Dineen Johnson Light Skin vs. Dark Skin in the Black Community

                 

Racism is a belief or principle that inherits differences that exist amongst human races.  These differences are determined by cultural or individual achievement.  African American people are beginning to separate themselves as two different races dark skin and light skin blacks.

  Beginning with slavery it is a fact that lighter skinned African Americans were house slaves and the darker skinned African Americans were field slaves being left outside in unbearable heat left to do the hard work.  In the media today you can see that light skinned black people are favored over dark skinned black people. It is said that Beyoncé and Halle Berry both fair skinned women are two of the best looking women on T.V.  Lil Kim and Trina both who were brown skin when they first entered the music industry are now light skin, due to bleaching their skin.  There are a few dark skin people in the industry such as Lil Wayne who do not like dark skin women and has even written lyrics bashing dark skin women.

                “Beautiful black women bet that bitch look better red.”

Not only is Lil Wayne dark skin but so his daughter.  How can you hate your own complexion?

                From my own personal experience I do believe that the black community believes that light skin blacks are more attractive than dark skin blacks.  A lot of males I know believe that to have a lighter skinned female on their arm is like having a trophy.  They say that they get more respect from their friends and there are viewed as “the boul with the bad ass red bone.” As if it is an accomplishment. The same with females, they believe that having children with a dark skinned male would give them dark skinned children, something looked down on.  They think that dark skin children are ugly.  One of my female friends believes that:

                “If it aint light it aint right.”

so sad and so true.

A black man AND ONCE UPON A TIME a well known rapper Young Berg speaking on his dislike of "Black Butts"

Race and Ethnicity

Submitted by Ryan Laverty

Race and Ethnicity

           I was born in Pyungtaek, South Korea to a mother that never seen America before moving here.  My father is of Irish descent and is the fourth generation to live in America after my great-great-grandfather arrived at Ellis Island to escape the famine in Ireland.  As proud of my heritage it was difficult for me to deal with racism.

Less than 1 year old in Seoul, South Korea

            From an early age my mother wanted me to be “Americanized” and tried to hide any signs that would make me “too Korean”.  This resulted in my mother never teaching me to speak Korean.  Throughout my early years being a mixed race was very common among my friends and neighbors due to living on military bases. Many children had parents of different races.  When I reached third grade I moved to the Frankford section of Philadelphia outside a military base and it was where I first experienced racism. None of the other children wanted to be my friend and many peers would make fun of my mother when she picked me up from school.  There was open discrimination and prejudice from the noon time aids at recess and even the crossing guard.  While walking down the street my father was spit on by someone just because he married a “chink”.

            After these events my family decided to move to the Olney section of the city. At first, everything was great, the neighborhood had people of many races and everyone got along very well.  It was in this neighborhood that I gained friends of Asian descent.  I began to notice that I was never allowed in their homes or when their mothers saw me playing with them I would over hear another language.  One day after school my friend took me to a local Korean Community Center to hang out but I was asked to leave because I was not a full Korean.  This was when I learned that my friend’s parents did not like that I was not a full Korean and they looked down upon my family.

            This discrimination and prejudice shaped how I viewed my family.  This brought me closer to my little sister and other family members because we all had felt our race being used to hurt us.  I could never understand why my family on my father’s side treated me as a loving family member but other people in the neighborhood just saw me as a “half-breed”.

I grew up experience incidents like this in many neighborhoods and in school. Even now some people do not realize I’m half Korean because it should not matter what race I am.   I used to get angry about racism and even tried fighting every bully who used racism towards me but now I just laugh at how ignorant and stupid they sound. 

A few months ago at a bar I was drinking at started talking to me and thought I was white and told me “White Power!” before he went on a racist tirade.  Instead of getting angry I turned his arguments against him and made him feel stupid for talking like that. After speaking up other bar patrons also began saying they were tired of his racist ways.  The guy has not returned to the local bar since.

I feel if I didn’t say anything that guy would still be getting drunk and hurting people with his racist remarks.  It is better to speak out against racism than to ignore that it still exists.  I think if more people stood up for what is right, things will change and maybe all laws and policies that are still discriminating to a person’s skin color will change.

