Disclaimer: I am speaking only for myself, not for all men. Also I am trying to be honest rather than politically correct. I make wildly general statements based on limited experience, but that is in the nature of a post like this – otherwise it becomes unanswerable. It would be tiresome to begin each sentence with “In general, based on my painfully limited experience”, but you can imagine they are there. Also: there are black women who fit none of what follows and probably those who are not black who fit all of it!

What I like in black women, from the outside in:

First, black women are beautiful. They have the prettiest eyes and the best figures.

Some black women have eyes that seem to go all the way down to their souls. When I look into them time stands still. It is like I am in another world. I think it is called an adrenalin rush. I have had the same experience with white and Asian women but only a few times in my life.

General looks: I like women with thick bodies, thick lips, thick, black hair and high cheekbones. Black women are far more likely to have all those things than other women. They also have the best bottoms ever.

Growing up people made fun of my lips, so women with big lips have a special place in my heart. Some people think they are ugly. To me they are beautiful.

When black women age their skin holds up way better. Also, it is rarely pale – pale skin turns me off.

When they get fat they do not lose their good looks as easily: I find myself looking at fat black women but not at fat women who are white or Asian.

I like how black women do not sugarcoat things. They are more honest with their thoughts and feelings. If anything they are too honest, which makes it hard, but I would much rather have that than a woman who pastes a false smile over everything.

Black women are far more accepting of me. I feel more like I can be myself.

Black women understand me way better, so much so that I do not always have to complete my sentences; so much so that they help me to understand myself better. White women just kind of look at me, leaving me hanging, like I was talking about butterflies from New Guinea.

Black women seem like they are deeper, less like airheads. I cannot stand airheaded women.

Black women are more likely to be religious, or at least it seems that way. I like that too.

Some say white women are easier to get along with. I have never gone with one so I cannot say. I did have an Asian American girlfriend once. She would say, “Whatever you want”. It got tiring.

Some say black women are too “ghetto”. I have known plenty of black women from ghettos. Very few fit the stereotype.

Thanks to commenter Marnie 2010 for kind of suggesting this post.

See also:

I am going to give this thing a second try, having failed to get my point across the other day when I wrote “Why black women are seen as ugly”. Fingers crossed:

Black women are not ugly, not hardly, yet many Americans seem to think so because they see them through racist eyes.

Mainstream American ideas of beauty are based on white women. Because whites run the fashion and film industries that affect what millions see as beautiful, even people of colour:

  • thin figure
  • pale skin
  • blue eyes
  • long, straight, flowing yellow hair
  • large breasts

Most black women fall well short of that. Not because they are ugly, but because that idea of beauty is not based on them.

This Hollywood idea of beauty is just a matter of taste. I know because I do not share it. I also know because White American ideas of beauty have themselves changed through the years. For example, Heidi Klum or Gwyneth Paltrow would have been considered ugly in the 1960s – an age when white beauties had lovely hourglass figures, like Brigitte Bardot and Raquel Welch.

Since it is just a matter of taste it cannot prove anything about the beauty of black women. Why should we suppose Hollywood’s taste for thin blondes is any better than, say, mine for thick black women with pretty eyes? But it does prove one thing: that despite the best efforts of Hollywood, millions of men still find black women to be beautiful.

Some think black women look too much like men. Yet, from what I can tell, black women in general have more of a womanly figure – one that clearly sets them off from men – than most white or Asian women.

Some think black women look too much like monkeys. That is kind of odd when it is white people who have so much in common with chimpanzees:

  • thin lips
  • straight hair
  • white skin

Strange how these are some of the very things black women are looked down on for not having.

These sort of beliefs about how black women look are not based on careful anatomical comparisons but flat-out racism that views black women as being neither truly human nor truly women.

Many of the black women you see in Hollywood are stereotypes: they are either too ugly or plain (Mammies), too mean (Sapphires) or too loose (Jezebels). Very few are women of grace and beauty. The effect is to make black women seem less desirable than they truly are. These stereotypes come from racism not from the “preferences” white people presumably have for the beauty of their own women.

