NewAfricanWoman Issue 49 - Flipbook - Page 65
SKIN BLEACHING
“I recall summertime visits from my
maternal great-grandmother, a welleducated light complexioned, straighthaired southern woman who discouraged
me and my brother from associating with
darker-skinned children or from standing
or playing for long periods in the July
sunlight which threatened to blacken our
already too-dark skin…
“It was a colour thing and a class thing.
And for generations of black people,
colour and class have been inexorably
tied together. Since I was born and raised
around people with a focus on many of
these characteristics, it should be no
surprise that I was later to decide — at age
26 — to have my nose surgically altered
just so that I could further buy into the
aesthetic biases that many among the
black elite hold so dear.”
resentment among the darker-skinned
field slaves grew… Not surprisingly, both
whites and ‘house niggers’ came to
consider the dark-skinned ‘field niggers’
to be less civilised and intellectually
inferior.
“Since many white slave owners
established clandestine and forced
sexual relations with their female house
slaves, the mulatto offspring (who were
also assigned slave status) extended the
size of the house slave staff. In fact, it was
to the owners benefit to mate with as
many of these female slaves as possible,
for each new child was a new slave.
“While none of these illegitimate
offspring had any more rights than the
unmixed African slaves, they became
a part of a growing phenomenon of
lighter-complexioned house slaves who
separated themselves even further from
the field slaves.”
"All my life, for as long as I can remember, I grew up thinking that
there existed only two types of black people: those who passed
the ‘brown paper bag and ruler test’ and those who didn’t.”
Lawrence Otis Graham — Author: Our Kind of People:
Inside America’s Black Upper Class
According to Professor Adele L. Alexander
of George Washington University: “It is
evident that the fixation on skin colour
by both upper class whites and blacks
derives from the fact that light-skinned
blacks were given a favoured status by
white slave owners from their very early
interaction during the slavery period.”
Fast-forward to 2023, many black people
remain unaware that loathing one’s skin
colour and thinking lighter skin is better
is so rooted into slavery.
Although more black people are
increasingly
speaking
out
against
skin lightening and championing selfacceptance, as a race, we seemingly
remain far from breaking this dispiriting
cycle completely.
Today, such debate is increasingly limited
even further because of the discourse
about freedom of choice.
But why choose someone else’s skin tone
and hair text over your own? Graham
provides part of the answers.
Photography:shutterstock/Ironika
Roots that run deep
As Graham points out, the characteristics
of the black elite have roots that can be
traced back almost 400 years to the
days of slavery when on arrival on many
plantations, black slaves were divided
into two general groups — the outside
labourers who worked in the fields, and
those who performed the more desirable
jobs inside the master’s house: cooking,
cleaning, washing and tending to the
more personal needs of the owner’s
family around the home.
“The terms ‘house niggers’ and ‘field
niggers’ grew into meaningful labels as
generations of slaves in the master’s
house gained more favourable treatment
and had access to better food, better
working conditions, better clothing and
a level of intimacy with the owner’s
family that introduced the house slave to
white ways, minimal education, and nonconsensual sexual relations.”
“As the caste system among the slaves
was gradually instituted by slave owners
and their families, the slaves themselves
came to believe that one group was,
indeed, superior to the other. The
plantation owners began to place their
lighter-skinned slaves in the house, thus
creating an even greater chasm between
the two groups — now based on
physical characteristics, not just random
assignment.
“Because these lighter-skinned blacks
were perceived as receiving greater
benefits and a more comfortable lifestyle,
| HAIR & BEAUTY
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March 2023 New African Woman
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