Feeling Rebloggy
2016
Before the game, reigning MVP Stephen Curry once again hoisted the Maurice Podoloff Trophy recognizing him as the league’s most-heralded player. As the glee gently took hold in the locker room and spilled into the hallway outside, I spoke to Curry and most of his family —
...But there is a vexing issue I didn’t raise with Curry and his family — an issue that his celebrity has shined new light on: the difference one’s visibility makes to the race, and to the larger world, if one is light-skinned or dark-skinned...Suspicion surrounds him because of his light skin, and because he’s been lauded by both the NBA and media establishments.
“Light, bright and damned near white” is an expression that captures the superior social appeal of fair-skinned blacks, who were believed to be biologically and culturally closer to white culture. Lighter-skinned blacks were deemed to be smarter and more culturally refined; darker blacks were believed to be dumber and cruder.
When discussing and thinking about colorism, we as black people have to deliberately have to deliberately access our double consciousness.
That is, we have to separate how we as black people are reacting to the reality of a light-skinned person's preferential treatment based on his or her proximity to whiteness. But we also have to be aware of, and separate, a white power broker's preference for whiter-looking black folks from how that whiter-looking black person receives that preferential treatment.
BLaCKCHiCKRoCKeD.BLoGSPoT.CoM
2016
Before the game, reigning MVP Stephen Curry once again hoisted the Maurice Podoloff Trophy recognizing him as the league’s most-heralded player. As the glee gently took hold in the locker room and spilled into the hallway outside, I spoke to Curry and most of his family —
...But there is a vexing issue I didn’t raise with Curry and his family — an issue that his celebrity has shined new light on: the difference one’s visibility makes to the race, and to the larger world, if one is light-skinned or dark-skinned...Suspicion surrounds him because of his light skin, and because he’s been lauded by both the NBA and media establishments.
The subliminal message has become explicit: Curry is a brother we may not be able to embrace because the powers that be embrace him too
“Light, bright and damned near white” is an expression that captures the superior social appeal of fair-skinned blacks, who were believed to be biologically and culturally closer to white culture. Lighter-skinned blacks were deemed to be smarter and more culturally refined; darker blacks were believed to be dumber and cruder.
Blacks have often internalized in our minds and cultures the vicious stereotypes associated with skin color. We have often circulated harmful beliefs about ourselves that are tied to skin tone: deferring to some blacks because their skin is lighter, demonizing other blacks because their shade is darker.
I remember several years ago speaking at a higher education conference where I was praised by a black attendee for being much lighter in person than I appeared on television.
I argued in a CNN documentary on black America that I thought my imprisoned brother Everett, equally as bright as me, but darker-skinned, wasn’t nearly as encouraged in his studies as I was.
And I witnessed firsthand how whites, and many blacks, too, disparaged my blue-black father, Everett Sr., for no other reason than his dark skin.
Intraracial politics of color can have an opposite, if not equally punishing, effect.
The resentment by darker blacks of the perceived and quite real advantages accorded to lighter blacks has sometimes led to a wholesale repudiation of all fairer-skinned blacks.
There is, however, a big difference between asking for racial transparency in light privilege, and the unvarying treatment of fairer-skinned blacks as automatically guilty of exploiting their status.
~Michael Eric Dyson,
THE UNDEFEATED
That is, we have to separate how we as black people are reacting to the reality of a light-skinned person's preferential treatment based on his or her proximity to whiteness. But we also have to be aware of, and separate, a white power broker's preference for whiter-looking black folks from how that whiter-looking black person receives that preferential treatment.
BLaCKCHiCKRoCKeD.BLoGSPoT.CoM
No comments:
Post a Comment