This racism has absolutely nothing to do with the supposed ugliness of black women. It has everything to do with white people’s need to look down on blacks – so that they can feel good about themselves and their unjust position in society.

And that is why white people think the lips of Angelina Jolie look good on her but not on black women.

See also:

Remarks:

K-Ci and Jojo’s remake of the old Bobby Womack song. I could not stand Jodeci back then, but I love this song.

Lyrics:

I just wanna dedicate this song
to all the lovers in the world tonight
and I expect that to be the whole world
because everybody needs someone
or something to love

Yeah
when it’s cold outside
girl, who are you holding
you’ll be holding me
well, well, well, well, well
said if y’all don’t mind
can I talk about this woman I have
she’s always complaining about the things she ain’t got
and the things her girlfriend’s got
but lady I will let you know
I can’t be in two places at one time

If you think you’re lonely now
ooh yeah
wait until tonight, girl
oh, you better wait til tonight
yeah, baby
wait until tonight girl
if you think you’re lonely now
wait until tonight girl
I’ll be long gone, yes I will
wait until tonight, girl
you better wait until tonight

When skeletons come out of your closet
and chase you all around the room
memories sound like a ghost
and if you is scared
talk to me, baby

If you think you’re lonely now
wait until tonight, girl
wait until tonight
wait until tonight baby(yeah yeah)
wait until tonight girl
you better wait until tonight
if you think you’re lonely now
wait until tonight girl
do you believe me baby

Ain’t it funny how tables turn
when things ain’t goin your way
when love walks out, pain walks in
you can’t help to say

If you think you’re lonely now
wait until tonight, girl
if you think you’re lonely now
you better wait girl, yeah
wait until tonight, girl
if you think you’re lonely now
if you think you’re lonely now
hold on, ooh yeah
wait until tonight, girl
ooh, yeah

I wanna testify
I wanna testify
I wanna testify to ya
I just got one thing to say
if you think you’re lonely now

If you think you’re lonely now
baby, yeah
wait until tonight, girl
(repeat chorus until fade)

I fell behind and thought I would catch up on my posts over the weekend. A dangerous practice it turns out since weekends sometimes become extremely busy, as this one did! So no post for Friday and or Saturday. “The Ascent of Man” returns next Saturday.

Coming soon:

  • Black men, Asian women
  • The state of black marriage
  • solutions to colourism

Our sincerest bureaucratic apologies,
The Management.

Warning: Some will find this post offensive as it deals with some ugly racist thinking.

Black women are beautiful, but from the American media you would never know it. Maxim, Playboy and Vogue magazines, for example, make their living by showing beautiful women, yet show hardly any black women – as if they came from Sweden or Utah, not New York and Chicago.

Some possible reasons black women are seen as ugly:

  1. Black women look too much like men. Steve Sailer says it is because they have more muscle mass than women of other races. J Richards of majorityrights.com says it is because their jaws are too big. And so on.
  2. They look too much like monkeys and gorillas. It has been shown that white people in the back of their minds think of monkeys when they see black people. So you see even Michelle Obama compared to a gorilla.
  3. It is just a matter of preference. White people prefer the beauty of their own women. How does that make them different than any other race?
  4. The white lens. Most Americans, even those of colour, are brainwashed to some degree to prefer white beauty because of white control of the media and of the culture in general.
  5. Racial scripting. Whites are trained to notice blacks who fit their stereotypes. So they notice the Mammies (fat and ugly), the Jezebels (who look like prostitutes) and Sapphires (mean looking) while discounting the graceful and beautiful Sades and Phylicia Rashads of everyday life.
  6. Flat-out racism. Whites look down on black women so much they do not see them as women, missing their beauty.
  7. Envy. Deep down whites know that black women are better looking than they let on but do not want to admit it. So when Jennifer Lopez or Angelina Jolie have some feature of a black woman, it is called beautiful, but not when the same thing (only better!) appears on  a black woman. Or: when white women lay in the sun to darken their skin it makes them look better. Yet when a black woman is born with skin the very same colour it does not.

