Allow me to ask a seemingly stupid—albeit provocative—question: Is Jeannette Kowalik a beautiful woman? Pretty? Cute?
To most brothers, that’s a seemingly nonsensical query.
But don’t respond affirmatively if you’re a Black male who wants to preserve your relationship with a sister who has fallen prey to the divide and conquer strategy of our oppressors. In that case, the wrong answer will get you in hot water, or maybe even hot grits or four feet of dog do, depending on your significant other’s level of self-esteem, cultural deficiency, and racist proselytization.
But recognize their disingenuous negativity isn’t necessarily grounded in Kowalik’s physical appearance. Instead, it’s more about her complexion and her hair, two attributes that remain a continuous subject in the African American community.
Confused? It would help if you weren’t since this paradoxical paradigm has plagued our tribe for centuries.
It’s ingrained in our subconscious. It is a crucial component of the racist priority to brainwash and thus divide our community.
It’s the reason why the punks who stole Lady Gaga’s ridiculously expensive dogs only took the white and mixed one, leaving the black pooch to perform mouth to mouth on Gaga’s valet, who had been shot in the chest by the thieves.
It’s because, as my ancestors posited: ‘if you white, you’re alright; if you’re yellow, you’re mellow; if you’re brown, stick around, but if you’re black, get back!’
I introduce this subject because I offered what should have been an honest and objective analysis of Kowalik, the former city of Milwaukee Health commissioner’s good looks during an otherwise innocent conversation among family members recently.
But when my son-in-law seconded my motion, the walls of Jericho came tumbling down.
Before the smoke cleared, the conversation had deteriorated to Defcon 3, taking on assertions about how Black men couldn’t have White women and thus viewed anything lighter than caramel as a substitute.
How brothers were prejudiced against dark-skinned women, and how we’re brainwashed into believing light chocolate tastes better than dark.
Despite what was said (or not said), it was obvious that the core of these sisters’ disgruntlement was the big ‘J,’ jealousy.
Like most sisters who are caught up in the ‘hue-woman’ paradox, the sisters in our small circle won’t admit it. Still, they have fallen prey to the disingenuous assumption that light-skinned women threaten their world because Black men value them more than darker-skinned women.
As a result, a subconscious animosity has developed, rearing its ugly head whenever a light-skinned sister is recognized or acknowledged by brothers.
Most will deny their jealousy, but it is a factual and divisive reality in our community, having its origins, some believe, in the slavery era when some slave owners gave preferential treatment to their multiethnic offspring.
The field slaves, seeing this accommodation and disregarding the fact that the mother of the ‘mixed’ child was raped by the bastard who called himself a Christian, struck out at the victim versus the perpetrator.
In doing so, the field Negroes unknowingly added fuel to the fire of White supremacy and the Willie Lynch strategy of divide and conquer.
Whether Willie Lynch was a real person is irrelevant, as this strategy of lowering the darker skin brothers’ and sisters’ self-esteem while simultaneously pitting one slave against another kept us attacking family members instead of the real enemy.
And if we’re honest, light-skinned sisters and brothers do have an advantage in the real world today.
It is not a coincidence that light-skinned sisters find it easier to weave (no pun intended) their way through the corporate, political, and educational structures.
You’ll find a disproportionate number of them on television, in the movies, and in front-office positions.
While traveling to the islands, I noted that the front office hostesses, bankers, and government officials tend to be lighter than the field slaves…uh, employees who did the ‘heavy lifting.’
Obviously, this is not an accident. We live in a White dominant society, where Eurocentric standards of beauty and culture are the norm.
Lie to yourself if you wish, but I wasn’t merely facetious a few months ago when I expressed both surprise and shock when I turned my TV to the Spectrum news and saw the anchor, Sachelle Saunders, proudly wearing braids!
Nor was I being flippant when I said if you put the sisters who anchored local network news in silhouette, you couldn’t tell them apart or from White female anchors.
Several Black female reporters have revealed that a criterion of employment is to look as European as possible. Things have been changing in recent years, but that’s only because diversity has become the new fad. There are African hairstyles HR departments won’t allow, and only recently has legislation been introduced at the state level to end this obvious form of discrimination.
But there’s a flip side to this coin that deserves scrutiny.
There was a time when our ancestors not only acknowledged the Eurocentric paradigm but tried to accommodate the racist notion.