Racism Goes Both Ways

By Ivonne Mosquera

For someone from my background, the first thing that comes to mind when considering the origin of racism, is a picture of a ruthless landowner brutally punishing his slaves two centuries ago. It may be a comfort for modern people to ascribe race problems to another, earlier time, but perhaps we are really brushing off the real problem behind racism: does each of us have a bit of racism within?

Perhaps if we thought about humanity like an endangered species, and then considered ways of protecting that species, the abolishment of "difference", "threat", we have a chance to get in front of racism.

Racism is not a color illness, a political one, nor a religious one; it is sadly a mental sickness. The Ku Klux Klan was (or is?) more than a right-wing extreme movement. They were convinced about "white supremacy", because in their minds, they were unprepared to accept the results of the Civil War, which decided the question of "man by man exploitation." The KKK spilt much blood, but for what purpose and to what end? The Black Panther Party, born as a "self-defense" movement, developed the same racist feeling in the opposite way.

Europe suffered the ravages of the Nazi absolutist regime, spurring a reluctant United Kingdom and America to oppose it because its outrageous racist ideology and deeds. All that effort, however, resulted in an equally horrible communist regime at the end of WWII throughout Eastern Europe. One by one, these oppressive states began to fall, ending in the dissolution of the USSR in 1990. What was the communist regime of the USSR about? Intolerance of difference, not focused on the issue of skin color, but about ideas. Nazis propounded the myth of the Aryan "superman," while the Communists showed a sort of evolved racism of propaganda. Both houses of cards ended up crashing in on themselves.

The United States knows racism well, having cast its net over a succession of "others," apart from the horrible treatment of the stolen and enslaved Africans: the myths about Chinese survival, the disdain of Irishmen, the distrust about the "Italian mafia", and most recently the generalized hate of Muslim people in the wake of the WTC disaster.

This is our reality, and is not going to change until we understand the problem is in our minds, racism is a deep fear of the other, a fear which make us weak.

Race & Ethnicity

Aubrey J. J.

What a word to describe a group of people of different cultures and characteristics. It is also fascinating that because we may be of the same race we may not be of the same ethnic group do to religious beliefs or other boundaries. Either way people must be identified some kind of way to their respective nationality, but most of us have been guilty in our personal bias or feelings toward a different race, be it positive or negative. I mean, what if we did not describe black people as of the African American race would we have racism? Sure we would we just would not call it that, I guess? What is more interesting about the process of race when it comes to identifying if a person should be classified as African American is the fact that all you need to qualify as Black is to have a very low percentage of DNA from the black race and you are in. Tiger woods is a great example of this in his comment once made that said, "I'm not really black, I'm 10% black", What?

About 33 minutes into their Q and A about race and ethnicity Tiger Woods is used as an example for an intro to a great comment and question about race. We find that there are a lot or people that have a problem with their own race because they personally would rather not be identified with a particular group. That is sad to hear because there are millions of people that are very young and uncertain about their ethnicity or race because of ignorance and fear. For example, if in the 1960's I was a person that looked almost white I would probably choose to be identified as a white man more quickly than I would identify myself as a black man. However, today as we have a African American President of this great United States in Barack Obama many people that would not identify them selves as black in the 1960's would quickly identify them selves as black today because of the different times that we are in now as a Nation and People

Because of this of race and ethnicity we see problems of injustice and standards of equality which tend to be unfair depending on what color you are. Equality of conditions are far from the idea that everyone should have an equal starting point from which to pursue his or her goals. Race seems to be the ruler of it all? Where you are from and what you have been associated with and who your parents are also plays a big part in describing  
your race and ethnicity as well. Just give a new born Chinese baby to a Hispanic family and watch who the Chinese baby turns out to become, and how the baby identifies itself with its culture. Sounds interesting, right?
Depending how well the Hispanic race is received during the time the baby is old enough to identify social groups or ethnic groups will determine who the baby will choose to identify itself as.

For the most part I think we all are proud of our race and ethnicity we all just have had trouble in our youth with fitting in and identifying with our own culture and race at times due to a number of reasons that you can come up with on your own as you think on this topic of race and ethnicity