Uncle Milton, a white commenter on this blog from California who is intellectually honest, said this about the envy argument:

In my 48 years as a white male in the US, the number of white men seriously attracted to black women seems to be in the distinct minority. … for the most part white guys are attracted to white women (well ok.. a pretty significant minority are attracted to Asian women).

That matches what I have seen in New York: a white man can walk right by a beautiful black woman and not even seem to notice her. Like she is not there. She is on every black man’s radar but not his.

There is a bit of truth in some of these arguments but I think in the end it comes down to flat-out racism, which in turn drives most of the others.

See also:

Afro-Latinos are those in the New World who are black by race, or at least mixed with black, and Latin by culture. Females are called Afro-Latinas. They mostly come from one of two places:

  • the Caribbean region, which has as many black and mixed people as America, about 40 million. Most live in Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
  • Brazil, which has half of all the black and mixed people in the New World.

There are other blacks here and there in Latin America, like in Uruguay.

A few well-known Afro-Latinos or those with Afro-Latino roots:

  • Brazilian: Pele, Ronaldo, Leandro Barbosa, Tais Araujo, Adriana Lima,  YaYa Da Costa
  • Cuban: Gina Torres, Christina Millian, Fantasia Barrino, Celia Cruz, Soledad O’Brien
  • Dominican: Sammy Sosa, Zoe Saldana, Fabulous. Juelz Santana, Trina, Sessilee Lopez, Arlenis Sosa Peña
  • Puerto Rican: Maxwell, Rosario Dawson, Lloyd Banks, Lauren Velez, Roberto Clemente, Reagan Gomez-Preston, Rosie Perez, La-La, Irene Cara, VV Brown
  • Venezuelan: Hugo Chavez
  • Panamanian: Tatyana Ali, Gwen Ifill
  • Haitian: Garcelle Beauvais, Wyclef Jean, Edwidge Danticat, W.E.B. Du Bois
  • Martinique: Frantz Fanon
  • American Creole: Beyonce, Prince

The blackest countries in Latin America which have at least a million black and mixed people:

  1. 98% Haiti: 9.8m
  2. 64% Dominican Republic: 8.5m
  3. 62% Cuba: 7.1m
  4. 49% Brazil: 91.2m
  5. 21% Colombia: 9.0m
  6. 10% Venezuela: 2.7m

Puerto Rico has almost a million. The western shore of the Caribbean has another million spread between different countries.

America - in very round numbers – has about 3 million (not counting Puerto Rico):

  • 0.5m Haitians
  • 0.6m black Hispanics, mainly from the Caribbean
  • 2.0m Creoles, whose roots go back to French New Orleans

There are three times more Afro-Latinos than Afro-Americans – because sugar in the Caribbean and Brazil brought in way more slave labour from Africa than did cotton or tobacco in North America.

Some main points to keep in mind:

  • There is no One Drop Rule in Latin countries. So those who are mixed do not see themselves as black and look down on pure blacks. That means colourism runs deeper and yet there is more race mixing.
  • Like America, Latin countries kept black slaves and so have racist beliefs about blacks too. On the other hand, the law in Latin countries comes from Roman law where slaves had certain rights, like buying their freedom or taking their master to court. They were not mere property as in Anglo law.
  • They freed their slaves but never went through a civil rights movement.

Racism: just as in America, black and mixed people have lower reading scores, die younger and are twice as likely to live in poverty.

Languages: Portuguese, Spanish, French, Creole.

Religion: most are Roman Catholics, though often practised with African elements. Voodoo, Candomble and Santeria come from African beliefs. Most black and mixed people outside of Africa are Catholic – something you would never guess from living in North America or the West Indies.

Music: Afro-Latinos have given the world new kinds of music, like jazz, merengue, salsa, mambo and samba.

See also:

Note: this post is not PG-13. It has some sex stuff in it – but not what you are thinking!

A female-led relationship, also known as wife-led marriage or loving female authority by its advocates, is where the woman is the married head of the household and makes all the decisions. It is not a thing of whips and chains and leather – it is just a different power arrangement.

