Its easy to have 'conscious' ideas about why black girls should stop gravitating towards Western ideas or 'standards of beauty'. to throw black consciousness philosophies around, and bash people with the bible of black thought for their fake hair. However , I think that the issue that is not being dealt with is what little black boys are taking in, on what beauty is, and what a woman is.
I went to my friends room yesterday, and on his wall was a picture of a naked white girl. I said" that girl is really skinny". and my friend responded by saying "well, skinny is sexy", and a whole lot of other painfully ignorant things about how getting a white girlfriend is the ultimate achievement for black guys. I realised early in the conversation that there is a pathology there that should be given attention real soon. Where does he get the idea that white women, in contrast to black women are the epitome of beauty. Not to say that white women are ugly, but if young black guys in South Africa cannot recognise and appreciate the beauty, importance and divinity of their black sisters, then there is something painfully wrong.
In a conversation with a friend of mine, he said (quoting Louis Vincent) that people continue to do what they do, because they are being continually told the same narrative. In the minds of many black kids, race has been constructed in binaries, and no one is explaining anything to them. What I mean by binaries is the thought that there is white and black, good and bad, rich and poor. and in this polarised system, placing whitness at the side of the good and every 'other' thing on the side thats not so good. There is beauty in everyone, especially in the things that make us different from each other. The narrative needs to change, and parents should teach their children (especially in black families) that the love of self means the love of others and vise versa.
In the last couple of months there has been an increase in rapes by younger and younger boys. If these young boys had been taught that every young girl is a princess and a sister, that every elderly woman is their mother, would this tragic reality still had been the case?
I strongly agree with you on the point your making my dear friend. As people we feed from what we are taught,and to our sad reality young minds are being infiltrated with rubbish of superior and inferior or acceptance and unacceptable, where we rather need to be raising a generation of people who appreciate and embrace their unique God given beauty and that of others around them.
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