I remember celebrating New Year’s in Newmarket, a very monochromatic town in Canada. I asked one lady if she wanted to dance, only to get the “I don’t like black guys” spiel. I was hanging out with some people at a house party afterwards, and I mentioned the incident.
One girl’s response was to say that such preferences are natural, or innate. Basically, you are born with a preference for a certain race. As the hick said, some of her extended family are dark-skinned so why does she prefer light-skinned guys? She also tried to stump me by asking what race I prefer, to which I responded I don’t have a solid preference. I have pursued girls of all races. The last girl I dated was Chinese, several were white.
The hick also added that she doesn’t normally like dark-skinned guys but thinks I’m attractive, giving me the old “you’re a credit to your kind” compliment. People who throw out the “I don’t normally like your kind” spiel don’t even realize how much of a back-handed compliment it is and think that they are so enlightened for being attracted to one person of a different race.
I have discussed this inaccurate belief before, but I am compelled to discuss it again now. The debate with this hick girl occurred around 3am on New Year’s Eve, so I was pretty inebriated and my brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders. So now, some dumb hick thinks she stumped me with a question I could have shut down easily in another arena.
My little sister is mixed, and my mom makes sure to raise her with an appreciation and love of her dark skin and all the features that come with it e.g. her curly hair, her nose, her lips. My mom buys my little sister books about black history and black hair. She teaches my sister to admire the beauty of dark-skinned actresses like Lupita Nyong’o and Viola Davis. My sister now fully embraces her black identity and doesn’t have any aversion to dark skin.
Now imagine if my mom raised my little sister with the mentality that she would be prettier if her skin was lighter? What if my mom told her not to play outside too much since the sun would make her darker, and therefore uglier? What if my mom constantly told my sister her hair looks better straight? What if my mom only used white actresses or public figures as examples of the beauty my sister should aspire to?
It’s pretty easy to see how my brown-skinned sister could grow up to only be attracted to light skin. If my sister started getting this conditioning by the age of five, she could easily get to twenty and think her preferences are natural. That is what the hick from Newmarket doesn’t understand. Wherever that idiot is now, I hope this truth will someday occur to her.
Leave a Reply