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Exposing Black America’s Color ComplexBy Tamiya King, AtlantaTribune.com
Author Marita Golden, author of Don’t Play in the Sun: One Woman’s Journey through the Color Complex, captures the hurt and confusion, along with the pride and sense of wholeness black people experience when embracing their ‘color.' “I am ten…my mother comes onto the porch and shouts to me… “I’ve told you don’t play in the sun. You’re going to have to get a light-skinned husband for the sake of your children as it is,” she writes. Golden explores the often unfair –and unsubstantiated – assumptions both blacks and whites have concerning color: Lighter-skinned blacks are affluent; articulate, and professional; darker-skinned blacks are violent, less intelligent, and poor.
She recounts an incident where a black professional woman was asked to take her braids out in order to keep her job, writing the woman’s bosses considered her hairstyle “too ethnic." Golden also candidly addresses the stigma of being a black woman in Hollywood. She shares these comments from a black male television producer, who chose to remain anonymous. “Both black and white directors cast according to European concepts of beauty…You will see dark-skinned women cast on television…when the show wants to be realistic. But if it’s a show where the beauty of the black female is important…you are more likely to see light and bright than dark and lovely,” he tells Golden. Off-screen, black women face the same negative reactions regarding beauty from their own families and black men. Golden shares the conflict her mother experienced in defining her own beauty and the beauty of other black people based on the color of their skin. “My mother did not want me to get darker than I already was,” Golden writes. Golden describes her mother’s two marriages: one to a light-skinned man who spent his life struggling with his racial identity, which eventually damaged his mental health; the other to Golden’s father, a darker-skinned man Golden’s mother loved and hated with equal passion. Golden’s mother assumed that her first husband was more agreeable and gentle in nature because of his light skin, and that the difficulties she faced in her second marriage were attributed to her strong-minded husband being dark-skinned. Yet, she found herself attracted to both men for different reasons. She once told Golden, “Your father may be dark-skinned, but he sure is handsome.” Color issues have been dealt with indirectly by black women and their families in the past, leaving black women to struggle with possessing a positive self perception on their own amidst the countless magazine covers, movies, and music videos that glorify light-skinned, long-haired black females. Black women have begun seeking professional counseling to help them deal with their negative self-images. Audrey Chapman, a therapist at the Howard University Counseling Center, shares some of her experiences with Golden. “I have so many women who come in…and when we start examining where their low self-esteem springs from, it’s all about hair or skin color or features.” But Chapman says that it isn’t just darker-skinned black women who possess these negative self-images. “Light-skinned women can become very insecure because they have depended on men to tell them they are beautiful…and they have relationship problems as severe as dark women’s,” Chapman tells Golden. Golden’s own reckoning with her ‘color complex’ came when she, along with millions of other black men and women, embraced the liberating Black Power Movement of the 1960s, whose mantra was a resounding, “black is beautiful." “The Afro, the natural, finally set me free,” Golden writes. The self-assuredness she gained grew progressively and she now shares her wisdom and experiences with the younger generation of black women, who are unfortunately battling the same demons. “You have to assert your value and your pride,” she says. “That assertion, honored regularly, will turn the words into reality…I believed that Black is beautiful. I still do.” |
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