shibumi01

email traffic amongst friends with my reply



-----Original Message-----
From: a friend
Sent: Monday, October 19, 2009 3:36 PM
To:me
Subject: heard this

True story:

A few years ago Jet magazine ran a story of a very beautiful af-american
woman who won an Italian beauty contest fair-and-square.
They denied her the crown because she was too dark and in their words
"unrepresentative of Italian beauty". Jet and other press media went all
around the barn about this and called them a bunch of no-good racists, etc .
. . The Italian judges finally relented and she is awarded her crown. Yea!

Last week, I read that a white girl was crowned Homecoming Queen at Hampton
University (yup that's right) And the student body is pi$$ed [attached].
They feel like she is not representative of the student body at an
historically black college like Hampton and should not be the HCQ. Sound
familiar?

Are we a bunch of hypocrites who think racism is wrong only when we are the
victims or do we have a point and black colleges should only have
black HCQs? Now I know we as a people have a long legacy of feeling
inferior because white has been the standard of beauty for hundreds of
years. That's true and I get that. But is it time to let it go, or should
they take back the crown from this woman and give it a black female who can
"represent" in Hampton historical fashion.

my reply

Hadn't heard but look, and my dearly sainted mother use to always say, "all
after 'but' is B*ll Sh*t," but, it's time. We are separated, as a species,
by such small genome coding as to be indistinguishable on that almost
quantum level. Dr. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois once said, that "for the
problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line"."

Here we find ourselves in the twenty-first century and still holding on to
old tired ethics, that still have merit in some cases, for "them" and "us."
We must now begin the painful process of self-examination, of defining
ourselves. This, to date, we have never done. We spent the sixties defining
what we were not, slave or descendants of slaves. We are, rather descendants
of people who have been enslaved. In so doing we must change our
perspective, not make the same mistakes that the colonizer/enslaver made,
that of race based divisiveness.

As a personal preference I will always chose the darker hued woman, in their
various shades. I remand you to my favorite Langston Hughes poem, "Harlem
Sweeties";

Harlem Sweeties
by Langston Hughes

Have you dug the spill
Of Sugar Hill?
Cast your gims
On this sepia thrill:
Brown sugar lassie,
Caramel treat,
Honey-gold baby
Sweet enough to eat.
Peach-skinned girlie,
Coffee and cream,
Chocolate darling
Out of a dream.
Walnut tinted
Or cocoa brown,
Pomegranate-lipped
Pride of the town.
Rich cream-colored
To plum-tinted black,
Feminine sweetness
In Harlem's no lack.
Glow of the quince
To blush of the rose.
Persimmon bronze
To cinnamon toes.
Blackberry cordial,
Virginia Dare wine-
All those sweet colors
Flavor Harlem of mine!
Walnut or cocoa,
Let me repeat:
Caramel, brown sugar,
A chocolate treat.
Molasses taffy,
Coffee and cream,
Licorice, clove, cinnamon
To a honey-brown dream.
Ginger, wine-gold,
Persimmon, blackberry,
All through the spectrum
Harlem girls vary-
So if you want to know beauty's
Rainbow-sweet thrill,
Stroll down luscious,
Delicious, fine Sugar Hill.

In my youth, as a thespian, I used this piece to audition with, depending on
the part. In my minds-eye I have never seen a need to define AfriKan Beauty
by European standards. "Blackberry Cordial, Virginia Dare wine..." we run
the gamut when it comes to hues. I have dated outside my race, so "never say
never," yet I have always come home. Love should be color blind.

Just a little perspective on why I say, yes, crown miss anne, and get over
it! Make sure that next year miss lula wins it back where we think it
belongs. SistER must have done something right to beat the SistAS'!
lmao

V/R

me