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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2006 11:54:30 GMT 3
"If you're white it alright, if you're brown stick around, if you're black get back or you better attack."
Quoting Mutabaruka in these wee hours of the night seems most appropriate. Rather than lay on my bed feeling deflated and like a rag doll, tossing and turning, I thought that I'd jump up and share my thoughts and feelings with the people here at Jukwaa. Please do excuse my emotiveness as I've come to grasp that in patriarchal thinking (in particular) emotiveness is frowned upon. Some people have made that abundantly clear here on Jukwaa as well. Being a feminist, I embrace the notion that one can be simultaneously emotive and intelligent. So, I've got no apologies to make about being a cry baby!
Is it true that gentlemen prefer blonds? Does this include black men? But Kane West sings that he hopes that light skins never come back on fashion. He is talking not of blonds, but of light skinned blacks. Now here in Toronto, it seems that every other white woman wants a black man and its looking more and more like the darker the better. I have no problem with any white person who wants to love people of color; so long as their dark love does not subconsciously symbolize an exotic pet. So long as they realize the full historical and contemporary implications of such a union I have no problem with such a relationship.
Going back to my fantasies. I want to be white but I'll settle for being exotically beautiful by being of mixed race ancestry. Then black men that I choose to nurture and love would want me too. But instead, I'm stuck with being a dark skinned meru who black men will have when convenient until the real deal, the one who looks better on their arm is around. But, I want them to desire me as much as they desire the next light skinned woman. I too want to have the "good hair". I graduated a long time ago now from the alienating notion that thinks of whites and light skins as more desirable than their darker skinned counter parts.
I too had that bug once but the Goddess intervened and voila, I was cured. Don't mess with the Goddess you all.
Loving black people is partly about healing myself too from the damaging effects of internalized racism. My favorite ones being those folks who want this world to change more than anything else. I prefer to nurture these sorts of people. In terms of race, I have no qualms about being with any white person who is politically conscious and committed to change. I'll have them over any conservative black. Am I contradicting myself here? Not really. I love black people in their darkest and their lightest, but this does not obscure the reality that white supremacy places lighter skinned blacks higher on the hierarchies of most desirable. Light skinned black women are put on a pedestal over their darker sisters. Its not just about whites, other blacks, having internalized racism to a hilt, put them on that pedestal as well. Just ask Beyonce Knowles or Alicia Keys. Sometimes light skinned blacks reject this absurdity in its entirety, but too often they revel in it. And ya, why do so many black men love Angelina Jolie's lips? Don't get me wrong, I find Angelina sexy. She's got it going on and for me it isn't about her whiteness. It's the way she carries herself. But, every other black woman has full and fuller lips than Angelina. I don't see anyone tripping about that. Why are full lips considered attractive when they are on light skins and white skins?
Can anyone tell me why I shouldn't want to be white or light skinned? Since I can't, I think I'll find me a white man who wants to make a baby and make a mixed race baby and that ought to make me feel more worthwhile. I'll have contributed to making desirable people for the world! If I make a girl, then I'll be adding to the range of choice that dark skinned black men have and for this I should be rewarded. After all I ain't getting anywhere in my own stinky black skin.
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Post by aeichener on Dec 27, 2006 12:26:57 GMT 3
After all I ain't getting anywhere in my own stinky black skin. Oh... for stinky black skin, just use Ivory soap, Kathure dearest. ;D   PS: Me, I love Angelina's lips, too !  The view of an artist called Fourteen from San Francisco in her painting „If Dalí had painted Angelina Jolie“, oil on wood, 2006, visitable on the 'Net via galleryoftheabsurd.com . Une hommage à Salvador Dalí. Alexander |
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Post by Onyango Oloo on Dec 27, 2006 16:50:33 GMT 3
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Post by aeichener on Dec 27, 2006 17:50:06 GMT 3
One of my favourite models indeed. Thanks, dear OO. *slurp* I shall now post pictures of my other favourite (though she be not African, but black Caribbean).      Alexander |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2006 15:37:48 GMT 3
Yes Alek Wek! and Grace Jones! But how many Sudanese and luo women lets say, are as gorgeous as Alek and why only Alek as a token in the modeling world. Also do black people find her attractive? We won't talk about the majority of whites because I think we all know the answer to that question.
The following is a long quote from Patricia Hill Collins in her incredible book " Black Sexual Politics, African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism" (2004)
Because femininity is so focused on women's bodies, the value placed on various attributes of female bodies means that evaluations of femininity are fairly clearcut. Within standards of feminine beauty that correlate closely with race and age women are pretty or they are not. Historically, in the American context, young women with milky White skin, long blond hair, and slim figures were deemed to be the most beautiful and therefore the most feminine women. Within this interpretive context, skin color, body type, hair texture, and facial features become important dimensions of femininity. This reliance on these standards of beauty automatically render the majority of African American women at best as less beautiful, and at worst, ugly. Moreover, these standards of female beauty have no meaning without the visible presence of Black women and others who fail to measure up. Under these feminine norms, African American women can never be as beautiful as White women because they never become White....