She makes all the decisions – about money, sex, housework, everything. She might ask her husband for his opinion, but she has the last word. He does not fight about it or disobey her. She does not nag, she does not play games to push his buttons – because she does not have to: they both openly accept her authority.

Some say it goes against nature or against the Bible. It certainly goes against the male pride of most men. But some secretly want it. They will even try “stealth submission” where they take over most of the housework and do whatever  their wife wants without question – but even that is not enough for them. They want her to know she is in charge and be in charge. It turns them on.

The man winds up doing most of the housework. Because she can just tell him to do it and he does it. For example, if she wants to go out with her friends while he works on the laundry, she just says it: “I’m going out with the girls tonight. While I’m gone you can work on the laundry.” No fights, no games, no nagging, no nothing.

Some other things she might say to him:

  • Go get the lotion. I need you to rub my feet.
  • Run my bath for me. And while I’m in there get started on the laundry.
  • Get up, Sweetheart, and make me some coffee and an English muffin with butter.
  • You did a nice job cleaning the bathrooms; I am very pleased with you.
  • I think I need to put you on a budget. At the beginning of every week, I’ll give you an allowance. If an emergency comes up, please feel free to come to me and we can discuss giving you some extra money.

She not only controls their money but also their sex life:

  • I want a full body massage for exactly one hour; keep an eye on the clock. When you are done I want you to go down on me until I tell you to stop. Afterwards, we’ll both go to sleep. You won’t be having an orgasm tonight.

Her needs come first. His come second – if he has been good. Some say a man is easiest to control if he comes only once every week or two, others say once a month. There are debates about this on the Internet as it is a key number in these relationships. It is hard for the man, but it makes sex way less boring for him.

Thanks to commenter BCR for linking to her blog where I found out about this. I did not even conceive that such a thing was possible.

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Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was an American writer, best known for the play, “A Raisin in the Sun” (1957). It was the first play by a black woman to appear on Broadway.

James Baldwin:

… never before, in the entire history of the American theater, had so much of the truth of black people’s lives been seen on the stage.

It is such a great play that even with a limited actor like Sean Combs playing the lead it is still powerful.

The play is about a black family that buys a house in a white suburb – something her own family did. The first two acts are kind of slow but the last act about moving day is pure, utter genius.

In 1961 it was made into a Hollywood film starring Sidney Poitier, who had played the lead on Broadway. She wrote the screenplay.

Her two other main plays are “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”, which was on Broadway in 1964 but was not a hit, and “Les Blancs”.

Some of her writings were made into an autobiography after her death, “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” (1969). James  Baldwin wrote a beautiful introduction, “Sweet Lorraine”.

Incomplete works at the time of her death:

  • “Toussant”, an opera
  • “All the Dark and Beautiful Warriors”, an autobiographical novel

She was also thinking of doing plays on Pharaoh Akhnaton, Mary Wollstonecraft and Charles Chesnutt’s “The Marrow of Tradition” (1901).

Born on Chicago’s Southside. her family moved to a white suburb when she was eight. Angry whites gathered in front of their house.  A brick was thrown through the window that narrowly missed her. The police were unwilling to protect them. Later the state supreme court ordered them out of the house.

In 1948 she went to the University of Wisconsin. There she became interested in left-wing politics and theatre, studying Ibsen and Strindberg.

In 1950 she dropped out and headed for New York. There she took courses at the New School and, for three years, wrote regularly for Paul Robeson’s Freedom. Later she taught school in Harlem and took part in protests. At one protest she met Robert Nemiroff, whom she married in 1953. In 1956 he wrote a hit song with a friend (“Cindy, Oh, Cindy”) which allowed her to become a full-time writer. She started writing “A Raisin in the Sun”.

In 1960 she wrote “The Drinking Gourd”, a television show for NBC about slavery. NBC never aired it because it was too violent and too “divisive”. But you can read it in “Lorraine Hansberry: The Collected Last Plays” (1983). 

In 1962 she joined SNCC and a year later she and James Baldwin went to see Robert Kennedy, then the Attorney General, to try to get him to understand race in America.

