Do you like me or my hair?

Shared by Raquel Reid

My whole life I have been praised because of my light-ish skin tone and my loose-ish curly hair. As a child, this made me extremely confident in my looks and growing into adolescence even more so because I learned how to actually do my own hair. When I was younger, I just thought that I was beautiful and that’s why people praised me for my looks, when I got older, I realized the implications of colourism. 

Colourism is the prejudice against people who have darker skin and the preferential treatment of people who have lighter skin. In my own head, I think of it as “proximity to whiteness”. The closer to white that you are, the more desirable you are. Throughout this article, I share comments that I have personally received from dark skin Black men. 

“Your hair is so beautiful”, 

“I just love your curls”

These were all comments that I got from men who wanted to “date” me. They seem innocent, right? Until the next set of comments came.

“I don’t usually date Black girls, but you’re barely black”

“I only date light skin women”

“I’m so glad you don’t wear fake hair”

“I want my kids to have hair like yours”

“You’re just not like the other Black girls I know”

Do you want to date me for who I am as a person or just because of my hair and my skin?

“I don’t want nappy-headed or dark skin children”

“Black girls just have attitudes and they’re so aggressive” 

Is that true or is that just what the media has shown you?

It was never hard for me to find men who wanted to pursue me, but the older I got, the more I realized the similarities between these experiences. It was like men put me on a pedestal simply for the way I looked and saw me as some sort of prize. They would praise me for all of my attributes that mocked Eurocentric beauty standards and express their happiness that I could relate to their experiences, but I didn’t look like them. How can you praise me and in the same breath tear down women who look like my friends and family? How can you find someone to be below your standards for sharing the same skin colour and hair texture as you? The internalized racism runs so deep and so discreetly that it’s hard to pick up on it sometimes. 

“Well that’s just my preference”

I vividly remember having a conversation with a Black man in university who blatantly told me he doesn't date Black women darker than me. When I asked him why every single answer of his was rooted in anti-Black and internalized racism. I remember this conversation being so frustrating because he hid these deep-rooted issues under the guise of “a preference”. Since when does a preference stop you from dating an entire race of women?

I think it’s terrible that we’re in 2021 and many Black women fear bringing dark-skinned daughters into this world because they don’t want them to be bullied for their skin tone. This thought terrifies me. The older I’ve gotten the more I’ve realized how important it is for Black women to come together and not accept Black men who have this toxic mentality. It is important for those who benefit from colorism to use that privilege to challenge these thought processes and stand up for our darker-skinned sisters.