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Igbogirl
Regular Poster
Username: Igbogirl
Post Number: 113
Registered: 09-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 25, 2006 - 12:30 pm: | 
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Two conversations I had over the weekend really disturbed me. First, a Filipino friend of mine, was talking about two of her colleagues : both extremely accomplished African American women in their 50s. I believe they both went to either Harvard or Yale. She said that one of them is really upset because her son, who is currently at Yale, just brought home a black girlfriend who wears her hair in braids. The woman apparently doesn't want her son to date a woman who wears braids because it is "too ethnic."
I met a black female friend of this same Filipino chick. The black woman had a pretty nasty looking weave. It was straight and it looked very synthetic. A month or so later, I saw her in a store looking quite beautiful with a short natural. I told her how great she looked but she seemed nervous about the new hairdo. My Filipino friend later reported that the woman didn't like her afro and felt more attractive with the hideous weave....
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Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 754
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 25, 2006 - 03:03 pm: |
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Well, sounds like the two black women have personal problems and conflicts that hopefully they are dealing with. Why does their personal issues bother you? What is your point? |
Igbogirl
Regular Poster
Username: Igbogirl
Post Number: 135
Registered: 09-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 25, 2006 - 03:07 pm: |
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My point is that these aren't isolated examples. There are a huge number of women with views just like this and it is extremely sad. Why? Because if black women don't respect themselves, why would anybody else respect us? |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 756
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 25, 2006 - 03:14 pm: |
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How do you know these women don't respect themselves? Have you talked to them? And what criteria are you using to determine if they have self esteem issues or not? Just curious..... |
Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 3196
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 25, 2006 - 03:21 pm: |
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Interesting thread, Igbogirl.
The first scenario sounds like CLASSIM. The second is related to colorism. Both issues are a result of white supremacy and are larger than just black women and their self-esteem. Black and other non-white people also suffer from a battered self-esteem (though it appears to run much deeper in blacks).
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Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 3197
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 25, 2006 - 03:23 pm: |
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Ooops. I meant "Black MEN and other non-white people.." |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 758
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 25, 2006 - 03:48 pm: |
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Yeah, even though the original post was about black women -not black men! |
Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 3202
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 25, 2006 - 07:10 pm: |
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This is so relevant to your thread, Igbogirl.
- - - -
IN MY OPINION
Blacks can often share blame for poor self-image
BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@MiamiHerald.com
''Can you show me the doll that looks bad?''
The two baby dolls are identical except that one has pale skin, the other is dark. The little black girl, maybe 5 years old, has been holding up the pale doll, but in response to the question, she puts it down and picks up the other.
''Why does that look bad?'' the interviewer asks.
''Because it's black,'' the little girl says.
''And why do you think that's the nice doll?'' asks the interviewer, referring to the light-skinned doll.
``Because she's white.''
``And can you give me the doll that looks like you?''
The dark-skinned girl reaches for the light-skinned doll, jiggling it as if she really wants to pick it up. In the end, with palpable reluctance, she pushes the black doll forward.
You might be forgiven for thinking you have happened upon one of the ''Doll Tests'' conducted by Dr. Kenneth Clark beginning in the late 1930s, tests that helped persuade the Supreme Court to strike down segregation in its Brown v. Board of Education decision.
But this is a new doll test, conducted by Kiri Davis, a 17-year-old student from New York, for A Girl Like Me, her short film about black girls and standards of beauty. You can see it at www.uthtv.com/umedia/collection/2052/. But be warned: If you have a heart, the new doll test will break it.
Hard upon mourning, though, will come outrage. How is this possible? How can this still be true? How in the hell, a lifetime after a little boy in Arkansas pointed to the black doll and said, ''That's a nigger . . . I'm a nigger,'' can we still have black children who think black and bad are synonymous?
Some of us were born of the generation that came of age with a mandate to hurl that thinking back onto history's trash heap. Some of us remember when James Brown sang Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud. Some of us knew that when Aretha Franklin spelled out Respect, she wasn't just talking to a feckless lover. Some of us piled Afros high on our heads and sprayed them with Afro Sheen till they shone. Some of us clenched our fists and cried ''Black is beautiful'' in the face of a nation that had always told us you could be one or the other, but never both.
And for what? So that 40 years later, our children would still parrot media-derived lies of their own worthlessness? What's appalling is that many of the lies now originate with black people themselves.
That's not to let white people off the hook. The simple arithmetic of majority/minority means that under the best of circumstances, a child of color will always see fewer images of people like her in media. And the white makers and gatekeepers of those fewer images have historically weighted them toward ineffectuality, hypersexuality, native criminality and plain ignorance.
What's different now is that African Americans are, themselves, often the makers and gatekeepers. And under our aegis, the images have, in many ways, gotten worse.
To surf the music video channels is to be immersed in black culture as conceived by a new generation, a lionization of pimps and gold diggers, hustlers and thugs who toss the N-word with a gusto that would do the Klan proud.
A new generation, afflicted with historical amnesia, blind indifference and a worship of filthy lucre, dances a metaphoric buck and wing, eyes rolling, yassuh bossing, selling itself out, selling its forebears out. Most of all, selling the children out.
And it's little excuse to say we're only buying lies we have internalized, lies that become self-fulfilling prophecy. That's all well and good, but the moment you're able to understand that you've been lied to is the moment you bear responsibility for promulgating some truth in reply. That too few of us are willing to accept that responsibility is driven home every time one of those black children chooses a white doll.