Hair texture, a female feature that is far more malleable, also matters greatly in re-creating femininity in the context of the new color-blind racism. Because a good deal of women's beauty is associated with their hair, this aspect of women's physical appearance takes on added importance in the process of constructing hierarchies of femininity. As Banks suggests, " the 'good hair' and 'bad hair' distinction is probably the most indelible construction of hair that occupies the psyche of African Americans." ... Raine, one of the participants in Bank's study, agrees with this position, and explains how ideas about"good hair" and bad hair" articulate with ideas about skin color:
"Blacks are judged on their hair. I think basically the long, straight hair people are more favorable. The shorter, kinkier, nappier hair, the less favoritism is shown. I've lived that, coming through school as a young girl I was dark, but I had long hair. I was put in with the little light skin long-haired kids. But the ones who had the short, measly, nappy hair, no matter what they looked like, they were always last, in the back."
S
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Post by aeichener on Dec 29, 2006 17:41:27 GMT 3
Yes, the vexed hair issue: that apparently *still* is a topic among US blacks, and to a lesser but maybe growing extent also among Africans. I have rarely encountered it as "issue" in Europe, only possible with French blacks (large number and longtime community).
Alexander
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Post by roughrider on Jan 3, 2007 14:05:51 GMT 3
I don’t like the tone of this post at all. Kathure must have been using sarcasm at points – else she must see a therapist at once to help her with self esteem. If it is not irony then Ms Kebaara suffers from serious inferiority complex. Dear ladies, especially those that call themselves feminist, men need not be the reference point for your beauty… or lack of it. Ms Kebbara would then certainly be a typical ‘Clementine’ that Okot p’Bitek sings about in ‘the Song of Lawino’
Here is how Lawino describes Kathure ‘Clementine’ Kebaara
The woman with whom I share my husband
Ocol rejects the old type
He is in love with a modern woman
He is in love with a beautiful; woman
Who speaks English
But only recently
We would sit close together
Touching each other!
Only recently I would play
On my bow-harp
Singing praises to my beloved
Only recently he pronmised
That he trsusted me completely
I sused topn admire him
Speaking in Ennglish
Ocol is no longer in love with
the old type;
He is in love with a modern girl.
The name of the beautiful one
Is Clementine.
Brother, when you see
Clementine!
The beautiful one as[pitres
To look like a white woman;
Her lips are red-hot
Like glowing charcoal,
She resembles the wild cat
That has dipped its mouth in
blood,
Her mouth is like raw yaws
It looks like an open ulcer,
Like the mouth of a field!
Tina dusts powder on her face
And it looks so pale;
She resembles the wizard
Getting ready for the midnight
dance
She dusts the ash-dirt all over
her face
And when little sweat
Begins to appear on her body
She looks like the guinea fowl!
The smell of carbolic soap
makes me sick.
And the smell of powder
Provokes the ghosts in my head;
It is the necessay to fetch a goat
From my mothers brother.
The sacrifice over
The ghost-dance drum must
sound
The ghost be laid
And my peace restored
I do not like dusting myself
with powder:
The thing is good on pink skin
Because it is already pale,
But when a black woman has
used it
She looks as if she has
Dysentery;
Tina looks sickly
And she is slow moving,
She is a piteous sight.
Some medicine has eaten up Tina’s face;
The skin on her face is gone
And it is all raw and red,
The face of the beautiful one
Is tender like the skin of newly
born baby!
And she believes this is beautiful
Because it resembles the face of
a white woman!
Her body resembles
The ugly coat of the hyena;
Her neck and arms
Have real human skins!
She looks as if she has been
struck
by lightning;
Or burnt like the kongoni
In a fire hunt
Why I don’t like the tone of this post? Because if we believe and know black is beautiful we do not have to discuss it, we don’t have to justify it and certainly it is pointless to protest too much about black being beautiful. Black does not have to be more or less beautiful…. we have no need to confirm it, assert it, deny it, prove it or compare it.
In another verse Okot p’Bitek (as translated from Luo by Taban lo Liyong) laments that we even make love like Europeans!
The dancers would all smoke cigarettes, like Europeans
Both women and men: smoke like Europeans
They would all suck their cheeks, like Europeans
They would all suck their tongues, like Europeans
They would lick the saliva from their mouths, like Europeans
Leaving men’s mouths plastered with paints, of Europeans
With which their women had smeared their lips
And, as if in resignation, p’Bitek tells those, like Kathure ‘Clementine’ Kebaara and their modern husbands to eat what they like of western stereotypes but to let those of us who don’t see it their way to eat what we prefer
My husband,
I do not complain
That you eat
White men’s foods.
If you enjoy them
Go ahead!
Shall we just agree
To have freedom
To eat what one likes?
