Friday, November 13, 2009

Friday Rant: Darkside followup

After reading Grace’s post yesterday, it really got me thinking. The comments on her post by men, was not of disgust at her outright disdain for lighter tone men. Instead, she was flooded with requests for a response by the men she left out. It just made me wonder, what if her post was written by a dark skin black man. Instead of it being a lighter toned woman praising dark skin men, what if it was a dark skin man, praising lighter toned women. Would the post have been so readily accepted without backlash from dark skin black women? The answer is undoubtedly no! Black woman would have ripped him to shreds. They would immediately be dismissed as sellouts who don’t love themselves, a man who needs validation, etc, etc, etc. Why can’t a black man write the same post, without getting side eyes from his Nubian queens?

As a mid-tone, brown skin, caramel woman (I’ve been called all of the above so you pick.) I feel a sense of pride when someone voices their love for my tone. Yesterday on twitter I posed a Silent Question of the Day: Do you have a preference when it comes to skin tone?

“Brown skin girls walk with this rhythm I still can’t explain to this day. Kryptonite. :(“

I secretly shouted ‘that’s right!’ when I read this reply. I mean I should take pride in it right? Shouldn’t it be as tolerable for a light skin woman or man to do the same when someone claims their tone is more likeable?

1 comment:

Reecie said...

I agree with what you are saying. I think the reason there is a double standard of sorts is because Black women are very quick to internalize any kind of negative judgment. We are bombarded with images and (music) daily that says we are inferior and not worthy of love. It has almost become dogma in our society that Black women are destined to end up as single mothers or eternal bachelorettes. As a result, we are much more defensive and protective of how we are talked about and perceived.

On the flip side...Black men have their share of negative stereotypes, but one thing they never ever ever ever have to combat is any kind of notion that they are undesirable. If anything Black men are probably these most sought after group of men (now the reasons aren't always good but that's beside the point). As a result it is easy for them to easily dismiss or even find humor in criticisms or negative over-generalizations. If that post contained the same generalizations outside of the context of "these men are desirable vs. these men" I bet there would've been a lot more backlash.


Ultimately...when you hit people where it hurts it's going to cause the biggest adverse reaction. Fortunately for Black men they have the luxury of not having to doubt their place on the mate food chain (unfortunately for us they tend to have an inflated sense of their options but that's another story).