+ nemzie +

Yo blog filled with light skin girls in bikinis, swimsuits, and undergarments

Yo blog is filled with posts showin stacks of benjamins, but i dont see u stackin

Yo blog is filled with Black rappers, and ONLY Black rappers for fuck sake

Yo blog is filled with people showin off guns and magazines

Yo blog got weed all over the dame page like iite we get, you smoke weed, tf?

Yo blog filled w/ super cars and pics of random cities for the sake of aesthetics

Yo blog basic af Tabitha. This post exposed you, but since you wanna walk right into this mess and act black, let me holla at you real quick, Eleanor.

1) Hair was nowhere brought up until your weak ass comment with a kissy face emoji came along. You ain’t cute, Eliza.

2) Hair has no significance at all. Wigs, weaves, extensions have no importance to any race whatsoever. That’s right, Libby, having straight/wavy/curly hair isn’t exclusive to blackness, whiteness, and any race in between.

3) Hairstyles, however, have significance. Hairstyles such as cornrows, braids, and dreadlocks have cultural significance that is exclusive to Africans. So, if we see yo unseasoned ass wearing cornrows, that cultural appropriation, because the hairstyle doesn’t belong to you and Black people are getting shitted on for wearing cornrows at the same time.

But wait… We can’t have your hairstyle but you can straighten your hair? That’s hypocritical!

No, Annabelle, it’s not. Living in the US, African Americans get discriminated for wearing their African hairstyles. 

1) You can be denied from getting a job because your Black hairstyle is “unprofessional” and looks “unkempt”. What’s crazy is that it’s completely legal. So Black people, especially Black girls, have to wear wigs, relax their hair, or just cut their hair just to get a fuckin’ job.

2) Due to European beauty standards, Black hairstyles isn’t attractive nor desirable… Unless it’s on a White girl. So Black girls have to buy wigs, weaves, and extensions, and relax their hair just to appeal to society’s standards of beauty. But you got nothin’ to worry about, Susan. You benefit from this double standard.

3) It’s called ‘Assimilation’, Rebecca. When Black people have to conform to society’s standards whether to look more appealing to the general public, or look more professional to get a job, by relaxing their hair, and buying weaves n extensions, it’s an assimilation. 

Do you really know why Black girls bleach their skin? Do you understand how toxic it is to Black girls, and no we’re not just talking applying bleach to your skin, we’re talkin’ mentally and emotionally. Did you know that bleaching or whitening your skin is a GLOBAL thing?? I bet you didn’t, Summer, but wait no longer though, because you’re gonna learn, right fuckin’ now.

1) Again… ASSIMILATION! Look up the word, please. Having White, or light skin, is seen as a desirable and an attractive feature on women in today’s society. This is due to European Beauty Standards. This is literally like hair, except we’re talking about skin tones now!

Anyways, since the world finds Black women to be the least attractive demographic group, compared to White, Hispanic, and Asian women (data which came from Facebook’s dating app), it’s no wonder why Black girls would feel so unloved and so insecure to the point where they have to put their health at risk just to look and feel beautiful.

2) Internalized Racism also plays a part in this. Internalized racism is self-hate for your own race, and/or skin tone. No Black girl wakes up one morning and thinks to themselves: “Hmmm, I should probably bleach my skin so i can look like a White girl…”. Noooo… This happens because of low self-esteem, and hate for oneself, solely because you blame your skin tone for appearing unattractive to society.

As a result of this internal hatred, Black girls may bleach their skin, in hopes of appearing as beautiful as the next light skin girl. But you wouldn’t understand that though… You don’t hear White girls crying in they sleep because “they wish they can be darker in skin tone”. The only women that do that is Black girls; Black girls who hate themselves sooo much, they’d do anything to be lighter, even if it they have to put their health on the line.

2) Let’s talk about the damages this does to Black women. Do you remember Lil Kim? The Black female rapper that brought you hits like “Crush on You” & “How Many Licks”? 

