Growing up there was a prevailing sentiment that it was better to be light skinned and this thought is carried not only by light skinned people but also by the darker skinned individuals, whether they want to admit it or not. It is almost like no matter what our hardships were they could not be measured with theirs because we were privileged to be brown.
Oftentimes, and I have mentioned this before, whenever there is an argument about something as simple as a pencil, that argument could easily turn out to be a vicious name calling gripe about colour. We were ‘cussed’ and told how ‘we think we white.’ How they knew what we were thinking was befuddling, but they always knew what we were thinking about ourselves; and we ‘acting like we were better than them’ sometimes only because of the difference in home training. We sat around the table at meal times mostly together while they sat anywhere, even outside on the nearest rock. This is not to say that all brown people sat at the table or all black-skinned people sat on the ground and I am talking about the sixties and seventies era when I was growing up.
I have to smile ruefully because the bitterness sometimes show when they declare that we would have been house slaves had we been born in the days of slavery while they would have had to endure working in the fields.
Yes that’s great! Because of my lighter skin I would have the wonderful opportunity of emptying piss-pots and cleaning up vomit and gore among other household chores. Perhaps it would be a lovely chance to be scullery maid or even be a cook. Actually, I love to bake and I do not mind cooking so being a cook might not have been half bad. But we probably could not have chosen to work in the fields if we preferred to be outdoors because we would have all been slaves!
This documentary allowed people of different shades of blackness to speak about their experiences and there were no surprises there for me because it is the same things I have been experiencing living here in Jamaica.
There was a lot of hurt because ‘brownings’ as we are called here, were too brown to be black and black skinned persons held no punches when they brought it to our attention. And, of course, we are not white and not only that, dare not mention that we have an ancestor who was white with blue eyes because that only solidifies the fact as they see it that we were acting white. It is like we cannot claim our blackness and we are not allowed to claim our ‘whiteness’ lest we invite the ridicule of our dark-skinned contemporaries.
The fact is, even though they proudly claim their African heritage, I remember meeting a Ghanaian some decades ago who was miffed because I was not interested in him. He wanted to know if it was because I was a brown Jamaican (it couldn’t be because I was married and still hoped my marriage would work) and he further heaped his disgust on me when he sneeringly informed me that Africans regarded Jamaicans (or West Indian negroes, I don’t remember which) as inferior because we were ‘sons of slaves.’ I wonder if he realizes that we know that slavery existed in Africa and still does to this day; and most egregiously, child slavery. Notwithstanding, I clearly could not believe he speaks for all of Africa and also I know that in moments of hurt feelings we tend to lash out with the most hurtful things to say.
Much of the bad feelings attached to being dark-skinned is learnt within their families because I have clear memories of dark-skinned mothers fawning over the little light-skinned girl with ‘tall hair’ telling her how pretty or cute she was while her dark-skinned daughter is sometimes pushed aside. I used to feel bad for the dark-skinned child who was clearly jealous of the attention her mother was giving to the ‘browning’ and I certainly understand that if that happened often enough to a child the resentment that those experiences would cultivate leading up to adulthood.
Growing up in a large household with children of different hues and ethnicity, I certainly experienced the petty favouritisms, and the scathing disdain with which we treated each other just because of the differences in the hues of our skin, the width of our noses and the texture of our hair. Other things like the size of our feet also came into play but you get my drift. We were taught to abhor the differences of our physical make-up which is something we had no control over and that God in his wisdom created. The same God who made the one ‘ugly’ also made the other pretty. Seems there is a lot of hating of God which is directed to the mere mortals who had no choice in this regard.
Even persons who are well educated and should know better jump on the hate bandwagon when they could have used it as an opportunity to teach someone something they were probably not conscious of us because I know we have within us the ability to know when we do and say the wrong things. Missed teachable moments.
We have to be very careful of the things we say or things get misconstrued and you could end up being hated for saying something which had no bearing on colour or race.
Some years ago, I was associated with someone who was trying to get into the entertainment business. It was a frustrating time because that person would spend hours in the studio trying to get a song recorded; certainly that person was talented and is evidenced by the subsequent success in the ability to foster a successful career in that chosen field. But before the success was a lot of waiting to the point where derogatory self-references were made.
She called herself a ‘nobody with no name’ among other things which at first seemed harsh to me but eventually it became an acceptable part of the conversation. This was not peculiar to her, however, because in listening to other persons in the entertainment business when they are being interviewed, many of them talk about a time when they were ‘nobody with no name’ which was a thread common to entertainers of different colours, races, nationalities and genres.
I was part of a choir that hired an actor to help choreograph the movement as it pertains to the rhythm of the particular song. I did not know him. My counterpart informed me that he was an actor and cited the local production that he had been appearing on at the time. It was a soap opera that I watched at first but had lost interest along the way and he apparently joined the cast after I had stopped watching.
In a country where over ninety percent of the populace is dark-skinned, it happened that my contemporary was very dark-skinned as was he, the actor. Because we live off a lot of assumptions, and it was all the rave to watch that soap opera, she assumed I watched and should know about this actor. Not being one to belabour any point which could lead to an argument, I simply said oh well another ‘nobody no name.’
She got angry and almost attacked me and told me that I could not call him that. Of course, since what I had said had nothing to do with colour I responded in anger that she could not tell me what to say. It was a slow day for me because even then I had no clue that her point of view was one that had to do with colour.
Clueless as to the tumult I had caused among the choir in its entirety, I dismissed the event and went on with life as usual. It took me a while (more than a decade) to figure out that there was a problem and what the problem was since by then as an adult, I had erased all the little pettiness that had to do with colour and really as a child I was so beaten down by abuse and neglect I was never one to try and beat others down. It was more my tendency to avoid others, find a corner and a book and read to my heart’s content. Plus I had a child to raise and if you were to ask her, in fact I asked her recently what was her experience with colourism. I was pleased when she said that she experienced colourism in school. As parents, we never made skin colour, race, texture of hair and all the usual ‘muckery,’ issues for her to deal with.
I do not know if many persons saw the documentary ‘Light Girls,’ in fact, everybody should watch both (currently running on OWN #Selma) because there is also another entitled ‘Dark Girls’ and since it is clear to me that there need to be conversations, and since these conversations have the power to cause friction and strife, perhaps watching them could ease some of the angst associated with colourism and by extension racism.
#LightGirls #DarkGirls #OWN