We've spent 387 years in this country trying to get white folks to love us. Might help if we first learned to love ourselves.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15545216.htm |
Igbogirl
Regular Poster
Username: Igbogirl
Post Number: 150
Registered: 09-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 25, 2006 - 07:18 pm: |
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Excellent article, Tonya. Thanks. Real food for thought. |
Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 3204
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 25, 2006 - 07:28 pm: |
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Yeah. The only part I disagree with is the lower class is NOT the only black "makers and gatekeepers." The middle and upper classes are just as culpable, if not more so, IMO, and according to historical data.
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Shemika
Regular Poster
Username: Shemika
Post Number: 200
Registered: 02-2006
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 25, 2006 - 10:32 pm: |
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Great article, -and so true. I think blacks need to show some respect for themselves, they need to stop being ashamed of looking black and hating on those that do. That's the problem. Many bw who feel insecure or ashamed of wearing their hair natural are just responding to the pressures of those around them. Being ignored by color-struck men, looked down upon by whites, blacks and ‘others’, and even the threat of loosing their jobs from scornful racists and wannabes who don't view natural looking black hair on bw as 'professional'. The black pride movement has long degenerated into a black shame movement that should say: “I’m proud to be black as long as I can pass for Italian or Pilipino.”
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Igbogirl
Regular Poster
Username: Igbogirl
Post Number: 153
Registered: 09-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, September 26, 2006 - 07:27 am: |
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Shemika you are right on point!! I totally agree with you.
A friend of mine who is half West African, half white and has hair that grows in big loose curls, said to me, "you have much nicer hair than me. I wish I had hair like yours."
My hair is the super nappy straight-out-Africa hair. The only people who ever adore and admire my hair texture like that are white or biracial, never black. |
Renata
Veteran Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 1350
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, September 26, 2006 - 05:37 pm: |
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Igbogirl....
sadly, this is too prevalent in the US. Growing up in MS, the girls there would rather use chemicals that made their hair look disgusting, unhealthy, unkempt, and greasy rather than be seen with "nappy" hair. I'm happy to say that I don't notice it so much in Atlanta.
I was very happy to learn upon first moving to Atlanta, that my new boss wore her hair in a super short natural (which is how I wore mine at the time). In MS, they just thought I was a lesbian because women DON'T wear it there. |
Igbogirl
Regular Poster
Username: Igbogirl
Post Number: 170
Registered: 09-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, September 26, 2006 - 09:03 pm: |
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Renata, that's good to hear about Atlanta.
I know what you mean about permed hair that can look unhealthy and greasy. It can also look see-through!!!! |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 777
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - 05:29 am: |
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"My hair is the super nappy straight-out-Africa hair. The only people who ever adore and admire my hair texture like that are white or biracial, never black."
I'm sure of that. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
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Igbogirl
Regular Poster
Username: Igbogirl
Post Number: 184
Registered: 09-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - 08:59 am: |
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I'm sure of that. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
I clearly was not wrong about you in my earlier posts, Ntfs. You little self-hating small brained black monkey. LOL |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 779
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - 03:31 pm: |
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"I clearly was not wrong about you in my earlier posts, Ntfs. You little self-hating small brained black monkey."
Oh God! Here we go with the petty personal attacks and name calling. Have I called you any insulting names? Think about it. How does it sound when a black person calls another black person a racist name like “black monkey”? I was expecting much more from you than that young lady. I was just agreeing with you and you had to call me childish racist names. Why are you angry with me? And how in the world would you know that I hate myself? I have no reason to do so. I have a very good life. What drove you to the "hate myself" conclusion? Because you don’t like me that means I hate myself? Look Boo Boo -it's like this, you may not like my posts and that's fine. But you have no personal information about me to make comments about my self esteem (which is very good by the way). Just stick to the issues and points of disagreement. No need for racist personal attacks. You can make a point without doing so. Ok..?
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Igbogirl
Regular Poster
Username: Igbogirl
Post Number: 194
Registered: 09-2006
Rating:
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - 04:13 pm: |
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Just curious, are you heterosexual, Ntfs? |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 790
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - 08:11 pm: |
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Oh Lord! Your taunts are so weak. You have yet to respond to any questions I have asked you. Just more rants and name calling -one after another. Never a point, no intelligent counter statements and nothing of substance. You cannot bait me Boo Boo. You lack the sophistication and intelligence to do so my dear. So, what's the next name or accusation you want to make? Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
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Igbogirl
Regular Poster
Username: Igbogirl
Post Number: 220
Registered: 09-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - 09:48 pm: |
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You haven't actually asked me any questions, Ntfs. I just asked you a question: are you heterosexual. You didn't answer it. Why? There is nothing wrong with you being a Batty Man as long as you are open about it and upfront. |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 806
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, September 28, 2006 - 06:12 pm: |
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"You haven't actually asked me any questions, Ntfs. I just asked you a question: are you heterosexual. You didn't answer it. Why? There is nothing wrong with you being a Batty Man as long as you are open about it and upfront."
Why? Why do you need to know? You're not my type my dear. Remember? Ya gotta be bright and very light, straight soft nice hair, I'm not into fatties and women who do not work out and they must have soft pretty facial feautres. You're not in that group. Sorry. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! |
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