Sitting in the kitchen in my halls last night, a most interesting discussion emerged between my friends and I about perceptions of beauty in relation to race; why there is (or why there used to be) so much negativity veered towards being dark-skinned and why girls who are 'lighties' get more attention. We talked about the idea of bleaching, how children are affected by society in terms of what they think about being black, who was to blame, how it could be changed. This group of friends consisted of four extremely intelligent and opinionated black girls so the conversation was...loud
We talked for a while on the stigma created amongst our peers on dark-skinned or girls or boys. Y said that she had always been the darkest of her sisters which was obvious but was never seen as a negative thing, and for this reason she never understood why dark girls didn't feel beautiful. She was mad, as were the others, at girls who would avoid jamming in the sun in summer because they didn't wanna get dark; at girls who would immediately conclude that 'she thinks she's too niceeee' just because she's light-skinned or mixed race; at boys who in their narrow mindedness only churpse 'lighties'. We talked about the diction used when discussing skin colours, 'ohh, you're lucky, your skin is ligghhttt', why was it enviable to be light? 'you're not even that dark though' as if being dark was a bad thing. A key phrase that kept popping up was 'slave mentality'. A still taboo subject. Can this generation of black people really attribute their negative or misconstrued self-image to the way their ancestors were treated during the days of slavery, institutionalized and vicious racism? I can't lie though, my mindset at times genuinely is one of inferiority. I often find myself (as discussed on twitter with jeni) trying to prove myself to white people of the older generation. I'll let them go through the door first, or pick up something they've dropped or apologise when it's in fact them that stepped on my toe. I'll talk loudly on the bus about the good university I go to, and the fact that I play classical piano or that I have a job or that I'm not promiscuous or that I go to church simply so that they don't immediately form their own negative assumptions of me. But why do I assume that that is what they are going to do? And why do I feel I have to show that I'm worthy of their approval? Sounds kinda crazy when put like that, but it is what it is. I'm essentially accepting the negative stereotype that I know is put on black people and it's not cool.
It's only even of recent that white people have wanted to be tanned! Everyone knows that back in the day to be a pale was a sign of wealth and nobility because it meant you weren't doing manual labour outside and getting beaten by the sun.
This then digressed into the mention of bleaching, something which we all find kind of appalling but essentially very sad. It brought to mind Jeni's uni project from last year on skin bleaching (jendelland.blogspot.com). We thought it madness that the connotations of being pure and wealthy and better came from having fairer skin. Think about some of the product names even... Fair & Lovely. (I haven't forgotten that Dark & Lovely is a household name)
The way in which the media affects our opinions then came up. We talked about how, when growing up, the media in every form was strongly dominated by white people. It's a lot different for children today, there a things like 'The Princess & The Frog', 'Handy Manny' - who has a fresh Latino accent lol. But there's still that ugly sentiment that lingers in the air. E's little sister, who is almost the same complexion as me, wished to be white for her 9th birthday. Apparently that wish got seckled nicely with some good old Nigerian discipline lol. A little girl in my church who is being brought up in a very affluent, white area and goes to a school where she's surrounded solely by white girls and boys, told me once that she wanted to be white...(I then proceeded to tell her that being black was beautiful of course)
Thinking back to my childhood, I wonder what kind of thoughts went through my mind. I lived in quite a working-class white area, I went to a predominantly white private school and my church was mostly 1st generation africans or west indians studying for qualifications while holding down a job. One crazy mixed-up up bringing. I guess I could never really pin one stereotype to one group having visited the humble, 2-bed houses of my neighbours and the splendid mansions (literally) of my classmates.
E then told us about a social experiment she'd once heard of where young children had two dolls in front of them and when given characteristics, had to pin them to either the white doll or the black doll. The black doll was coined as stupid, bad and poor, and the white the opposite.
Here's a link to an article on a similar social experiment...
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7213714&page=1
(Interesting how the majority of my searches show sites from America)
Been doing some research on the topic this morning and came across a social experiement called Brown Eyes/Blue Eyes conducted by an elementary school teacher from Iowa in 1968. She split up her class between the blue eyed and the brown eyed, told the blue eyed that they were superior, and they were treated as such, given a longer breaktime and other privileges...the brown eyed were told they were inferior, ostracized and made to wear collars. The result? The brown eyed pupils became hostile and performed poorer on tests. When she reversed the experiment, roles quickly reversed in turn however the brown eyed students felt more sympathy for their peers having already experienced discrimination.
Whose fault is all this anyway? Can we still blame it on the accepted and ubiquitous racism that has existed up until very recently? Is it the wrong doing of the media? Is it our teachers, our parents, ourselves? Difficult to tell.
