It's been awhile since, I've written and ironically I was discussing this very subject with my best friend. Tonight, I was on the phone with a... errr, "friend" (after this discussion I'm not so sure). Fantasia Barrino's reality show "Fantasia for Real" was on. The episode focused on the aftermath of her attempted suicide and the media fallout. I kept focusing on how overly made up she was and her make-up being ruined as she cried while recounting the events. I thought to myself, that there are times when I feel she's an attractive around the way girl but when made up dramatically, she isn't anything to write home about.
I asked my "friend" : " Do you think Fantasia is pretty?"
Him: "No. She has too many round features. Round lips. Round head. Round nose. Just everything. Ugghh, no she's unattractive. Do you think she's attractive? "
Me: "Sometimes. I think it depends on how she wears her hair and make-up. But not on tonight's episode. No."
Him: "She looked like how slaves use to look."
My heart damn near stopped and I had to take a deep breath because I knew an argument was on the horizon. But arguing with him always ended dramatically and I knew I wouldn't be able to get my point across clearly and effectively because I usually get emotional.
Me: "I can't believe you just said that. That was so ignorant."
Him: "What was so ignorant about it? That's how slaves used to look."
I then pointed out to him that I have a wide nose, lips and forehead like the majority of Black people who roam God's green earth. He came back with the fact that my lips and nose didn't look like that. Huh? I told him that slaves looked like him, me, my mother, all the Black people in the Americas and damn near the African continent since before the slave trade began there were always slaves with our skin color, regardless of features. Black people haven't evolved physically, have they? What incensed me even more was his attempt to point out that He couldn't look like a slave because he didn't have negroid features despite his skin color. Huh? Run that by me again? Then he brought up the fact that he has "Spanish blood" and his great great grandfather/grandmother (I cant remember at this point) was German. Now, that's when my blood began to boil.
1.) Spanish is an ethnicity under the category of nationality. It is not a race. His mother is a Black woman of Costa Rican nationality (who by the way has more Negroid-ian features than Fantasia. Figure that one out.) One cannot carry "Spanish blood."
2.) To point out a distant ancestor's nationality doesn't validate your argument. It is once again, a nationality. And plenty house niggers were just that, still slave niggers, with direct White ancestry.
I teared up a bit and started yelling at him about his superior race complex that he carries around like a badge. It hit home but I'm not sure why. But it gives strength to Fantasia's accusation of the media hounding her and making her life miserable when it came out that she was seeing a married man, because of the way she looks when Alicia Keys did the exact same thing and no one paid her scandalous ass any mind. The self-hate that people carry around makes you go hmmm...
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