In 1963 she began to lose her strength: the doctors said she had pancreatic cancer. Two years later she was dead – at age 34. Over 600 came to her funeral in Harlem.

Baldwin:

Her going did not so much make me lonely as make me realize how lonely we were.

See also:

Remarks:

From 1995, this is Faith Evans’s very first single. You can tell because in the video version (not this live version) Biggie Smalls introduces her like we have never heard of her before. The song went to #4 on the R&B charts. I like this live version way better than the video version.

Lyrics:

I remember the way, you used to love me
I remember the days, you used to love me

You don’t appreciate the time
I put into this love affair of ours baby
I couldn’t let you walk around
Thinking it’s alright to let me down

I remember the way, you used to love me
I remember the days, you used to love me

I gave you all my precious love
And anything you wanted from me
You didn’t hear me calling out
Calling for your warm affection after all this time
You can’t deny what I’m feeling is real
And I stood around, stood by your side
Went through all the hurt and pain
And you turned and walked away

I remember the way, you used to love me
I remember the days, you used to love me

Can’t give up on the way you used to give it to me
Give it to me
What a feeling it’s for real

I remember the way, you used to love me
I remember the days, you used to love me

You didn’t hear me calling out
And that’s not what love’s about
I remember you used to love me
You used to love me every day
Now your love has gone away
I remember I remember

I remember the way, you used to love me
I remember the days, you used to love me

See also:

The following is based on part three of Jacob Bronowski’s BBC series on the history of science and invention, “The Ascent of Man” (1973). It is about architecture and the rise of cities:

One of the biggest steps in the ascent of man was the rise of the stone mason. Instead of living in caves or houses made of earth, man built his house out of wood and stone and brick. It might seem like a small change but in fact it was huge:

  1. It marks a new understanding of nature: that it is something you can take apart, understand and then put back together in new ways.
  2. It allowed the rise of cities: not just physically by providing the necessary buildings but also by giving a new understanding of human society as something made of parts working together.

A city is made up of people who work together in certain ways. In particular:

  • division of labour: a man doing one sort of work his whole life and becoming very good at it, perhaps even coming up with new inventions. Not just the masons but other craftsmen too like potters, coppersmiths and weavers.
  • chain of command: which allows a city or a people to act as one and achieve things for the greater good, like the control of water by irrigation. Information comes into a commander or ruler at the centre and comands flow out. For it to work you need roads, bridges and messages.

When the Incas fell to the Spanish in 1532 they were at just this stage. Their civilization was cut short before it came up with the wheel, the arch or even writing. They kept records on knotted strings called quipu, but it recorded only numbers not words.

The Greeks, despite their great love of geometry, never came up with the arch. That was a Roman invention. By spreading the load it allowed columns to hold up more weight or be spread farther apart. The Roman arch and later the Arab one were based on the circle.

A thousand years later in the 1100s came the Gothic arch, the oval or pointed arch of the Gothic cathedrals of northern Europe. By spreading the load even farther than the Roman arch, buildings could rise to 40 metres. And since the arches, not the walls, were holding up the building, it made possible huge stained glass windows.

The Gothic arch was the last big breakthrough in architecture till the 1800s with the rise of buildings made with steel frames.

Man built Gothic cathedrals not because he suddenly needed huge, beautiful churches, but because he could. Man loves to make things, so much so that he often makes them better than he has to. That in turn allows things to be used beyond their intended purpose, leading to new ways of doing things – technology.

Taking things apart and putting them back together laid the groundwork for more than just architecture and cities but also for a new understanding of nature - which in time became science.

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The following is based on George Orwell’s “Why I Write” (1946):

George Orwell knew he wanted to be a writer since he was five or six and yet avoided becoming one till he was 24 and did not firmly make up his mind to be one till 33. In the end he found he had to write.

In the 1700s he might have become a Christian minister:

A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;

But he was born to evil times when evil men, like Hitler and Stalin, wanted to rule the world. Democracy was disappearing. After fighting in the Spanish civil war from 1936 to 1937 he made up his mind. He had two talents: he was good with words and he was good at facing unpleasant facts. So from 1936 onwards he used those talents to fight against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism.

