Self-Determination, Part 1:
My Dark-Skinned Sisters, STOP Letting
Biracial/Bicultural/Multicultural/Light-Skinned Women
Wear YOUR Stolen Crown!
This essay is contained in my new book. I'm delighted to announce that The Sojourner's Passport site has launched! You can visit it at http://www.sojournerspassport.com/.Everyone, I can't thank you enough for your ongoing encouragement and support; I truly appreciate it. Your support is what made this possible. And here's a special shout-out to my web designers at Educo Web Design. They're nice people to deal with, and they do outstanding work!
Peace and blessings,
Khadija Nassif
___________________________________
I. My Sisters, Let's Be Clear About the Fact That Your Crown Was Stolen
Negroes stole your crown. In earlier decades, Black men stole your crown of recognized beauty and gave it to light-skinned women like me. I've watched and denounced this practice back since I was in high school in the early 1980s. I HATE oppression. Which is why I've always made a point of rejecting "stolen goods." Especially stolen goods that are based upon devaluing Blackness. I've always rejected Black men who have a fetish for light skin. You see, my crown does not depend upon devaluing other women. My crown rests upon my head because it belongs there, based upon my own individual charms. I don't want a crown that was stolen from some other woman.
II. Dominance Through Hair-Flips
Unlike some of the other light-skinned girls in my high school, I didn't prance down the hallways while making sure to flip my hair in the presence of darker-skinned girls. We all know what the hair flip is really all about. It's an act of dominance by Black women who have so-called "good hair." It's intended to put those without so-called "good hair" in their assigned place. Which is somewhere beneath the woman who is doing the hair flip.
First of all, my hair (even while permed) does not flip. LOL! Second, despite other people's eager suggestions, I was never interested in pursuing concoctions (gel, carefree curls, etc.) that might have given my hair a more "flippable" (as if it were naturally wavy) appearance. Most importantly, I came to hate the entire scenario. So, I had my hair cut into a natural. Of course, other Black people were horrified. The common refrain from other Black folks was, "You let somebody cut your hair off?!!! You need to find the person who did that, and get your money back!"
Let's be real. I had the self-confidence to do this as a teenager because I knew (in the back of my mind) that no matter what I did, my light skin would ensure that I got a certain amount of favorable [Black] male attention.
I know how painful it is to talk about these things. I know that talking about this is pulling at half-healed scabs. But we need to be able to talk honestly about these things. As Black women, we need to get our crowns back, and take our rightful place on the global stage! I was going to do a post about Black consciousness. Then I realized that nothing (including consciousness of any sort) is possible without a foundation of self-determination. Self-determination means that we think, speak, and define things for ourselves. It means looking at the world through our own eyes. And we can't have self-determination when we cooperate with other people assigning lower value to us. Collectively, we've got to get our crowns back. In order to recover our crowns, we need to understand how they were taken away. And how we [sometimes inadvertently] cooperate with this mass theft.
III. Many Black Women's Bad Faith & Collaboration with Oppression
I've raised my voice against intra-Black colorism since high school. Over the years, I've had VERY, VERY few light-skinned sisters in arms speaking out against this with me. Most of us didn't have our darker sisters' backs "back in the day." Many light-skinned Black women did not take Black men's self-hating choices seriously until these choices began to put a crimp into their lives. Until they lost their spot at top of the "preferred by Black men" heap. Until Negroes snatched the already-stolen-from-darker sisters-crowns off their heads and placed them on the heads of Becky, Lupe, J. Lo, and Susie Kwon.
This is an example of bad faith, not any kind of solidarity. From what I hear, it hasn't gone unnoticed by darker sisters.
However, I've also noticed that many darker sisters cooperate with being robbed of their crowns. Many Black women in general aid and abet having their crowns stolen. In many cases, we have allowed Black male thieves to redefine their theft of our crowns as a matter of their "personal preferences." Which is why we acquiesce to this mass theft.
Let me give some examples:
When a Negro celebrity such as Ne-Yo says "All the prettiest kids are light-skinned anyway," he's stealing your crown, and giving it to light-skinned women. If you persist in listening to, and buying this creature's products you are helping him snatch your crown off your head and put it on somebody else's head.
When a Negro celebrity such as Yung Berg says that he doesn't date "dark butts," he's stealing your crown. If you persist in listening to, and buying this creature's products, you are helping him steal your crown.
These are obvious types of collaboration. There are many less obvious forms of collaboration. When you embrace mediocrity in your self-presentation, you are helping to validate Negroes stealing your crown. You are also helping to validate other women's decision to wear your stolen crown.
IV. Verbal Forms of "Hair Flips" & Collaboration Through Inappropriate Inclusion
Unfortunately, some of us have grown so accustomed to being assigned a lower value, that we accept this as normal. There are verbal hair flips that many of us accept, and don't even recognize as dominance and aggression. We feel the effects of the verbal hair flips. But we don't make the connection between the verbal hair flips AND our battered and bruised spirits.
