When preparing to do your laundry ensure that the white clothing is separated from the black in order to avoid cross contamination, I mean cross colouration.
I used to dream about being Caucasian.
In these daydreams I could picture the privilege pricking through my skin, the probing hands retracting from my hair, my body becoming just that…a body, the word chocolate becoming a synonym for Dairy Milk instead of a supposedly beautiful black girl.
In my mind and in the minds of black girls all over the globe, being white meant being accepted. No, being white MEANS being accepted. People are washing machines. We remain trapped in cycles, with the same settings (or ideologies): one of which is the normal setting. The normal setting is white. Another of which is the “anything other than normal setting.” But we never learn what those setting actually do. They truly have no purpose in the grand scheme of things. In fact the cycle of ignoring those settings becomes ingrained in our daily routine. We even start to forget those other buttons exist because the only one that truly matters, the only one that has a useful purpose is the normal setting.
White.
But this is a tale as old as time.
40% of black women worldwide have tried to become normal and in compensation for their efforts to bleach their skin these women activate their cancer cells and irreparably damage to their livers.
When preparing to do your laundry, buy the correct detergent to avoid death. I mean, discoloration.
When preparing to do your laundry, don’t.
Black is only beautiful when it is trending. “Chocolate,” “Neubian Princesses,” “The Blacker the Berry the sweeter the juice.”
Chocolate is food. Neubian Princesses are Egyptian and Egyptian’s generally identify as Arabs. “The Blacker the berry the sweeter the juice” is a setting that has no bearing here or anywhere. Just like black women. We have no bearing here or anywhere.
We are not even here or anywhere.
“If you look for something wrong for the world, your bound to find something insignificant and make a mountain out of a molehill.”
Well I’m here to make the mountain out of the molehill.
Humans consume food. We consume food to survive. So when a black woman is likened to chocolate, to something you consume as a comfort food, it becomes a mountain. There is nothing comforting about digesting the aspirations and wishful thinking of black women. There is no molehill. For years we have relaxed our hair; chemically straightening it in the hopes of becoming more socially acceptable and we continued to do so because we became more socially acceptable. In compensation for our conforming to the Eurocentric beauty standards created for people who do not and will not ever be able to fit within their idealistic realms, we risk activating our cancer cells.
So no. Being likened to a chocolate, Neubian princess who is so dark that I can be likened to a sweet berry (yet another food) is not a compliment. Being so dark that black women are three times more likely to be suspended from school than their lighter skinned counterparts is not a compliment. I refuse to be consumed for the purpose of comforting white people. I refuse to be so easily digested. I refuse to apologise for being anything other than normal because what is normal other than a setting on a washing machine?
