Jesse Williams: The Pain of the Light Skinned Black Man

photo from LA Times

I waited for it; I knew the backlash against actor and activist Jesse Williams would be hard and fast. I watched his speech, and like many I applauded his bravery. He did what many of us are afraid to do: bite the hand that feeds us.

When he was given the 2016 BET Humanitarian Award, he seized the moment to speak out against the injustices and inequities that African Americans face in America. It was a great speech.  What difference does it make that he didn’t say anything that hasn’t already been said? As long as the problems exist, the message bears repeating again and again.

I’m not surprised at the folks on Fox who criticized Williams. I am inclined to agree with Jane Elliott that racism is a mental illness. Tomi Lahren’s rant and subsequent response to the Black Twitter beating she took, was nothing more than her making a name for herself—again!--on the back of Black pain. There are some people who simply cannot help themselves. She is one of one of them as is her partner in crime Stacy Dash. Dash has sold her soul to the devil to stay relevant. And she had the audacity to call Williams a plantation Negro! She too, is a non issue.

But what burns my grits is that some of these so-called conscious people who are doing the most complaining just woke up. We know that light skinned people have been favored, and some of us still long for what they have. How many times have we talked about good hair, being mixed or having Indian in our family? How many of us think pretty eyes are anything other than dark brown?  Black folks quick to claim everything but African, but now we mad?

We speak of skin color bias as something that happened in the past when enslaved Africans worked in the field and in the house. Even today we continue to use this as a marker to divide us as evidenced by some of the posts that I read following the speech. The first two posts I read in opposition to Williams both mentioned his appearance: . . .you got this grey eyed Man say a couple of words and all of a sudden He’s the “New Face”???” a dark skinned woman wrote on Facebook. I look at the Jesse Williams speech for what it is, entertainment. . . I try not to take it seriously, but some of y’all be pushing a pretty bitch to do just that. Ugh, okay. This was the opening of a long post by a non pretty, average looking Black man. Am I saying that Willams is above being criticized? Not at all, but I do take issue with those who attempt to discredit what he said based on how he looks and who his mother is.

The notion that his bi racial background and European-like appearance disqualifies him from speaking for the masses is rooted in colorism and sexism--something that we are not willing to talk about. But looking at the role of complexion and how it relates to our definition of Blackness will explain some of the discontent and/or ambivalence with Williams’ comments.

It is well documented that lighter skinned Blacks do benefit from a culture that is steeped in a Eurocentric esthetic. Those of mixed-race backgrounds or lighter coloring have had advantages since the days of slavery, but it has not come without a price. Many of our leaders and firsts have been fair in complexion carrying the burden of race and color. In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm shared his conflicted feelings about his complexion—thinking it was a status symbol, but feeling his mother’s pain of being a child of rape.  

Malcolm’s father, though dark skinned, was not immune to the effects of colorism. “Father was belligerent toward all the children except me. . .I actually believe that as anti white as my father was, he was subconsciously so afflicted with the white man's brainwashing of Negroes that he inclined to favor the light ones and I was his lightest child." (excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X).

I have had numerous conversations with people whose preference in a partner is in part based on their complexion. To deny that color does not play a role in our interactions with another is to deny a part of our reality.

The pendulum of colorism swings both ways. Colorism is the discrimination of others within a race based on skin tone, hair texture and facial features, so those questioning someone’s blackness based on the lightness of their skin, need to come into the light. Wake up.

We have a racist and sexist perception of what a “real” Black man is, and a light-skinned Black man ain’t a man at all, let some of us tell it.  We live in a society that doesn’t even acknowledge Black men as men. We refer to them as boys and/or males. And then when we want a Black man to “man up”, we want him to be the stereotypical Big Scary Black (dark) Man.

Light skinned men might be pretty, but we don’t think they’re manly.

This continued stereotyping based on lightness or darkness of skin and facial features hurts everybody. The pain of dark skinned people is real. But we have to stop measuring pain. At some point, pain is pain. Now we need to start the healing process.  From the lightest to the darkest we’re all Black. It’s time to be united, not divided in overcoming the challenges facing us.

The Sad Truths of Straight Out of Compton

I left the movie theater heavy-hearted after viewing Straight Out of Compton. I allowed the positive buzz around the movie to suck me into seeing it even though I’ve never been a fan of NWA. While I loved Public Enemy, NWA was a bit over the top for me. I didn’t then and still don’t like music with explicitly sexual and/or violent lyrics. Words are things. Words matter. So, I’m mindful of the words that fill my head. I detest music that refers to women as bitches and hoes, and NWA lyrics are full of such references. I cringed as I sat in the theater listening to some of their infamous songs about life in the hood.

