Be careful who you idolize

Last year, during the Katrina horror, when Kanye West said that George Bush didn’t like Black people, the number of Black people who put him on a pedestal was off the charts. I stood as the lone person who refused to give him any accolades. First, it doesn’t take any genius to figure out that Bush doesn’t like Black people. He stated the obvious, big shit. Second, his popular Golddigger was out at the same time, reinforcing to all of America that poor black men are in fact niggers. In his Katrina benefit song, he called the people of New Orleans niggers. What the fuck sort of message is that sending to white people who you want to have compassion for those victims of racism? You get no props if you are promoting Black women as gold diggers and you get points taken away if you are using the N word in a song and urging white people to sing along at your concerts. Kanye West is far from a scholar or an activist, he’s not even remotely articulate and yet Black people lifted him up as some sort of new school voice of the oppressed hero. I got all sorts of grief when I challenged people to think seriously about whom they gave praises to and of course I was attacked and people defended him by saying, “He’s not calling ALL Black women golddiggers . . . The N word has changed, it means something positive now.” When you start making excuses for your make shift idols right off the bat, that’s a clear indication that they don’t have what it takes to be idols in the first damn place.

Now, we have Mr. West, saying in Essence magazine, that the only attractive women are mixed and he refers to biracial and light skinned women as mutts. Nice. While I’m sure he speaks for a great many Black men, and his sentiments reflect a reality that we don’t want to discuss, Mr. West, and his color struck fans are nothing more than little nigger slaves on the plantation, repeating what the massa told them to believe. Biracial people are not more attractive than dark skinned people. We have been SOCIALIZED to believe that biracial and light skinned people are more attractive because the slave master gave them the stamp of approval, declared them to have more value.

“Well, I can’t help what I’m attracted to and I’m attracted to light skinned women, it’s not my fault.” “You’re just jealous, you’re just hating because you aren’t light.” Those are the number one uninformed, ridiculous statements I hear from men in response to any discussion that stems from the glorification of light skinned women. You can’t help what features you are attracted to in a person but your preferences are shaped by the messages that you were given. Your grandmother told you how pretty that little light skin girl was, you saw how people ranted and raved over the little girl with “good hair,” you sat around with all the little boys in the neighbor hood and looked at pictures of porno mags with white women in them, it stands to reason that you would grow up and be attracted to women with white or damn near white features. Acknowledgment of that fact is the first step towards correcting your misperceptions. But do Black men really find dark skinned women attractive? No.

Black women are ugly. Wide noses are ugly, big lips are ugly, dark skin is ugly. Isn’t that what massa told us? Did African men see African women as ugly prior to our enslavement? No, of course not. It’s only after we were told by the slave master that mulattos and octoroons were the prettiest that we started to believe that. It’s then that we hated the features that made us beautiful. Kanye West and all those who think like him, and there are many, are convinced that light skinned women are the most attractive women and there’s nothing anyone can say to convince them otherwise because they believe that Black is ugly. They run off to Brazil to find the perfect mixed mutt, they use women like toys who are dark because they wouldn’t be seen in public with them.
And Black women are falling right in line with these dysfunctional men. Light skinned women believe that they have more value because they are light. They voluntarily identify themselves as redboned and yellow, as if that’s a benefit. Dark skinned women try to compensate for not being light by proving how sexual they are, how big their asses are, how willing they are to accept any ole trifiling behavior Black men dish out in an effort to show how supportive Black women can be. We raise our daughters to believe the diseased mindsets of the slave. Ninety seven percent of all media shows Black men with lighter skinned women. And then we act shocked when Mr. West calls light skinned women mutts and wonder how he could have said something so crass.

What Mr. West has done is articulate his self hatred. He hates women with features like his own. Until we can rid ourselves of this diseased perspective as a people, until we can recognize how detrimental it is to continue with the beliefs of the slave master, we will be forever enslaved. Kanye West is not worthy to be praised, he’s not even worthy of celebrity. He’s a minstrel bucking and dancing for Mr. Charlie who happens to have a very public platform. Unfortunately what comes out of his mouth is ignorant. It’s a sad commentary on a society that lifts up the dysfunctional as some sort of spokesperson and everything that comes out of his mouth is diseased. Maybe one day, Black America will celebrate someone who actually has something intelligent to say out of his mouth.