Way back in the mid-to-late ’80s when I was just a young boy, I remember going to my uncle’s home and looking through his record collection (which I did everywhere I went for some reason) and coming across an album cover that confused my young mind. It was Yellowman‘s “Zungguzungguguzungguzeng,” which featured the albino reggae DJ standing tall amongst a group of beautifully brown children in their school uniforms. At that young age, my parents had never explained albinism to me, so my young mind couldn’t truly process what I was seeing. Yellowman’s features were very similar to any Black man I’ve ever seen, but his skin and hair color were completely different. Eventually, my parents explained everything to me.
About a month later, I was walking with my mother in the west-end of Toronto, through a traditionally West Indian neighborhood called Eglinton West. As we walked, I saw a woman approaching us with pale white skin and a long brownish-red weave. After she walked by, I leaned over and whispered to my mother, “Is that woman albino like Yellowman?” To which my mother laughed and replied, “No, Lincoln, she just bleached her skin.”
Hearing that at a young age was damn-near incomprehensible. Why the hell would someone do that to themselves? Why did that woman think her skin looked good? What was the actual purpose of skin bleaching? Growing up in a West Indian community, I was confronted with skin bleaching on more occasions than these. And before long, I realized that skin bleaching is self-hatred.
As many of us know, “skin bleaching” is the act of using creams and chemicals to whiten the skin or bleach out the melanin of the skin. The phenomenon plagues the Black and Caribbean community, as well as many other communities of color, especially in Asia. Now, there are many different ways that people bleach their skin. But the one thing that makes me extremely upset, is the fact that some prominent members in certain Black communities are now actively promoting these products to the masses – and far too many of us are eagerly jumping at the chance to erase the beauty of our brownness right from our natural bodies.
Yesterday, I came across an ad for a skin-bleaching product by a company called Whitenicious, which featured a woman named Dencia, a Nigerian-Cameroonian pop star. This was specifically sad as hell, because Dencia was formerly a very attractive brown-skin woman who now looks like a cross between Lil’ Kim and Michael Jackson. The only thing sadder than what she did to herself is the fact that this product sold out in DAYS.
When I talked to friends and family members about her decision to bleach her skin, I was mostly met with the same typical response: “It’s her life and she can do what she wants!” As much as that sentiment may be true, that reasoning is simply NOT good enough. Not only is Dencia bleaching her skin, which she’s entitled to doing in a free world, but she’s also propagating, spreading, and capitalizing off self-hatred by selling whitening products, and that is unforgivable.
I’ve often heard people rationalize skin bleaching as a simple cosmetic change, like coloring one’s hair, wearing colored contacts, or rocking a weave, but that is complete bullshit. Throughout history, Black people have been taught to reject their skin color and everything that is a Black characteristic, from our kinky hair to the fullness of our lips. We’ve been ridiculed and belittled so much that many Black folks have been conditioned to believe that having dark skin and nappy hair makes us intrinsically ugly. And that is where the need to bleach our skin comes from. It’s not about enhancing one’s beauty – it’s about conforming to Eurocentric standards to negate Afrocentric aesthetics.
Black people, we have no reason to encourage, sidestep, or ignore this shit. Skin bleaching is simple but excessive self-hatred, and if we don’t start advocating the beauty of our Afrocentricity, these products will stay on the shelves – and continue to sell out in days.
LAB
Lincoln Anthony Blades blogs daily on his site ThisIsYourConscience.com, he’s an author of the book “You’re Not A Victim, You’re A Volunteer” and a weekly contributor for UPTOWN Magazine. He can be reached via Twitter @lincolnablades and on Facebook at This Is Your Conscience.