So, why did I want to see Straight Out of Compton? I was curious: Who was NWA? I wanted to know their story. I wanted to get an inside look at the men behind the music. I’m not the same person I used to be, and I wanted to see if they were different than I thought them to be. I went seeking understanding; I went looking for redemption. I wanted to be sympathetic to their plight as young Black men in urban America; I wasn’t. 

There’s a scene in the movie Doubt where the nun, played by Meryl Streep speaks with the mother of a student at the school who the nun suspects is being molested by the priest. Streep’s character wants the mother to say something. But the mother, brilliantly played by Viola Davis, refuses. The mother wants to keep her son free from the wrath of her husband who rejects his son’s perceived sexuality. Never in my life did I think that I would be ok with not revealing the identity of a suspected child molester! But she made understand why she was willing to look the other way if her son was being molested if she thought it would save his life. 

In Nathan McCall’s book, Makes Me Wanna Holla, there is a chapter called Trains that is very difficult to read, but so insightful into the psyche of some young men. McCall explains how the young men in the hood looked up to the old heads, and how the old heads were disrespectful of women. The chapter explains how the boys would trick girls into compromising situations and gang rape (run a train) them. Later in the chapter, McCall goes into detail about having a girlfriend and taking her to a friend’s house for sex, but learns that his boys have set her up for a train. He ends up getting into a fight trying to defend her honor. But a couple of the guys take the girl to another apartment to finish what they started. McCall does an excellent job of demonstrating the warped view many men held of manhood and the roles of women and girls in their lives. He also shows a maturity that I found lacking in characters in Straight Out of Compton.

It has been said that members of NWA were revolutionaries, but there was nothing revolutionary about their music or about their movie. It was a bio pic—based on real life events, and they had the right to tell the story that they wanted to tell. And they did. The only one who was really “about that life” was Eazy-E. Both Ice Cube and Dr. Dre came from stable home environments. It was a well-cast film that left me cold. I couldn’t wrap my head around glorifying what I saw as a destructive force in the Black community. Every time a movie about slavery or the civil rights movement comes out, there’s a chorus of Black folk complaining that we keep telling the same stories of victimization. Well, we’ve seen this story a thousand times as well.  I didn’t find anything revelatory in the nearly 2 ½ hours that I sat and watched.  Here are five sad truths that I gleaned from Straight Out of Compton.

1.       We’re still oppressed—some of us more than others. I was disappointed in how easily Eazy-E fell for the okey-doke. He allowed their manager Jerry to swindle not only the group out of money, but Eazy was also taken advantage of because he trusted this White man that he didn’t know, to do right by him. Even after Ice-Cube and Dr. Dre tried to tell him, Eazy still believed in Jerry. Yea, even the so-called hard-core members of keeping-it-real, fuck-the-police NWA were still looking for a White Savior.

2.       Consumption and greed continues to be our downfall. As soon as the money started rolling in, so did the wild parties, the drugs and the excess of material goods. There was never any mention in the movie of them giving any money back to the community or doing any type of charity work. It was all about how much they could get and spend. Though Dr. Dre and Ice Cube managed to escape the downward spiral that so many of our athletes and entertainers succumb to, Eazy Ended up being a casualty of never having enough.

3.       Colorism is alive and well. Not only did the members of NWA end up with light-skinned women as partners in real life, there was a color caste system used to hire girls for the movie. When the casting call went out, the request was for girls who were classified as A’s B’s, C’s and D’s with the brighter complexions and straighter hair being A’s and B’s, brown girls with weaves were C’s, and dark skinned, poor girls were D’s. I can’t make this up! Here’s a link to the story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/17/straight-out-of-compton-casting-call_n_5597010.html And this is what we saw play out on the screen. Most of the women in the movie were light skinned. Early in the film, Eazy E was the only one who had a brown-skinned woman, but she was also “upgraded” for a lighter model. Some of the “blackest” men we know adhered to a Eurocentric model of beauty. Kathleen Cleaver, member of the Black Panther Party and wife of fellow Panther, Eldridge Cleaver spoke of being told to go inside during times of conflict so as not to mess up her pretty light face.

