Happy February 1, 2010!!!

Today, despite my brown skin, ancestral link to Africa, and BA degree in Black American Studies, I will not initiate any kind of well-wishes for Black History Month. If you want that, please log on to Facebook as there are plenty of folks there that will gleefully fill your Live Feed with an abundance of “Happy Black History Month” statuses. But you won’t find any of that here. Instead, I am going to wish everyone a “Happy February 1, 2010!” in celebration of two things:

1) A reasonable countdown until spring. There are 47 days until spring and the first day of February seems like the only practical time to begin the countdown. If you start counting in October, November, December, or January, you just seem silly. Let the countdown begin!!!!

2) Miss America 2010 is black. BOO-YAH!!!

I am overjoyed that spring is right around the corner because, for the first time in my life, I have a yard of my own where I can plant flowers!!! Even though I am petrified of all things that crawl and fly, I am prepared to start digging and planting…well at least until I see a worm/ant/bee/fly/ladybug/you get the picture.


And, as we all know, after spring comes summer, which is my favorite time of the year. Beach here I come!

The beach...the wonderful beach (this is me :)

In other celebratory news, America has just crowned her new Misses! On Saturday January 30, 2010, Caressa Cameron aka Miss Virginia won the title of Miss America after a 2 hour televised competition. Cameron (who also happens to be black) beat all her competitors in various contests which included a talent performance where Cameron hit the stage with her rendition of Beyonce’s Listen. By all accounts, Cameron did very well for herself, her state, and her race.

Now, I know the newly crowned Miss America is light, bright and almost white. But, in spite of her complexion, she is still black so I am going to give her the benefit of the doubt and congratulate her-and her racial classification anyway. In light of all of this (no pun intended), I will continue to big up America for crowning her 8th black Miss America. Sure I wish that our current Miss America was a brown baby like me, but I’ll live with a high-yellow baby just the same. Its 2010 and my president is black (kinda) so Cameron’s skin complexion doesn’t really matter, right?

Or does it????


See, on Saturday, after me and Lyricist (the significant other) ventured out into the depths of icy hell for some food, we talked about our families and their skin complexions. We both are the product of a ‘light’ paternal and ‘dark’ maternal mixture. During our conversation Lyricist explained to me the wealth difference between the two sides of his family with his paternal side holding a significantly larger amount of wealth than his maternal side.
That got me to thinking…


When comparing the two sides of my family, I have found that my paternal “light’ side of the family has more wealth (it seems) than my maternal ‘dark’ side of the family. In addition, my paternal side of the family has more business-minded and formally educated members than that of my maternal side. Does this make one side of my family any better than the other? No, of course not. And is any of this a coincidence? I think not.


If you know anything about Black American History you know that historically, the lighter the black person, the better. During slavery, mixed slaves were treated with a higher regard than the darker slaves, resulting in a division between light skinned black slaves and those of a darker complexion. This division was passed from mother to daughter and father to son, which resulted in what we now know of as a ‘color complex’ that has severely damaged the self esteem and success rates of dark skinned blacks.


With this difference in social and familial treatment of dark skinned and light skinned blacks, clear distinctions began to become a reality between the two. Light skinned blacks were given more access to higher paying jobs, cultural experiences (traveling, the arts, etc.), and formal education (as compared to those who were darker). Dark skinned blacks were, for a lack of better words, left behind.


Because of this, light skinned blacks began to populate colleges, artistic movements, and high ranking jobs (over dark skinned blacks) which in turn afforded them the opportunity to provide their children with the finer things in life, including financial wealth that could be passed from generation to generation. With all this opportunity given to light skinned blacks, what did/do dark skinned black have to look forward to?

Alek is pretty :)

Well unfortunately, I do not have an answer to that question but I can say this—if you are black as Alek Wek, you darn sure can’t look forward to becoming the future Miss America.



So, I guess Miss America’s high yellow complexion does matter after all, huh?


If you are reading this and you happen to be on the darker side of the complexion scale, have no fear! Our president is black (kinda), and will be for at least the next 3 years so that has to mean that something good is to come for us!!! (I think…)
***Laugh, this part was funny :)***