He says there are five motives that drive every writer to one degree or another; they are always there no matter how weak:

  1. To earn a living: Journalists are more concerned about money than serious writers, but even serious writers must eat.
  2. Sheer egoism: “Look at me!” Wanting to be remembered after you die, wanting to bend your life to your will instead of going with the flow like most people do after age 30. Writers share this in common with artists, scientists, businessmen, etc. Writers do not like to admit to it, but it is often their strongest motive.
  3. Aesthetic enthusiasm: the love of words and their beauty, of putting them together in the right way. Even textbook writers feel this. “Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free of aesthetic considerations.”
  4. Historical impulse: wanting to see things as they are and get the truth out.
  5. Political purpose: wanting to change the world by changing people’s ideas of the kind of society they should work for. Even “art for art’s sake” is a political stand.

In a more peaceful age the political motive would have barely mattered. As it was he found he wrote his best stuff when the political motive was uppermost. Anger at injustice drove him more than anything else:

I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.

And yet as a serious writer he wanted to write well, to create art. It was not always easy to do both at the same time.

But in the end, as much as he might try to make sense of it, he says wanting to write is a mystery:

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

See also:

The poll is now closed. The winners are:

  • 28 Afro-Latinos
  • 26 the state of black marriage
  • 21 black men, Asian women

The losers:

  • 18 self-blame syndrome in rape and racism
  • 16 Blasians
  • 15 Shaniya Davis
  • 14 voodoo
  • 13 black abortion
  • 11 transracial adoption
  • 3 Jesse Owens

If your topic lost, do not feel bad: I voted for transracial adoption! (But if it was not me doing the writing, I would have picked black marriage). I might do some of the losers in time, particularly Blasians and voodoo.

“Get over it” is something White Americans say when black people point out a case of white racism that is hard to deny, like that picture of watermelons growing in front of the White House. The phrase means that blacks should not get too hung up on racism, that thinking about it too much will only make things worse. It also means this: shut up and stop being such a crybaby.

One commenter advised me:

Get over it abagond, stop whining about racism and move to Africa, yep, make a contribution to the motherland.

When whites complain about reverse racism or affirmative action, I do not notice anyone telling them to “Get over it”. Instead their complaints are taken seriously. You know, like they truly matter.

“Get over it” assumes that racism is pretty much over, that it is either dead and gone, ancient history, or at least no longer a big deal. “Get over it!” Blacks are either stuck in the past or making something out of nothing.

“Get over it” assumes that whites are better judges of racism against blacks than blacks themselves! Because blacks are oversensitive, because they are like children who have it too easy and complain about every little thing. And, like children, blacks do not know what is in their own best interest – but white people do, despite their terrible record on that one.

Unlike most racist arguments, this one admits that the case of racism in question is true – otherwise there would be nothing to get over.

That is why it comes up so much in arguments about the White American practice of keeping black slaves: it is one of the few cases of racism that whites cannot deny. They know it was true and know that it was terrible. But they do not see – or want to see – that a society that could allow that to be done to people because of the colour of their skin could allow other bad things to be done to them – even now.

Slave days, Jim Crow and all the rest are ancient history for whites because it does not seem to affect their present. But not for blacks – not because they are unreasonable children who do not know when to let go of the past, but because racism still affects their lives.

Racism did not die on the day they freed the slaves. Racism did not die on the day they outlawed hanging a black man from a tree. Racism did not even die on the day a black man put his hand on the Bible and became president – in fact, it seems to have only made it worse since it was against the wishes of most white voters. Racism is dying, yes, but it still very much alive.

When will blacks “get over it” and “move on”? When whites get over their racism and move on. They created it to excuse their crimes; they can also destroy it.

Thanks to commenter and fellow blogger Aiyo of  BBG: Black British Girl for suggesting this post.

See also:

Internalized racism is where you are racist against your own race, even against  yourself! It is also called internalized oppression, internal colonization and the colonized mind. If you grow up in America as a person of colour it is hard to avoid: you are told in a thousand and one ways that “white is right” and that you are not – not just from white people, from school and television, but even by people of your own race, maybe even by your own family. You are brainwashed to see yourself like white people do, seeing yourself through the white lens.

