Color Me Exquisite

One of the most beautifully exquisite features to women of color is we run the spectrum of shades from very fair skin to dark as pitch. It is the melanin in our skin that makes us so unique that the sun kisses us with its luminous rays showing us favor on those wonderfully hot summer days. Yet there is still the remnant of a slave mentality that raises its ugly head to remind us that the Willy Lynch syndrome is still part of our psyche. It was brought into fruition by a sinister letter written by Willy Lynch, a foreign slave owner, to the slave owners of America to gain control over their slaves.

He suggested dividing the house slave from the field slave, the woman from the man, the dark skin slave from the light skin slave, creating rivalry and jealousy that literally destroyed some of the comraderies we had for each other as a people.

It is a sad commentary in the people of color community that for some is too taboo to talk about. But there are some things that can no longer be ignored and need to be flushed out, confronted and eliminated because it contributes to a self-loathing in an individual and it has the capability to be transferred to someone else by proxy and even worse to indoctrinate a child that is by far unacceptable. So let’s put this debilitating lie to bed once and for all that say light skin people are better, than dark skin people and dark skin is negative, ugly and something to be ashamed of. And anyone who falls in the middle of these skin tones are ok if you pass the brown paper bag test. It is inconceivable that this still goes on today, but unfortunately it does.

Willy Lynch promised his plan would last for generations….it did. 

After 400 years, we still suffer the lingering effects of the brainwashing the slave owners implanted in our brains. We still have light skin sisters hating on dark skin sisters, dark skin sisters hating on light skin sisters. The old cliché of not dating a man who is too dark or too light, some add insult to injury by making ignorant comments about a baby born too light or too dark. Some sisters are so ashamed of their own skin they go as far as lightening (bleaching) or darkening (tanning) it to be acceptable to society’s standard of perfection.

A dark skin daughter said to me, her mother told her to stay out of the summer sun: “You don’t need to get no blacker.” What a shame to put such a horrid complex on a dark skin child, but as a black parent with her own inferiority complex about skin tone, it becomes a matter of teaching what you have been taught! Whether we do this knowingly or unknowingly it is a practice that must end, it creates an inferiority complex in our children that they carry into adulthood causing deep psychological scars that affect the way they feel about themselves, their culture and nationality.

This is how it is perpetuated generation upon generation.

It is noticeable in the movie industry, music videos, TV commercials, magazines, every aspect of society proclaims to us what the standard of beauty is by skin tones and then we practice those standards among ourselves. Black is beautiful no matter what shades we are, as African Americans we are the ones that need to be convinced of this.

It is way pass time that we embrace the beautiful spectrums of ebony we are blessed with. We must deny the psychological effects of Willy Lynch’s plan to destroy the relationships we should have with each other.

My family ranges the color spectrum of very fair to very dark and although we have embraced our various shades without issue, most of the ridicule and ignorant remarks have come from outside my family.

When my second son was born, he had very fair skin and my black coworker said as I showed her his picture; “He looks like a white baby!” You would think a grown woman would be intelligent enough not to say something so tactless.

Needless to say, I wasn’t happy with her remark and I let her know, but it’s just an example of the ignorant things that we say to each other about our skin tone.

It is time that we begin to reverse this divisive mentality from our conscious thoughts, it isn’t inferior to be a people of variable shades. It is a gift that The Most High gave us to differentiate ourselves as nations, not a race.

Our melanin is what makes us unique, there are no other people that can produce the beautiful shades of fair, to brown, to deep black skin that we do.

The Most High created us this way….

Who are we to reject that gift?

Who are we to allow others to define that gift for us?

Our various shades of skin color is something to be proud of, celebrated, it is not something to be ashamed of!

Yes, color me exquisite, because that is how Yah made me!

I would hope that we come to a point in our development as a people that we begin to acknowledge our differences and love each other regardless of complexions and learn to embrace everything that makes us unique and beautiful…..because we really are!