She’s gone through A LOT of abuse from her past relationships, both physical and emotional abuse. She was constantly told that she was undesirable and Lil Kim felt that if she was lighter in skin tone, guys would become more attracted to her… This is the result of people saying that Black girls are unattractive…

This is her now…

Look at her skin tone…

Look at her nose…

She’s still Lil Kim to us, but there’s no denying the fact that she’s visibly broken inside. She has ultimately submitted to the idea that light/white skin is more attractive than black skin, and this is the result of it all.

Let’s not forget that abuse isn’t the only way to convince Black girls that there is something wrong with their skin:

- Black rappers will swear to you they LOVE Black girls, but when you look at their music videos, it’s filled with White/Light skinned girls. 

- Black female models are rarely seen in advertisements and magazines, let alone the fact that Black models make up a very small percentage in the fashion industry that is predominately White.

- Black actresses rarely get any representation in the hollywood business, let alone the fact on how difficult it is for Black actresses to get lead roles.

So imagine living in a world where people told you that dark skin was unattractive, but there’s is a way to fix it… Which brings us to number 3…

3) Whitening Cream… Yes, Alyssa, bleaching your skin isn’t the only option to whiten one’s skin. As a matter of fact, ITS JUST AS BAD, IF NOT WORSE!

Everything you’re about to read comes from the Dark Girls documentary (2011):

- Whitening skin cream has been proven multiple times to cause negative long-term effects, like cancer.

- Whitening skin products is a billion-dollar industry, with sales as high as $43 billion in 2008 - worldwide.

- In countries like, like Korea, Thailand, Dominican Republic, and Ghana, whitening skin cream is one of the most popular cosmetic products on the market.

- In countries around the world, especially in Asia or Africa, Whitening skin cream is commonly advertised in billboards and magazines

- Finally, even though a country, like Thailand, is predominately dark in skin tone, their media is nearly full of their light skin counterparts.

So not only is this issue affecting Black girls, it affects anybody who is dark in skin tone. It’s a global situation where for some reason, “darker is wrong, but lighter is lovely”, but yo pasty Elmer’s glue havin-ass wanna talk shit about Black girls tryna bleach their skin so they can look White, rite????

Now, let me say this one more time for the culture:

NO BLACK GIRL EVER WANTS TO BE WHITE! 

One of the saddest/most frustrating things for me is people’s inability or refusal to consider and understand the consequences and effects of racism, and I mean the psychological and emotional effects. I know this has been said many times before, but it’s just something I personally feel the need to get off my chest right now.

Earlier I was on the bus on my way home from the library with my housemate, and she started talking to me about this rumor of Beyoncé playing Saartjie Baartman in a movie (which I know we all rolled our eyes at the idea, I certainly did), so I’m like first of all let me look at who’s supposed to be creating this movie cus I wanna know who’s shit idea it was to involve Beyoncé. But I was stopped early in my tracks. As soon as I started seeing images - paintings and drawings - of Saartjie Baartman, I felt chills through my body. Just looking at images of her, I was silent for the rest of the ride home, my head full of troubling thoughts and my heart heavy with emotions. It’s not that I’ve never seen images of her before, of course I have. But those images are really triggering for me as a black woman - not even images of white people staring at her, just her. And that’s really what life is like being a person of colour. Small things - images, stories, jokes, words, phrases - sets off a trigger and sends you into a state of distress that no one really understands. In those moments I have to fight with my heart and my brain to stop myself from crying (esp when I’m in public) or just getting lost in my head with endless horrible thoughts.

