It's been a while, I know. I'll confess that I was a little peeved with President Obama who was still President-Elect Obama when my grudge began. But, with the whole Inauguration/Leader of the Free World thing coming up, I didn't want to make waves for the man, so, you know, I played the background for a minute. But, I'm back.
Here's the deal. I was going to write an open letter to my son on his birthday, January 10th, but Mr. Obama bet me to the punch with that Parade piece and really stole my thunder. This isn't a Victim Binge post, but...you do feel me here, right? Thus, the whole grudgey silent treatment thing.
It took me a while to figure out how to recover, but I did. Whenever one finds herself at a loss for blog content, turn to one's child's father. There's always something rich there. So...I decided to write an open letter to him...but it isn't complete. Alas, that's an upcoming post. Fortunately, something else came up recently...
During an interesting conversation, my new colleague, a Black man who has hinted at Republican leanings but seems to support our new President nonetheless, and I were trying to make sure we were talking about the same person.
"Oh. You mean the light-skinned brother?" he asked.
Now, this is a reference every Black person in this country at least (I don't know how they do elsewhere in the Diaspora) has had umpteen million times. It's a standard way of describing the man you're dating, which child belongs to whom, which woman you're about to stalk at the club...yourself. But for some reason, in this instance, I found myself stumped, confused, befuddled, as I looked at my own skin trying to compare myself to the nameless subject of our chat. Still, I responded appropriately albeit unconfidently, "Yeah. Maybe my complexion or a little lighter." Or was he?
I don't know if it's my new Obama Era sensibilities that have shifted my perspective and suddenly left me questioning so many things, including my ability to differentiate shades of Blackness or perhaps some new consciousness about the relativity of Black people's skin color comparisons, but dangit, I need a Complexion Color Wheel. And, if we are truly going to be led into this post-racial America, I know White folks need one, too!
Seriously, I consider myself relatively pecan, not light, not quite brown-skinned, definitely not caramel, because there's a certain glow that goes with that that I just don't have, but to my son's father's Charleston-bred family, I'm just light-skinned. And, when is a brother dark-skinned versus chocolate? Is that just when he's fine? Then there's yellow versus red, although, I haven't heard "redbone" in a long time. My middle sister is the yellow one in our family, and I think my youngest is brown. I can't quite place my son. His father, dark-skinned. And, then, there are those among us, who can't be classified as other than white, but on the spectrum of Blackness. You get my point.
On second thought, I guess I realize that my color wheel could lead to more Wannabe/Jigaboo colorism, but I'll hope that in the Age of Obama, we will finally dead that. Because, for real, some Black-is-beautiful Pantone chips would help a little. Anyway, I found my confusion confusing until I realized that this thing we do, this way of describing ourselves is confusing and relative and dynamic...but still so beautifully Black, fraught with all the creativity and contradiction that color us as a people.
The good thing is, turns out that my colleague and I were talking about the same person...at least I think we were.
Your turn...Have you figured this whole shades of Blackness thing out yet? Do you really know what brown-skinned means? Are dark-skinned and chocolate the same thing?