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Post by aeichener on Jan 3, 2007 16:42:31 GMT 3
I don’t like the tone of this post at all. Yes, that is the point. The tone is personal, bitter, it touches, and not always comfortably. Well-written it is, to be able to achieve such effect on us. Oh indeed. Do you say. Ah, c'mon. She writes about a societal and imparted complex, about internalization at large, not just about herself. Her observations, sarcastic and at times bitter, go beyond her individual and temporary self-perception. And how many of us can say they are 100 % content and confident with all parts and all aspects of their physis, hmmh? How many of us have never felt down and less attractive on occasion? We *should* not have to... but it isn't yet so. You know it, I know it, Kathure knows it. Why do black guys abroad feel a silly need to boast about their having shagged or shagging white women, as if that were any special achievement? Why will an average white guy on visit not have much difficulty to find female admirers in Kenya, who'll be glad to show him off to her friends, as if a mzungu lover/friend/partner were anything better and more stately and worthy? Or would he be?  Indeed. Both genders! See Kathure's posting on Polygamy vs. Bigamy. Ah, what societal and legal hypocrisy. The Bureau of Double Standards, Kenya's most important national institution. Alexander |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 4, 2007 7:29:23 GMT 3
RR talking the truth for what it is is not an indication of lack of self regard. Like it or not white supremacy reigns and thinking about it, talking about it is not a reflection of my lack of self regard. I have self regard, however this sense of self worth is strong at times but at other times it waivers. We are all social beings and psychological beings and no matter how strong we are, the way other people treat us does impact us negatively or positively. Racist ideologies do not impact just those people of color who live in the West. Remember that we've been colonized and then neo-colonized. People do learn to be oppressive and concomitantly the marginalized internalize oppression. Read Fanon's "Black Face White Mask".
Childhood is the most crucial period in the development of a sense of self worth. Children are subordinates of adults. I don't mean this in any sort of power tripping and abuse of children by adults. What I'm trying to say is that my 5yr old has hardly any power over me. If I chose to be abusive toward him physically, emotionally or in other ways, there isn't much that he can do about it. Adults look the other way all the time when children are abused, so there wouldn't necessarily be any intervention.
It follows then that as we raise our children we reflect on the real world in which we live and act accordingly. Hopefully we grow up in health environments where our needs are met and where we learn that we are worthy of love from others regardless of the forces that paint people of our gender, race etc as inferior. Not just romantic love, but love from family members and good plutonic friends too. To paraphrase bell hooks - most people recognize that we are hard wired for sex but do not recognize that we are hard wired for love. Parents who want to pretend that we live in a harmonious world do not have good parenting skills.
The reality my friend, is that hierarchies exist and some of these are organized around race, gender, class, and dare I say sexual orientation. I take it as a parental responsibility to mitigate the psychological and emotional pain that my children are subjected to by being the "wrong" color. Since I have sons it is my responsibility to raise their awareness about ways in which they are privileged for instance because of their gender and ways in which they are penalized because of their race. It is my responsibility to raise them to be men who are not misogynist. It is going against the grain given that the media, education systems, peers and society in general reproduces and re-enforces oppressive relationships. But I will do my work and the rest is up to them as they enter adulthood. They will choose to be on the right or the wrong side of things.
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Post by Onyango Oloo on Jan 4, 2007 18:41:15 GMT 3
KK:
I read RR's intervention with a smile playing on my bemused lips.
Having known your strong, beautiful, dreadlocked self for close to twenty years, I can affirm that you do not suffer from any low self-esteem. On the contrary, I have seen you help hundreds of women anguishing through identity crisis in Canada's racist and sexist society transform themselves into powerful beings who rediscover their hidden powers.
By the way, your writing is simply brilliant- both in form and content, especially incisive analysis.
Onyango Oloo
Nairobi, Kenya
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Post by roughrider on Jan 5, 2007 15:14:04 GMT 3
I see KK.... and thanks OO for giving us a hint re KK - sometimes you never know whether you are engaging some conceited arm-chair ideologist... or a practical human rights worker.
If you take another look at the pictures OO and Alex generously provided then you may or may not see beatiful women; but you will certainly see tall and slim women. Yes, black, but tall and slim - which exposes another of the sterotypes you alluded to. Everyday i meet African women who are big, buxom and no less beautiful.
So its not just about being white or black - but tall and skiny?
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Post by aeichener on Jan 5, 2007 16:02:27 GMT 3
Good point, roughrider.
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Post by aeichener on Jan 9, 2007 18:52:03 GMT 3
Dear Kathure, here is one most interesting link right to the abstract (not concrete) topic of your posting; an article written by none less than a fellow Torontonian woman of colour, Amina Mire from Somalia. Amina’s many publications include: “Skin-Bleaching: Poison, Beauty, Power, and the Politics of the Colour Line” in the Canadian based feminist journal Resources for Feminist Research (RFR/DRF/Vol.28.No.3/4/2001/winter/spring issue). Her doctoral dissertation “Soaping the Cells: Poison, and Skin-Whitening Biotechnology” examines the social, political and economic implication of the emerging practice of skin-whitening. She seems like an intellectually hot gal. Check her out and hit on her . Here is a link to a very good blog article by her: newsomalia.blogspot.com/2007/01/struggle-for-somalia-warlords-islamists.htmlAlexander |
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