Musings from a Colored Girl Part II

I received several interesting comments about my last post on skin color including one expressing surprise at encountering some black people who perceived having lighter skin as a desirable goal.  It's sad that skin color is still an issue within and without the black community, but it is.  It's a complex issue that stems out of slavery in this country.  Following is a simplified version of the color complex that still affects Black America.

 

The first settlers that came to this country were predominantly male.  It was a dangerous journey and a hard life and most did not bring their families.  They did however bring slaves and some of those slaves were women.  The slave women were property and not thought of as equals but they had the right equipment to satisfy the needs of the settlers. These sexual unions produced children. 

 

Skip ahead fifty years when the south is beginning to thrive and slave owners are still slipping out to the slave quarters for a little fun on the side.  The children from these unions were a mix, not fully white but not fully African either.  The south's solution was to devise an elaborate system of laws classifying people based on the amount of "black blood" they possessed.  A union between a black and white equals a mulatto; if a mulatto mated with a white the child produced was classified as a quadroon; if a quadroon mates with a white person the child produced is an octoroon.  Blacks didn't devise this system of classification; it was created by whites.  New Orleans is the crowning example of the very public use of the classification system.  Continuing on after the Civil War was a custom of holding balls attended by octoroon women and white men for the specific purpose of finding a suitable mistress.

 

Why the fixation on skin color or black blood?  Well, genetics allowed that the offspring of these black/white unions came in a variety of shades ranging from dark brown to white.  It was important to the white landowners that only their legitimate children inherit their estates.  Blacks could not inherit the property but what about those children who weren't easily identified as black?  Could they come forward some day and try and claim their birth right?  To ensure that this didn't happen, most southern states had laws that specified that the race of the child was the same as the race of the mother.  The system of classification allowed for identifying anyone as black who had even one black ancestor somewhere along the line.  Because nature didn't always cooperate and make identification easy, there were people with black ancestry, who because of their physical appearance, passed for white. (Of course they had to escape and leave their families behind forever.)  Even those not fair enough to pass for white, found benefits in their lighter skin tones.  There was a preference to have lighter skin slaves work in the house.  Seems sort of illogical because surely the master's wife had to have some idea why some of the slaves were lighter than the others.  Nonetheless, house slaves were often selected for their lighter complexion.  Being a house slave meant a somewhat better life than being a field slave, relegated to hard physical labor under a hot sun all day.  On the other hand, many house slaves suffered almost daily abuse from angry ladies of the house who recognized a certain resemblance between the house slaves and her own offspring.

 

I don't find it surprising that black people began to internalize this color consciousness.  To be white was better in a societal context.  Even the poorest white person had more rights than any black person.  Even free blacks did not have the rights afforded to a white person.  If you were light enough to pass for white, then you had opportunities that you would never have as a black person living in a society controlled by whites.  Even after emancipation, lighter skin blacks were more acceptable to whites.  Human nature being what it is, societal norms for acceptability and attractiveness are set by the dominant culture.  In Eurocentric American culture, the further removed an individual's physical appearance from the African, the more acceptable that individual. 

 

I don't indulge in a great deal of anger about race; I decided long ago that to do so would be self-destructive.  But I do have anger about the damage done to the psyche of my people by white privilege, arrogance, and blindness.  I am continually amazed at how little white people know of  this country's racial history.  Too many people appear to believe that slavery was a self contained institution, bad but long gone and therefore of no significance in the present.  The legacy of slavery still permeates our society, like a cancer. 

 

I often encounter whites who are somewhat bewildered by what they perceive as black folks' obsession with race.  Well meaning, they ponder as to why we can't all just get along and offer that they don't see color, people are people.  I can't speak for all black people, but my color is a part of who I am, if you don't see it, then you don't really see me.  I find nothing objectionable in that you recognize that I am a black woman.  I only object if along with that recognition comes an assumption that I am inferior and you are superior.  Simply acknowledging differences in skin color is no more offensive than noting hair or eye color.

 

I've worn myself out and I have to end this post.  This is a subject that always leaves me weary.  My final comment today is that I am continually amazed at how strong and resilient my people are, that in spite of a societal construct that rejected us as a people, that continually told us that we were inferior, we have managed to grow and develop our own identities.  We are strong.  We are survivors.