“Chelsea would be cute if she was lighter”, he said.

It’s difficult to put it into words, but the mixed emotions that flood over me when someone says something offensive is an outright battle between my flesh and my God loving spirit. When the spirit wins, I am most likely able to formulate a well thought out compassionate response aiming to give the person the benefit of the doubt that they really didn’t mean to offend me. When my flesh wins, I basically black out and go in! Followed by a heartfelt conversation with the Lord requesting forgiveness for my slick mouth. It’s all about balance right?

But back then, I had just begun developing my communication skills, and in that moment, as a newly transferred eighth grader to the country great state of Texas, I was simply too caught off guard to warrant either aforementioned response. I vaguely remember stammering out something along the lines of, “What does he mean? We’re practically the same color”.

And so began my disassociation with our newfound home. This was only the first of many conversations I heard along these lines, and each one made me more militant and disdainful of this place we had just come to.

See, the catch was that my parents are Texans, and I had spent most of my life, up until that point, dreaming of the amazing place we traveled to visit family during the summer. Our trips were almost magical- traveling city to city to catch up with family and friends spread out all over the state. Somehow, until that moment, I had literally managed to bypass any conversation of that sort.

Back in Maryland and Virginia we had family and friends of all shades and hair types. It never occurred to me that anything was “worse” or “better”. To me it was just variety.

For the first time, I was living in a place where the consensus of thought was completely opposite of my “power to the people, say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud” norms. The pro black community that I was accustomed to existed here to some extent, but it was now tainted by an underlying schism of a hierarchy based on where you fell along the spectrum starting at “Light Skinned”, which some pronounced “Light Skinnded”! The horror I thought. Red Bone, Yellow Bone, Dark Skinned, “That N’s Black as f&%$”, the list goes on…

By the time I reached sophomore year of high school, I had made it my personal mission to make sure that everybody and their mom knew how crazy it was to me that this way of thinking was accepted and worse, perpetuated by our own people.

I was fortunate to be brought up by a mom who was somewhat of a reformed Black Panther and a dad who dotes over me in such an over the top way that I just can’t help but love my chocolate self, even at the beach when I turn purple. What hurts my heart is that the result of this is this poison spilling over into the psyche of girls who don’t have that support system generation after generation.

My mom always says that the saying, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”, is the dumbest thing she’s ever heard. Isn’t it incredible that those words were spoken to me over ten years ago and it still triggers a sentiment within me so familiar that it carries me away for a second…

It’s my hope that you’ll remember this piece, and use it as an inspiration to love on all of our girls for being just they way they are.

Chelsea

Image Credit: The Film Series Warped