This isnât meant as shade or to attack anyone, but it is inspired by a post that I saw:
I really donât like seeing people go âfinally the Black girl gets to be the cute/feminine/soft one/the one who falls in love/the one who gets to be carefree and cheerful and quirky!â and the character is a lightskin biracial woman, often half-white.
Like Iâm sorry but I really canât celebrate it as a âwinâ for Black female representation, when mixed Black women are always already treated as the feminine standard for Black women. They are already seen as the more acceptable and palatable version of a Black girl, and what Black girls are expected to look like in order to be considered beautiful or sympathetic or worthy of love. Mixed women were always the exception to Black women being deemed too masculine, too aggressive, too sexual, too ghetto, too vulgar, etc., so I just canât and wonât accept it as a âwinâ for Black girls when they get to be seen as beautiful, innocent, sweet, the love interest, the princess, etc., because they are already the beauty standard for Black women because theyâre closer to whiteness/less unambiguously Black; Iâm not saying that itâs not nice to have these characters, or that Iâm incapable of loving, connecting, or even relating to them, but I donât see them as my âsoft and girly Black girlâ representation, because they donât represent me and never will. Mixed race women will never experience the same level of masculinization, hypersexualization, and degradation that Black women do, and thatâs a fact, so unless I see an unambiguously Black woman with darker skin who actually looks like me in these types of feminine roles, then I wonât force myself to feel represented by it or count it as a âwinâ, and I shouldnât have to, either. Just because those characters are accepted doesnât mean that Black women are accepted; they are the exception and not the rule.
The same is true even in real life as well. âIâm so glad that HYBE let the Black girl be the pretty girl of the group!â Bitch, tf is you talmbout, biracial women being the stand-in for pretty Black women because theyâre seen as prettier than Black women is literally already the norm, not the fucking exception. It is not revolutionary and never has been. They would never give a fully Black, darker-skinned, unambiguously Black woman the âvisualâ role, because Black features are seen as ugly and masculine to them. To them, Manon is pretty because even though she is Black, she has enough adjacence to whiteness to be âsafeâ and pretty enough in a white personâs eyes. Again, biracial women are seen as the exception to the general rule that Black women are unattractive, rough, and unfeminine. The only âprettyâ Black women are the ones who make up for it by being half-white or any other race. Biracial women being placed on a pedestal will not and never trickle down to Black women, and it is fucking clueless and naĂŻve to think that it will. It only further reinforces the notion that Black women are only pretty as long as their Blackness is diluted in some way, because unambiguous Blackness is insufficient, ugly, and masculine. For Godâs sake, Lara Raj is not even Black, and she receives the most hate from racists for being dark-skinned and looking âmanlyâ(even by Indian men!!!), so imagine how much worse a fully Black, darkskin girl would be treated.
I just canât see myself in a group that tells me that Iâm not attractive enough because Iâm not half-white, and I just canât see myself in Black girl rep that is really just biracial girl rep and tells me that the only Black girls who deserve to be seen as girly and innocent and sweet are the ones who arenât fully Black. Itâs just sad to see this same exact idea regurgitated over and over again. Iâm so tired of it.
