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| 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.