Most people of colour know they are just as good as white people, but that has to be believed in the teeth of not just the racist messages that they get all the time but, even worse, those that were laid in their hearts when they were too young to understand. As Kenneth Clark’s doll experiments showed, internalized racism affects even six-year-olds. Most people will believe anything at some level if they hear it enough times. That is how ads on television work.

It can lead to shame, anger, confusion, self-hatred and self-doubt. Studies have shown that black Americans with high degrees of internalized racism are more likely to be violent, get fat, get diabetes, get high blood pressure and have unhappy marriages. That is not to say that it causes those things all by itself, but to point out that it has measurable effects (well, correlations). Internalized racism itself is measured by the degree to which you believe the white stereotypes about your race.

Some stuff that come from internalized racism:

  • colourism
  • “good hair”
  • “acting white”
  • skin lightening
  • “not being black enough”
  • wearing coloured contact lenses
  • Black women are ugly and disagreeable
  • Black men are no good and undependable
  • Life will be better if I act or look more like white people
  • That to be black you must act like the black people on television
  • That to be black you must have certain interests, tastes and beliefs

Most black people on television are acting out stereotypes. Even – or especially – on BET.

God does not make mistakes. God made you to look a certain way and gave you certain gifts to use in the course of your life. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of it. Nothing. It is only white people and narrow-minded, brainwashed people of colour who want you to believe otherwise. Who want to make you think your eyes or nose or hair or lips or skin colour are no good, that there is something wrong with them. Who laugh at your interests and things you want to do because they do not “fit” your race and sex. Who think there is something wrong with you for just being you.

Internalized racism is partly why these statements are wrong:

  • “I have a black friend who says….”
  • racism = prejudice + power

And why this one is necessary:

  • “Black is beautiful”

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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and to this beholder Halle Berry is hardly the most beautiful black woman in the world. I have several lists of beautiful women on this blog and people keep asking, “Where’s Halle?” So this keeps coming up. I will write my opinion in this post and point readers to it.

First of all, I do think Halle Berry is beautiful. I never said she was ugly and never would. I am not blind. I have thought she was beautiful ever since 1992 when I saw her in “Boomerang” (pictured). She was in “Jungle Fever” the year before but there she played a crack lady so her beauty was not apparent (not unless you thought about it).

So it is not a question of whether she is beautiful but only if she is the most beautiful. On that score I think there are plenty of black women who are better looking, like  Angela Bassett, Sade, Tyra Banks, Gabrielle Union and Lisa Bonet to take some better known examples.

Some women I just cannot tear my eyes off of – like Gabrielle Union, Lisa Bonet and Sanaa Lathan. It seems to be something wired into me, something I cannot control, not without an effort. Halle Berry does not affect me that way. So that is another way I know she is not the most beautiful, not to me.

When I look at Halle Berry I can tear my eyes off of her. She is pleasant to look at and has a nice smile, but there does not seem to be anything deep to it. When I look at her eyes I feel nothing. When I look at Lisa Bonet’s or Sade’s eyes, for example, I do feel something, they get to me, they draw me in. I generally like women with beautiful eyes and lips and a thick figure. Halle Berry has none of that.

Even in “Boomerang” itself I thought Robin Givens and certainly Lela Rochon were better looking (but not Grace Jones). Even Toni Braxton, who sang a song for the film, I thought was better looking.

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Back then my judgement on the matter was much purer: she was not yet a big name in Hollywood and I did not know she was half white, so those things could not affect my judgement.

It seems like what Beyonce is to music, Halle Berry is to black beauty: both seem to be pushed by Hollywood, their publicists or whoever, way beyond their merits. They are both good, but not that good. You wind up getting sick of them, almost hating them.

Hollywood seems to push Halle Berry as the height of black beauty. I mean, she is a black beauty, of course, but I cannot help but think that what they see in her is not her black beauty but her white beauty; that she is just another piece of their effort to push a sort of beauty that most certainly is white.

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