She's Not Prettier than You, She's Just Racially Ambiguous

How Black Men's Internalized Racism is Ruining Black Women's Self Esteem

by Nia Mclean | Photography by Chika Okoye

There’s something about the obsession we develop with our ex’s new girlfriend. The obsession is never really about the girl; more likely it’s about you and your insecurities.

As an insecure person, being dumped made me obsessed with pinpointing the exact quality that made me disposable. I thought I could find that explanation in his new girl. It makes sense, right? He didn’t want to date me, but he wanted to date her; meaning, there is some quality I lack that she doesn’t. So, being a logical person, I tried to identify my fault so I could improve upon it.

I looked her up on Instagram.

It’s weird; I didn’t even feel threatened by her. I was just confused; she looked nothing like me. Was I even his type?

I am undeniably Black; I have kinky hair, ethnic features, and dark brown skin.

She was… Black? She had loose curls, Eurocentric features, and light skin. She’s what Pop Smoke meant when he said, “I like my b—--es redbone … Lightskin, yellow.” I only knew she was Black because she attends an HBCU.

My friend said it best: “She’s not prettier than you; she’s just racially ambiguous.”

That’s when I realized that I didn’t lack anything, rather I had an abundance of something: melanin. And when a boy goes to an HBCU, surrounded by a ton of other colorist Black men who feel the same way, attaching attractiveness to lack of pigmentation, that boy succumbs to peer pressure. He dumps his girlfriend for a fucked-up status symbol.

My ex made it clear throughout our entire relationship that he, like most Black men, is a colorist. Colorism is a phenomenon in which lighter skin people are treated more favorably, especially within an ethnic group.

One time he held me, looked at me like I was the most beautiful thing in the world, and called me his “little light skin.”

I am not light skin. However, in that particular lighting, I suppose I looked light. In that particular lighting, he thought I was beautiful and felt the need to mention my skin tone because he associates skin tone with beauty.

Black men’s colorism stems from internalized racism and self-hate.

My ex always got offended and defensive when someone called him dark skin — as if it was an insult. One time he showed me a baby picture of him, in which he looked super light because he hadn’t gotten much sun yet, and said, “I miss light-skin baby me.”

My ex’s friend said he wanted to loc his hair, and my ex told him not to, saying, “Don’t do it. You have ‘good hair.’” Good hair is an offensive term describing hair that is looser curled as more desirable and implying kinky hair is bad. My ex has locs. So, he must think his kinky hair is “bad” enough to loc.

Many Black men feel this way. Think about the number of Black men who have significant others who are darker than them. Think about the rap lyrics that praise light skin women. Think about how Chris Brown reportedly denied Black women entrance into a nightclub for being too dark. Consider America’s trendsetters: the Kardashians. The Kardashians have fetishized racial ambiguity by producing an entire generation of mixed-race babies.

The examples are endless.

I care about Black men’s bad self-esteem because they project it onto Black women, and that makes Black men just as bad as the white people who set Eurocentric beauty standards.

Black men are making Black women insecure about their Blackness. It bothers me that Black men are making Black women feel the same way white people make Black people feel when they say our hair is unprofessional or compare our ethnic features to monkeys. I care that my ex made me insecure about something I was never insecure about before; he made me afraid I was too Black to be loved. During our whole relationship, I was scared to wear my natural hair or get too tan.

When I was born, my grandma said I was too dark. When she was a child, her grandfather called her evil for being so Black. I can't help but think those two incidents are related.

We need to stop perpetuating the idea that only one kind of Black is beautiful--because all Black is beautiful.