Why Black People have lost their cool.
We live in a very sad age. We live in an age where the oppressed are letting their oppressors win. We live in a day where people try to resemble their oppressors in as many ways as possible. We see our true inner selves as ugly and try so hard to look lighter. We have let the ridiculous notion that lighter skin is more beautiful than darker skin, and have lost mastery of our selves and our emotions.
The issue I am talking about is colorism. Simply, colorism is having a biased preference toward a certain type of skin color. 99% of the time, this color is tended toward lighter skin. We have let the white man fool us into believing that we are ugly and worthless as our true selves and should instead strive to be pure and white. I have lost my patience with this issue in our society and I frankly do not even feel bad anymore. Light skin people are a trophy in our society. The lighter you are generally makes you more beautiful than your darker brother or sister right next to you. People filter their photos and post them on Instagram to get more likes. I even used to do such things when I was younger because I was stupider. I would wash my face everyday and overnight, sometimes multiple times a day just so I can “wash” the ugly darkness off of my face.I went so far as to buy bleaching cream. I literally thought that I was ugly because of my dark skin and it really got to me. As I grew older, I realized that thinking this way is stupid and destructive. As a more mature individual, I now realize that all skin tones are beautiful, not just lighter ones. I fully embrace my skin tone and am proud of my melanin infused epithelial tissue. My black armor is my most prized feature.
Others in out community have failed to come to the realization I did. What is saddening is the fact that this colorism comes just a few decades after the civil rights movement in which black people fought and died to be accepted for who they are. Now, we are more divided within our community then ever before. Things like #teamlightskin and memes in which the uglier or more negative subject was a dark skinned individual have led to destruction in our community. As a result of this destruction, us black people have lost the aspect of cool in which we master our selves. We have allowed the oppressors to continue oppressing and we do not even realize they do. We are fighting each other based on the way we all look while white corporate America profits from our struggle. THEY are the ones selling us the creams and the soaps and hiring the lighter models and shaming the darker ones, all so that they can steal our money and destroy our community.
Black people have lost their cool because they have lost their power. In allowing ourselves to be so influenced by something so simple as skin color is such a loss. And to want to resemble your oppressor as closely as possible is so twisted. Emily explained this clearly by saying that “we” prefer to see dark skinned features on lighter skinned people. People want the big lips, the diverse hairstyles, the big butt, the edge up hairline.... all of what makes black people black people, but on a light person. How sad is that? How uncool is that?
Whats even worse is that light skin people have such a superiority complex, as if they were white. Of course not all light skin people are like this and in fact many of them are humble. However, the stereotypes that have grown within our community have allowed light skin people to become, in some way, the “oppressors” within out community. Many strive to look like them, and praise them on their beauty while tearing the rest of us down. We have lost our cool because we have allowed ourselves to be captured and held captive once a gain. We are in emotional chains now, and only we can change that.