inside of the house. If I am driving, a cop will sooner let me off the hook than a darker African American. If I am going for a job I am more appealing to the eye in comparison to a blue black Afrikan. Knowing your complexion as an African American puts you in a very different mind set because race has always placed the human race (in particularly us) in different categories.
I even asked my parents this morning if they new I was light-skinned and they said, "Yes, of course you are." My father laughed at my lack of knowledge. I have truly never known. This is something else. Oh well, at least I know now.
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hey, sisyv.
ReplyDeleteyou just keep bringing up stuff that i feel a need to write about! i don't know how i'm gonna get any work done anymore! ;)
so, about three years ago, i had a similar awakening to this aspect of how people viewed me when a friend of mine referred to me in a "by the way" manner (i almost said "in passing" but i didn't want to introduce that word to the conversation...oops) as DARK-skinned. like you, i was shocked. it caused me to read back to certain incidents to examine what role this dark-skinnedness might (or might not?) have played-- whether in rendering me invisible in certain environments, hypervisible in others, losing me a job, or getting me laid. it also caused me to examine the source of my shock. instead of judging people for seeing my skin color (not just my blackness) before they saw "me," i had to ask, why was *i* so invested in a particular category of skin color that i even FELT shock? my actor training told me that it was unlikely that i could ever have been objective or disinterested about this.
and the thing is that nobody is disinterested: there's no objective measure for whether you're actually "light skinned" or "brown skinned." the majority of the results of the surveys we take among friends and family may cluster toward one end of the spectrum for you and another end for me (i for one think that we're both kind of in a middle zone of brownness where we don't burn easily at the beach, and yet we can look in the mirror and see blood rising to the surface when we blush) but everybody has something in mind when they see us that is almost never "us". that in itself is interesting, probably telling.
my thought on your realization, juxtaposed with my own similar realization: you are not the lightest of light-skinned black women, and i am not the darkest of dark-skinned black men, but the details of where we are placed on this curious color spectrum is irrelevant in light of one fact true for both of us: neither of us will be mistaken for anything but black on sight. maybe that irrelevance is why we were so late in our awareness of others' perceptions of where we were on the spectrum.
my uncle and i have been reading One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life-- A Story of Race and Family Secrets by Bliss Broyard. it sheds a LOT of light on this in a very readable way. it is not the first text to do so, nor is it treating the topic as complexly as you and i can do. but it's a recent and interesting book.
I will definitley check out that book. And yes, what I failed to write on facebook (which maybe now that I think about it I should) is that while my parents said, "Yes, you are light-skinned" they also continued to say exactly what you stated.
ReplyDelete"Either way it doesn't matter because when the others look at you what do they see; a black person."
Its interesting the comments I get from black and white people on facebook. Because some are so stuck on the idea that my question deals with beauty. For those who are not black fail to realize the psychological and situational cases that the shade of our skin causes for us. I think its one of those things that we feel and see as African Americans but dont know exactly how to articulate. Or atleast I don't as of yet.
Im glad Im making you take a break from work to enjoy some good stimulating conversation!
Yes. I had missed that element of the difference. There is indeed an implicit assumption that your statement can be equated with saying "does everybody see me as skinny when i thought i was full figured?" like you're looking for reassurance.
ReplyDeleteihave seen black women blush, i mean skin changing color. i saw one light brown skin woman turn hot pink, i saw 2other light skin black women cheeks turn pink. and i saw another woman mediun brown skin woman cheeks turn maroon. how come more blacks dont comment on this?
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