Conversations of Color: Pigmentation and Perception

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The awesome blogger I posted here before has a new blog up, and it's an especially interesting one that hit home pretty heavy for me, if anyone's interested: http://buildameworkshop.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/conversations-of-color-pigmentation-and-perception/

[Salty]

I find that kind of behavior dismaying, strange, and unsprising.

In high school I once overheard a bunch of kids talking about some the others they knew.
Two of them I had gone to school with in the 3rd-6th grade.

Joe was super dark, but he didn't hang out with other kids of color, he hung out with a bunch of white, asshole jocks. They referred to him as a coconut or an oreo.

Jake was my neighbor and childhood tormentor. He hung out with the white burnouts, kids who had started smoking as much weed as they could get since the 5th grade or so. His mom was white.
When he came up, one of the girls simply said, "Aw, Jake? He's just a little dirty."

Roaring laughter.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

People are weird. And complicated. But I really believe that talking about things and shining a light on them is a good way to help them start to change.

[Junkenstein]

Nice find Nigel, it's certainly something that needs more attention and discussion.

I'm not as well versed on the history as I could be so ending up reading through this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_bag_party#20th_century

From 1900 until about 1950 in the larger black neighborhoods of major American cities, "paper bag parties" are said to have taken place. Some organizations used the "brown paper bag" principle as a test for entrance. People at many churches, fraternities and nightclubs would take a brown paper bag and hold it against a person's skin. If a person was lighter or the same color as the bag, he or she was admitted. People whose skin was not lighter than a brown paper bag were denied entry.

Was pretty eye opening, I'll be reading into this more when I can. My initial reaction was along the lines of people will always fragment into groups and the less oppressed will try and discriminate against those more oppressed where possible to make themselves feel better. I'm sure there's much more to it than that though.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Nice find Nigel, it's certainly something that needs more attention and discussion.

I'm not as well versed on the history as I could be so ending up reading through this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_bag_party#20th_century

From 1900 until about 1950 in the larger black neighborhoods of major American cities, "paper bag parties" are said to have taken place. Some organizations used the "brown paper bag" principle as a test for entrance. People at many churches, fraternities and nightclubs would take a brown paper bag and hold it against a person's skin. If a person was lighter or the same color as the bag, he or she was admitted. People whose skin was not lighter than a brown paper bag were denied entry.

Was pretty eye opening, I'll be reading into this more when I can. My initial reaction was along the lines of people will always fragment into groups and the less oppressed will try and discriminate against those more oppressed where possible to make themselves feel better. I'm sure there's much more to it than that though.

It's pretty awful.

Americans and Brits live in extremely stratified societies, and one  thing that seems generally to be true is that in societies where there are extremes of social status strata, people are exceptionally creative and insistent about finding ways to shit on anyone lower down than they are.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I am, for the record, almost exactly the same shade and hue as cardboard. I have "good hair". I am generally shunned by the dark skin girls because they assume I'm stuck up and won't talk to them. In any groups of black women of mixed hue, I find that all of the light skin girls will sort of end up clustering together, and the dark-skin girls will ignore us even when we try to say hi and include them. It is hard to ignore that they feel like we don't really want to talk to them because our society has been pushing on them the idea that they're "ugly" and not as "valuable" as light skin women. Simply because they have dark skin. WE'RE ALL WOMEN OF COLOR, it makes no fucking sense at all that we perpetuate this on ourselves.

http://www.beyondblackwhite.com/true-confession-advocate-swirling-black-mans-cast/