Facing color privilege. Photo by Donald Andrew Agarrat, 2003.
Charles grabs his coat leaves Adam4Adam.com for good this time...for real. He also posts an interesting rant on color. I told him how I felt, kinda, leaving out a hellava lot of anecdotes about what I think about the value of my skin. See below for my commentary, but check out Charles's provo polemic first.
Heru considers sex as a way of creating a moment of spiritual and psychic engagement. What happens when bodily fluids are exchanged? What information is transferred? Can you give karma? This essay raises more questions than it answers, which is great because there is no one answer. There are multiple realities, and that's where you, dear reader, come in and well, engage your own.
Kevin interviews the wonderful DJ Ken Terry.
Philippe considers the late great Ossie Davis.
Lynne d spreads the word about a web job opportunity and offers a few words and links to 50 cent's latest videos.
Bernie hangs out with a rough crowd.
EJ’s waxing crescent moon shares a baker's dozen descript of his va-ca down to New Orleans. Along the way he hangs with a couple of sisters, Angelica Storm and Crackmonkie. Welcome back EJ.
Larry considers suffering and it leads to a larger discussion of how the internal impacts/affects the external, and what our responsibilities are.
James, graciously gives us a calendar for jazz concerts...
Tim’m shares a heartfelt letter to a very special blakkboy.
Ryan takes on the blocks in his life. Fear stands at the gate.
I'm sending out good sweet love to The Love Hater whose Radioblog says it all.
Lordy Charles, you said so much that I need to address this post. My experience has led me to believe that most black folks adhere to the Master Narrative around “light is right” resulting in making emotional cripples out of all of us. I have to hear about color every day, in a variety of ways and still, conversations about it rarely reach for healing, understanding, and culpability, but only serve to (re)inscribe and honor the myths.
I have been abused by color issues all my life. I am tired of people acting out a fantasy on my body. I am done with acting fantasies out on other bodies. I am working on an extended essay about it for the next book, and I will share some of my experiences and thoughts. Black folks give color privilege (for bisque or tawny-skinned blacks) and denigrate brown bodies for a shitload of reasons. One to keep hierarchy intact, two, because of self-hatred, three (which is the most slippery) that beauty is subjective and informed by a host of tangibles and intangibles that people have made important as opposed to the soul. These random acts of conscious and unconscious choice have had corrosive affects for our communities at large.
Still, more than enough brown-skinned bros and sisters have laid down their bodies, and their children's bodies, to touch/taste/experience this pseudo "privilege." Personally it has never made me feel about myself in anyway; it has mostly confounded me, because I grew up in a family that was filled with colors, and played its own damaging and corrosive selective process in dinging who was worthy, and therefore, who was not. Surprisingly I wasn't—“valued,” at least not the way I wanted to be. Like all things ridiculous, my skin color went in and out of style like a pair of pants. Cute, but obviously not something you want to bank your self-esteem on.
It is not a good feeling when someone thinks I am attractive and out of their mouth flies a comment about my skin tone--like I fucking purchased it and need to be affirmed. Oh, light skin on sale, 5 dollars! They think it's a compliment. I realize I am talking to someone who doesn’t even know I exist, despite the fact that I am standing right in front of them. They are playing with this “thing,” and generally, if I don’t give a fuck, I don’t challenge it. What I do think about it how few of us truly connect with each other when skin color is a factor other than as aesthetic. I think of it as a burden getting to know someone, and someone getting to know me. It feels like our old friend white supremacy collects again on our quality of life, and we willingly and grinningly submit.
How does it feel to be reduced to a thing? White supremacy not only to the people it targets, but to its authors as well. Black folk who value color in this manner are reduced in this manner and hurt deeply: I am one of them. I am one of the hypersensitive ones you spoke about on my way to healing. It's been taking awhile, and I suspect that I am only at the beginning of deeper journey that will strip my skin and leave me with more effective tools to love and be loved, and not the skin I happen to be in. But while I have no control over what people think of me, or my skin tone, I do have a choice in how I respond or don’t respond to color issues in our community. Let’s call a tribunal in the black LGBT community and see what comes of it.