4.       Misogyny was and still is an issue. NWA objectified women. They were boys with toys to be discarded at will. Though they come off as decent guys in the movie, their lyrics and their lifestyles show their disdain for women. Ice Cube married his girl and they’re still together. It’s inferred that Dr. Dre’s desire to pursue a relationship with a woman who didn’t want drama was partly why he left Death Row Records. And Eazy-E was also married in the film, but their references to women as bitches as hoes seemed to also reflect how they felt about women. An abuser doesn’t call his woman honey or babe before he hits her; she’s probably a bitch, or a hoe. Maybe that explains Dr. Dre’s abusive past and Ice Cube’s recent interview with Rolling Out in which he reinerates why some women are bitches and hoes, and only women who fit into those categories should be concerned. When Dr. Dre brutally attacked journalist Dee Barnes, members of NWA thought she got what she deserved. It was only with the release of Straight Out of Compton that Dr. Dre saw the need to apologize for his past transgressions.

5.       Hypocrisy at its best. NWA may have made music that was raunchy and edgy, but at the end of the day, they were entertainers shuckin’ and jivin’ for the master. Their gangster rap wasn’t for the people in communities like Compton; it was for the masturbating voyeurs in the suburbs who played out the racist fantasies of hood life in their minds. NWA exploited what was happening in urban America for material gain. These are the sad truths straight out of the book of conformity and status quo.

The Scandalousness of Scandal – Part 2

I’m a Gladiator! Scandal is definitely my guilty pleasure TV because I make sure that I don’t schedule anything on Thursdays so that I can watch the episodes as they air. So, when a friend of mine texted me recently on a Thursday and he said he’d talk with me later, and I reminded him that he had to talk BEFORE or AFTER Scandal; my girl friend and I talk about the show  during the commercials. 

My guy friend doesn’t like Scandal. An afro-centric militant black man, he doesn’t like race mixing between us and our former enslavers. So, the storyline of Olivia Pope and the President getting it on is a taboo topic for him. We get into this discussion about real-life interracial coupling, and he shares his disdain for Blacks who date Becky or Brad (his names for white people). And while black on black love brings a smile to his face, he is also accepting of blacks having relationships with people of color. 

And while I get his point of solidarity as it relates to oppression and people of color, the unique position of the history of African Americans in this country, can make inter-racial dating even with other people of color problematic because too many black folks are still fascinated by “other.” This disturbing fascination with people who “look mixed, look better” continues to rear its ugly head as pretend that color doesn’t matter. In too many instances, it does.

I teach writing to middle school students. And the population is evenly split between African Americans and Hispanics. Recently, we were working on descriptive writing, I asked them to write a description of somewhat they thought was attractive, and I stressed that I wanted to see what the person looked like, so the students needed to describe physical characteristics. 

I was blown away that in 2013, paper after paper specified some variation of “light skin” “nothing darker than caramel,” “black” or “too dark”. Most of them wanted someone with “pretty eyes” meaning blue, green, grey or hazel in color. Some African-American students even went so far as to say they wanted someone Puerto Rican, Mexican or mixed so that they’d have pretty children. A lot of the boys wanted blonde, blue-eyed girls. Here are some actual excerpts from their papers.

Light skin – the color of a pale person with a tan. He has green eyes that’s kind of hazel. Hair is black, silky and smooth. 7^th grade girl African American girl

Long, blonde shinning gold hair. 7^th grade African- American boy

. . . Have to have pretty eyes. They would be either green or blue. Hispanic 7^th grade girl

They have to have . . . good hair cut with like waves cause boys with nappy hair ugly. 7^th grade African-American girl

I like girls that have light skinned, blue or hazel eyes nice attitude, dimples and long hair.” African-American Hispanic boy 7^th grade

I would like for him possibly have beautiful blue eyes . . . not boring brown eyes. Hispanic girl 7th grade

And it’s sad to say that our children learn this from us. I recently ran across the following status of an African American woman on Face book looking for a hook-up: “I like a man who is confident, responsible and goal oriented. . . Physically - I prefer men at least 6 feet tall, light skinned and average builds.”

I believe that we love who we love, but I also know that who we are attracted to is dictated by society’s standards. And as long as we think white (and anything close to it) is right, brown skinned black girls and women with dark brown eyes don’t stand a chance against the exotics. The only difference between those of yester year and those of today is now they have to have big booties—an asset that until recently was deficit or black women and girls . . . but that’s another post for another day.

We may come in every shade from alabaster to ebony, but until we stop looking for validation elsewhere and learn to love all of ourselves—colorism will continue to be a problem even in our coupling with other people of color.