One verbal hair flip is a woman making a point of making sure that you know she's so-called biracial/multicultural/bicultural. There are normal, loyal Black people who happen to have one parent who isn't Black. Or one parent who is Black, but is not African-American. At some later point (when it comes up naturally, such as when you meet their parents) you find out that the person has a non-Black parent (or non-African-American parent). Such a person's identity and "claim to fame" does NOT revolve around making a distinction between themselves and Black people. These are people who are acting in good faith by rejecting stolen goods. Stolen goods that rest upon devaluing Blackness (or, in the one foreign Black parent scenario, devaluing African-Americans).
This is quite different from self-proclaimed "biracial," etc. persons who want to make sure that you know that they are NOT Black like you. From so-called mulattoes within ancient African societies to apartheid-era South African "Coloreds," to the "biracials" here and now among us, these type of "I don't want to be Black, and Whites won't let me be White" people have done great harm to Black people's interests.
Throughout out our history, Black people have allowed these "biracial" types to form a wedge, and a disloyal fifth column among the Black collective. Where do you think the self-proclaimed, yet Black-skinned, "Arabs" in Darfur came from? They came from partially-Arab, so-called biracial/bicultural people. Where do you think the mostly-collaborating Coloreds in apartheid-era South Africa came from? Throughout our people's history, what these internal enemies all have in common is their obsession with being recognized as something other than, and distinct from, Black:
"...there were many tribes or societies in Africa which were exclusively Mulatto (to use the term loosely). Nothing was more characteristic of the mixed breed clans, tribes or societies than their unceasing efforts to emphasize their separate identity, and their constant fear of being considered 'Negroes' or Black Africans."
The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race From 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D., by Chancellor Williams, pg. 208.
The pattern that I've seen with these self-proclaimed "biracials" is that they want to be considered Black like any other Black person when there's something to be gained [such as scholarships from Black organizations, affirmative action slots, etc.]. When there's nothing to be gained [nothing to be stolen from Black people], then they want you to know how distinct they are from Black people.
NO! If they want to be distinct from Black folks, require them to be all the way distinct! Cut them off from Black folks' scholarships, set asides, etc. Make them find biracial, etc. scholarships for biracial people. And stop them from stealing Black folks' meager resources. STOP including these people.
In the crown context, STOP celebrating these self-proclaimed biracial/multicultural/bicultural women wearing YOUR stolen crown! STOP lifting them up. STOP claiming them as part of our collective, and worrying about them. Purge them and their problems from your list of concerns. These self-proclaimed biracial/multicultural/bicultural/whatever women don't need your help. They have plenty of worshipful Negro slaves [like Ne-Yo, Yung Berg, the NFL, etc.] to attend to their needs.
Don't fall for the lie that says, "They're part of us." Didn't these self-proclaimed biracial, bicultural, multicultural, etc. people already TELL you that they are something other than part of us? That they are anything but Black? Why are some of you so eager to claim them when they are not claiming you? Especially when they are wearing your stolen crown?
V. Celebrate Yourself and the Women Most Like You First & Foremost
We're going to need some affirmative action among ourselves to get this situation righted. I mean affirmative action in terms of who we hold up to our children (and ourselves) as representing our ideal "look." The "color neutral" and "let's celebrate our internal rainbow" doesn't work in the context of everything that has come before it. It's similar to White folks wanting to play color-blind after centuries of accumulated injustice went down. In both examples, doing this leaves pre-existing problems firmly in place.
As Black women, WE have the power to turn this around. By taking back our crowns and taking our rightful place on the global stage. It doesn't matter what most Black men think about us. Since most of them don't protect or provide for us, they are generally of NO or LOW value to us. The only thing that matters is what WE think about ourselves.
Ladies, if you have Black-oriented magazines in your homes, who's images are you surrounding yourselves (and your children, if you have any) with? Are you surrounding yourself with images of White women's children like Alicia Keys? Halle Berry? Lisa Bonet? Persia White? Rashida Jones? Jennifer Beals? Jasmine Guy? Victoria Rowell? Are you surrounding yourself with images of Black women who look like White women's children like Vanessa Williams? Are you watching music videos packed with biracial/light-skinned women? If so, have you considered the possibility that this is not healthy for your psyche?
If all of the above is true, are you willing to find images that affirm YOU and women who look more like YOU?
Black self-hatred is so deeply entrenched that it will be a long, long time before people like me are in any real danger of having our self-worth assaulted as a result of corrective internal affirmative action. I don't feel threatened by efforts to raise my darker sisters up so that their beauty can also be appreciated. Everyone has their own rightful crown. Collectively, we need to get ours back. Nobody is going to voluntarily return our stolen crowns to us. A thief never returns what he has taken. A person who accepts stolen goods never returns them to their rightful owner. We're going to have to snatch our crowns back ourselves. The first step is to stop aiding and abetting the theft of our crowns.
*Reader's Note* We've reached 100 comments to this post. Since I don't like having to scroll down miles of computer screen to read new comments, I'm closing the comment section here and transferring this ongoing conversation to Part 2 of this series. Please post new comments to this essay in the comment section of Self-Determination, Part 2. Thank you!
