Nowadays, we’re living a time of complicated racial relations that we haven’t seen since the 50s and 60s. Every day you log on to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and see another police shooting, another protest or some other racially charged incident. Some would say we are living in a whole new era of civil rights movements and I completely agree.
As a biracial woman, I walk the line between both parties. Between white and black. Between Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter; and let me tell you it gets harder all the time. Everyone wants you to pick a side but you can’t because every day you wake up and live on both.
Being mixed has never been easy for me. Growing up I struggled with my racial identity. I was never black enough for the black kids, but I was too black for the white kids. I denied my blackness for so long, because I desperately wanted to fit in with the “cool” kids, and big surprise, majority of the cool kids were white. Don’t get me wrong, there were a handful of token black kids that we’re part of that crew…but almost all of them were biracial.
Which brings me to this unfortunate but glaringly obvious occurrence in our society… it’s OK to be black, but only if you’re the “good” kind of black. The “good” kind of black has a light complexion, a 2a to 3b curl pattern and light eyes. The “good” kind of black is just “ghetto” enough to be entertaining, but not to the point of being “ratchet.” The “good” kind of black doesn’t take pride in their own blackness, but fits into the mold of what society has constructed.
Here’s a perfect example of this concept; let us not forget Feb. 6, 2016,. A day that will live infamy. The day Beyonce dropped “Formation.” From SNL to Twitter, the “white people just found out Beyonce is black” jokes ran rampant and were honestly hilarious. Then came the Super Bowl… and shit really hit the fan. Beyonce’s black panther tribute was no longer a laughing matter. People (white) were actually pissed. For the first time, the beautiful, light-skinned, blonde-haired Beyonce was proudly and unapologetically displaying her blackness. How could this be? How could this icon not fit into the mold that was constructed for her?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to attack white people. The concept of the “good” kind of black isn’t only something that happens between black people and white people. The “good” kind of black is valued among black people as well. A few years back Twitter was taken over by the #TeamLightSkin versus #TeamDarkSkin hashtags, the later being the “losing” team. Even within the black community, it’s still better to be light.
I need to mention the role black men play into this concept. Every day I’m scrolling through my timeline and I see an alarming amount of black women slander coming from black men. Black men praise the light skin, the Latino, the “foreign” and the white woman while calling the dark skinned female “cockroaches,” “ratchet,” “bad attitude” and “angry.” I wonder why they’re angry? Maybe because since the day they’ve been born they’ve been pitted against the “good” kind of black woman? I’d also like to casually remind the black men saying these things that most of them were birthed and raised from the type of black woman they find so disgusting…
So what can we do? How do we move away from this “good” black person and just celebrate our blackness? For me, it happened when I stopped caring about what other people think of me. I stopped caring where people wanted to put me on this “blackness spectrum.” All of a sudden I just started to love myself, and I refuse to let anyone take that self-love away from me.
So for all my light skinned, dark skinned and any shade skinned in between black people, don’t be afraid to love yourself. Be as black as you want. Be as white as you want. Be whatever the fuck you want. We are ALL the “good” kind of black.