It doesn’t have to be racism towards you to trigger you, at all. But those triggers just, open a floodgate of unpleasantness. The thoughts that follow are almost intrusive because that’s the last thing you want to do when you’re going about your day trying to live your life, and suddenly all these horrible haunting thoughts are in your mind at once and it’s so overwhelming you’re just sitting there like….where do I even fucking start with all of this, how do I process any of these feelings. You just suddenly feel this burden weighing on you, forced on you. Now you know I love being black and I am more proud of my skin and my heritage than ever, but these are the only times I ever feel a sense of sadness about my blackness and it’s a really hurtful thing to experience, to ever feel sad about your existence. To feel hopeless about your existence. You’re suddenly really angry, at everyone and everything - at white people, at your white friends, at apathetic black friends/family/people, at God (or whomever you worship if you are religous), at the Europeans that have been in the grave for centuries and at the Westerners that exist today, at everyone else in the entire world who you don’t know but they never cared or understood. Do you know how toxic it is to harbour such intense anger towards so many people and things that you can’t really do anything about? And honestly I used to carry this anger around with me all the time. I never asked for it, but as a black person who has experienced racism on so many levels and who began to understand it, it was just there. And this really had a huge effect on my mental health last year. It really weighed me down and was a fundamental component of my depression. It affected my spiritual wellbeing because I had a personal vendetta against God, I felt like I’d been cursed. Do you know how horrible it is to feel like you’ve been cursed with your own existence? I could go on here but I think this post is already long enough.

Without any help from a therapist, a carer, support groups, family, self-help books or online tools, I worked through all of those emotions and thoughts. I learned how to be strong - I had to if I wanted to live a meaningful existence. But that doesn’t mean it goes away completely. Because everytime a trigger goes off, all those traumatic emotions and thoughts come flooding back in one overwhelming rush, and let me tell you it does not feel good.

But I feel like we, people of colour, are forced to suffer in silence. Everyone knows racism is bad, but no one really knows. We shout about our pain and we’re constantly told we’re overreacting or being oversensitive or that we should just move on, or our cries are simply met with silence or a shrug. People are listening to women’s voices, why do they still refuse to listen to ours? Why do they insist on pretending that it doesn’t really matter as much as we say it does? What more do we need to say to get you to believe us when we tell you how dangerous and harmful this is to our wellbeing and our existence as individuals and as a people? How much louder and painfully do we have to scream for you to believe it’s not an exaggeration?

Society has finally started to understand the effects of abuse and trauma, sexual abuse for example, and the services and resources to teach or help people deal with that kind of trauma are plentiful. Where are all the therapists who specialise in racial trauma? Where is the funding for such specialisation to even exist? Where are the psychologists who aren’t black that take a legitimate interest in racial psychology? Franz Fanon has been telling you about the psychology of racism, with the same psychological science that his white peers have used to build theories of knowledge and progress to suitable solutions, and they banned his work and silenced him - a well educated and incredibly intelligent psychiatrist. Dude literally presented scientific, well-informed, and well-researched work on the psychology of racism - what more do you need to listen?

Like really ask yourselves. Where is the compassion? Where is the concern? Where is the demand for solutions? Where is the effort to really change how people of colour experience this world?

White people are only comfortable addressing racism when it presents itself in the most superficial of ways, in which case scratching the surface is an understatement. People will join in on the outcry when a black boy is killed by police, but talk about microaggressions, self-evaluation of your own prejudices, changing the way you think and perceive, re-evaluating everything you thought you knew, accepting fault and truly striving for change - I just don’t see it yet.

You guys have to know by now that racism runs way way deeper than statistics. I’m tired of this fake or half-assed attitude towards the issue of racism. I shouldn’t feel so alone in this world because no one is taking my issues seriously.

As a black woman I have had no choice but to do all that hard-work and undo the toxic racist ideologies that I’ve internalised over my years of being in this world in order to live a healthy functional life and to make life better for the people around me, and I still work on it to this day. So why is it such an issue for white people to do the same? Why do you make me feel like I’m asking so much of you, to do the work that society has forced me to do alone?

I go on about racism all the time and that’s only because the knowledge I’ve gained from my experience and the experiences of other people of colour has made me understand just how dangerous and harmful it is. I’ve been there, racism did some serious damage to me in the past, and I don’t want any more people to go through the same. And this is why I will always fight people who complain about ‘PC culture’ and talk about ‘freedom of speech’ because I know what kind of pain their ‘freedom of speech’ has and can put me through. And if people truly understood or cared they would have a similar passion to see the end of racism in our societies.

So let me tell you one more time; racism is more dangerous, more toxic, more harmful, than you can ever imagine (if you haven’t experienced it)

Before vs After Adoption