Man, if I had a dollar for every time someone said I was "pretty for a black girl" or highlighted some European features of myself as beautiful, I wouldn’t have needed that GoFundMe account to go to Italy. But before we get into that, let's press rewind.
Growing up, I was raised in what many today would call a “colorblind household." My parents didn't discuss our race or other people's races. We were taught that people were people no matter the color of their skin, and that they all deserve to be loved equally and shown the same level of respect. I used to think that's how I wanted to raise my children until my mom reminded me about an incident I had in kindergarten. A pair of twins that resembled the girls from “The Shining” told me that I was black and my whole world came tumbling down. My mom said that I came home throwing a fit and bawling my eyes out because, for all five years of my life, I had thought I was white. As she's telling me this, I'm laughing and shaking my head in disbelief.
At 5 years old, I was already lacking the proper education I needed to truly love myself. The world had already led me to believe that being black was a curse, the ultimate lifetime sentence. But how? Thinking back, I didn't see girls like me on TV until “That's So Raven," “Penny Proud," and “Sister, Sister” came out. Damn you, Disney. No one like me came on the big screen as anything other than someone's baby mama or loud, ghetto, uneducated beings. These have proven time and time again to be the falsest of all the stereotypes being that African American women are now the most educated group of individuals in the United States. I grew up being so afraid of being black because I was never shown or taught it's value until I made friends in college who were unapologetically black. A professor of mine, Dr. Tumminia, had us read "Oroonoko: The Royal Slave" (if you have time, read it. it will change the way you perceive and define beauty). Then it all began to make sense.
I'm constantly told, “I'm usually not into black girls, but with you there's something different. You're pretty for a black girl.” A phrase I and so many others hear way too often and is said way too easily. For a while, it was something I valued about myself, but now I question such a backhanded compliment. Like, what does that even mean? Why do you have to validate and decipher to yourself why you find me beautiful? Can I not just be beautiful? A bus ride I took to War Memorial Park to celebrate another year of making Principal’s Honor Roll in high school explained it all.
Sitting on that hot, humid bus that vaguely smelled like throw up and stale gasoline, two melanin deficient people in my class turned around and asked me, “Are you mixed?” But this time I didn’t answer but rather I questioned, “Why do you think I'm mixed?” And without shame the two of them started listing parts of my body that “weren't typical of black people” like my light skin, good hair and small nose. The comment that stuck out most was that all “the other black people they've ever seen have been ugly and fat, but I'm pretty because I don’t necessarily look completely black.” Back then, to me, it was normal conversation and a question I've been asked a hundred times. But that specific awkward conversation put me on the verge of tears for it helped me understand what they were implying. It proved to me that I valued myself on traits that were European and would have made me the perfect house slave in pre-Civil War America, and not those that were African. I was so whitewashed that I didn't appreciate myself for the uniqueness that I was as a woman of color.
It wasn't until I went abroad that I, as black woman, understood that for many others that I was merely a fetish and most definitely a mystery.
I dated a boy while I was over there who I don't think had ever spoken to a black person in his life before me. Throughout our relationship, I found myself trying to educate him and prove my worth more than actually building a healthy normal relationship, all of which I failed at miserably. Turns out, I didn't know enough or love enough about my heritage and melanin to educate him. I needed to truly educate and love myself. I could have loved him in ways unimaginable, but it seemed like the two of us could not look past our racial differences. And for the first time in my life, I truly understood what people said about loving your whole self and not bits and pieces of it.
I love myself and my blackness more now than ever. I want to thank him for making me feel uncomfortable about something I now cherish so deeply. I know he probably meant no harm, he was just curious and wanted to learn. It was just that it was a few hundred conversations I was just not used to having after being raised in a culture of fake societal acceptance and infrastructural racism. But he was right about something, My black is beautiful. My black is magic.
Black women come in all shades and colors with varying hair textures, eye colors, and frames. To say you don't like black women is saying you don't like any woman. To say that someone is pretty for a black girl is saying you appreciate some aspects of her that resemble the “less black” features of herself which she is actually fully composed. To say you merely like someone solely based upon their race is to say you don't actually like them or have taken the chance to know them at all.
To all of you who are “pretty for black girls" and those disregarded by society for not, know that your melanin is poppin' and you are a queen. Don't let those who rewrote our history determine your worth. Define it for yourself with true self-acceptance and education.
Your black is beautiful without any add ons or additional stipulations. Screw society. Love yourself. Empower each other. Get in formation.
