Journalist and syndicated columnist, Roland Martin once said, "[w]e can't truly evolve as a Black community until we begin to celebrate and appreciate our own." In his speech about the importance of Black self-love, he goes on to say, "We have too many of our people who don't love ourselves enough that we're chasing something that we can't have and when we have our own we see it as less than. Sometimes you've got to love yourself and appreciate your own."

I have never really thought about the importance of Black self-love until I got to Spelman College. Even then, I didn't have to think much about the lack of it because I was constantly surrounded by beautiful young ladies who, justifiably, think highly of themselves and their peers. It wasn't until a conversation with my younger male cousin, that I realized what I had been in a Black self-love bubble for nine months and this mindset isn't transcended in every Black mind across the nation. That conversation went as follows:

Me: Did you hear about the two men who were recently, wrongfully, murdered by the police?

Him: Yeah, but didn’t the man in Louisiana have a gun though?

Me:

I explained to him that, though, Alton Sterling did have a gun he did not pull it on the officers. (As if having a gun necessitated him having to be murdered.)

I felt the need to bring this situation up to him because he is a young, Black, male who is tall and muscular and he happens to be the first person I think of when I hear about these police brutality incidents. I simply want to make sure he knows that just because the majority of his friends and his girlfriend are white, that doesn’t mean he is automatically “okay”, essentially, I don’t want him to let his guard down too much.

A later conversation we had really got me thinking about the self-hate that festers in the Black community, it went like this:

Me: You and your girlfriend are so cute together!

Him: Yeah, we’re gonna have cute mixed kids.

Me: You would have cute kids even if they weren't mixed.

Him:

Me: You don’t like black girls at all?

Him: I just don’t like the ghetto ones.

I’m not going to lie, I was baffled by this comment, and I was trying to find the right words to explain to him how what he said could be taken offensively. I want to start by saying that anyone who knows me knows that I am all for the swirling and twirling in relationships. I’m used to seeing interracial couples at church and I completely understand having a preference and liking what you like.

What I have a problem with is the fetishizing of mixed children because they are seen as more desirable than those who aren’t mixed. Also, the fact that his default thought of a Black woman was “ghetto” is telling. He didn’t think of any of the Black women in his family who are anything but ghetto, it was interesting. I don’t fault him for this mindset because I used to have it too. I believe it stems from the lack of representation in mainstream media in regards to having someone to look up who isn’t video vixen, athlete, or reality T.V personality, as well as the history we learn about African Americans in K-12 schooling. We see this

vs

this.

While it is true that we certainly have a black nationalist movement going on, which I love, the reality of it is we still have problems accepting ourselves and this is proof:

Though this appears to be a deep-rooted issue, that isn't necessarily overt, I am confident that it can be reconciled as more black people who continue to rise to the occasion are offered a platform in which they can reach and inspire other black people.