Black Girl

What is it about being a black girl that can make things far more difficult than they have to be? When I was growing up in Dayton, Ohio, I was a quiet, shy little girl with very few friends. The friends I did have at that time looked like me or were white. As a "high yella" girl with long black hair, I was not a favorite among the brown-skinned girls whose hair tended to be much shorter. I think it was then in my life that I decided what color meant. I learned it from black people, not white people, girls who were black just like me.

I was often taunted, pushed and intimidated by brown-skinned girls as though I thought I was better, cuter, smarter than they. Quiet as I was there was no other reason for them to harrass me than the skin God chose to cover me in. I sho' didn't take boys they liked, I didn't get into boys until I was about 12 years old - for real. Somewhere along the line they had learned that there is a graduation of color that goes from dark to white and the closer you fall to white, the better. To them, I suppose, I was better.

To me, it's pointless to argue the light-skinned vs. dark-skinned with a dark-skinned woman because it's like white people telling me there is no racism. I always want to tell them, You are not black so what do you know? If I feel there are forces at work against me because I am a black woman a white person should accept it and move on because he or she can never know where I am coming from. So when a dark-skinned woman says she feels the opposite end of the spectrum is treated better in whatever ways, I take it with a grain of salt.

I believe we all want what we can't have. Many darker women marry lighter men, even white, in hopes to have a lighter child. I hoped the children growing inside my womb would take on more coloring of their father, who is dark-skinned, because I wanted to teach my daughter differently: she was beautiful because of her skin and no one could make her feel inferior unless she allowed them to. I teach my daughter the same thing now, only I guess I wanted to be the great light hope in a world of dark-skinned sisters who seem to feel that my lighter skin makes them less beautiful, less desirable, less.

We as black women have to take the power back from white America who has insisted that we be separate. If they can separate the black race, they've won, but when they've separated black women our entire being is threatened. What about our cocoa, caramel and chocolate babies? Where will our beautiful black men lay their tired heads? We'll be a people divided because some are closer to the "white is right" end of the spectrum when white America couldn't care less about any of us. America has stripped us of who we as a people are and we believe all of their lies. Do we really want to continue to give them all of our power?