Black male slaves would cake their nappy locks with axle grease to ‘process’ it in the futile hope of being more acceptable. Even my idol Malcolm X processed his hair before he knew better and learned to love his Black self.
Sisters spent their hard-earned money frying, relaxing, and straightening their hair to embrace the same prototype. You still hear women, more so than brothers, talking about ‘good hair.’ And they are not talking about Afros or locks.
Ebony and Jet magazines survived in the early days with advertisements for skin whiteners and process cream—lye.
I doubt those products appealed to White folks.
It is a paradox of the past two centuries that so many tribal members want to diss the so-called ‘biracial,’ light-skinned sisters, yet have themselves embraced the European standards of beauty and acceptability.
I don’t necessarily ‘blame’ them because the truth is, they have been brainwashed, propagandized, and indoctrinated by government schools and the media to think as they do.
And the process starts early, as evidenced by the ‘doll’ tests that show Black girls prefer white ones over dark ones. It is also manifested in some African Americans’ efforts to try to ‘bleach out’ the darker hue within their families.
I recall an African American woman who worked at the Milwaukee Star Times newspaper who had moved to Brewtown because her son was attending college here.
She went ballistic when she learned her vanilla son was in a serious relationship with a dark chocolate sister with great promise.
In a deceitful action that would have made a fascinating episode of a reality show or soap opera, the mother schemed and scammed to break the happy couple up.
Eventually, when all else failed, she confronted the sister. She unapologetically told her she didn’t’ know her son messing up his life and his future children by ‘devolving’ with a dark-skinned woman.
You might think that scenario is fantasy, but I witnessed it first-hand.
What makes the story even more bizzare is that the disgraced dark-skinned sister eventually married a white guy and achieved a successful level in her chosen field.
I know of other Ebony people who have sought to ‘lighten’ their family generationally to avail themselves of opportunities they believe are offered to lighter-skinned Africans.
Actually, I had mistakenly thought we had moved from this dichotomous paradigm.
We elected a ‘multiethnic’ brother to the presidency and a light-skinned sister to vice president in the last election.
Of course, in the eyes of the mass/major/mainstream/White media, Barack Obama was rarely referred to as bi-racial, a disingenuous and idiotic term, to be sure.
Obama was generally referred to as ‘Black,’ not even given credit as being ‘African American,’ even though his father is from Kenya which, the last time I looked, was in Africa.
Kamala Harris is usually referenced to as ‘bi-racial,’ which in my worldview is a ridiculous and misleading term because there is but one race, and to be ‘bi- implies a false paradigm. I rank ‘biracial’ right up there with the other disingenuous term, the ‘n-word.’
Since everybody knows the n-word means ‘nigger,’ is using a phantom word really just a get outta’ jail-free concept?
I hate the word nigger, but despise the term ‘n-word.’ That’s why I continue to use the actual word and then write the n-word in parathesis to make a point.
It’s also why I was forced to reassess the adjective ‘bi-racial,’ because, by its definition, I would be ‘bi’ as well, since my DNA reveals one of those dastardly slave owners raped one or more of my ancestors.
His DNA has filtered down to only 18% over the centuries, but if one drop of Black blood makes you Black, 18% of white blood makes me what?
Any way you look at it, Black is beautiful, whether we look like my cousins in Ghana or my in-laws’ members of the Igbos of Nigeria who are light-skinned.
God has blessed us with a rainbow of hues. I have a vanilla grandson, a granddaughter who is caramel, and siblings who are dark chocolate. I continue to love all chocolate favors, even though dieticians say dark chocolate is good for you.
It doesn’t make a difference to me, and it shouldn’t to you either.
We are all from the same tree, and those who falsely believe there is such a thing as ‘good hair’ need to talk to the men without any.
As James Mosley explained in a recent post to me, “To say your skin organ is better or more advanced is really a non-medical sudo- diagnostic illusion.
“This is why racism is an invention, a power concept rooted in false human perceptions about the power of people who have an epidermis colored lighter than others.”
Got that?
Sure, Kowalik is lovely, but so is Michelle Obama. In fact, even while bald, Cicely Tyson was one of the most beautiful women of her era. She passed that baton to Lupita Nyong’o.
Now think about how ridiculous it is to say she is not as beautiful as Haley Berry because she has more melanin.
Hotep.
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