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Insults such as “light-bright,” “mello-yellow” and “banana girl” were tossed at lighter-skinned black women, objectifying them as anything but black. Meanwhile, friendships with darker-skinned black women could be fraught. Black men often adored them, but this could quickly flip to scorn if their advances were spurned. These women considered themselves black but said they always felt out of place, on the outside looking in. The subjects who were interviewed shared their stories. I was relieved, then, when I was asked to consult on a second documentary, “ Light Girls,” in 2015, a film centered on the pain and suffering mixed-race black women endure. Green or blue eyes, on the other hand, represent someone who is white. The film seemed to suggest that if you are black, you have dark skin. But it left something important out, and I wondered if it would lead to misconceptions. No doubt it confirmed the pain that dark-skinned black women feel.
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BLACK HAIR BROWN EYES FEMALE ASIAN SKIN
The trailer for ‘Dark Girls.’Īs someone who has studied the issue of skin color and black identity for over 20 years, I felt uneasy after I finished watching the “Dark Girls” film. In 1992, I coauthored a book with DePaul psychologist Midge Wilson and business executive Kathy Russell called “ The Color Complex,” which looked at the relationship between black identity and skin color in modern America. In 2011 Oprah Winfrey hosted a documentary titled “ Dark Girls,” a portrayal of the pain and suffering dark-skinned black women experience. This debate over “who counts” has created somewhat of an identity crisis in the black community, exposing a divide between those who think being black should be based on physical looks, and those who think being black is more than looks. African-American presidential candidate Ben Carson even claimed President Obama couldn’t understand “the experience of black Americans” because he was “raised white.” These mixed-race people, some argue, are not “black enough” – their skin isn’t dark enough, their hair not kinky enough. However, these expressions of black pride have been met with grumbles by some in the black community. Their hair can be styled long and wavy ( Alicia Keys) or into a bob-cut ( Halle Berry).Īnd unlike in the past – when many mixed-race people would try to do what they could to pass as white – many multiracial Americans today unabashedly embrace and celebrate their blackness. Mixed-race African-Americans can have naturally green eyes (like the singer Rihanna) or naturally blue eyes (like actor Jessie Williams). With these demographic changes, traditional notions of black identity – once limited to the confines of dark skin or kinky hair – are no longer so. And this leaves out all of the people who might be a product of mixed ancestry but chose to still identify as either white or black. By 2010, that number grew to 9 million people. According to the 2000 Census, 6.8 million Americans identified as multiracial.
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Spurred by the court’s decision, the number of interracial marriages – and, with it, the population of multiracial people – has exploded. Virginia, which ruled that blacks and whites have a legal right to intermarry. A mere accusation of impropriety could lead to a lynching, and interracial marriage was illegal in a number of states.Įverything changed with the 1967 Supreme Court decision Loving v. For generations, intimacy between black men and white women was taboo.