For a Black Girl

my name is crystal oli i’m a 17 year old

immigrant from nigeria

i moved here with my family when i was

six years old

now that’s a pretty special age to move

to a new country

i wasn’t old enough to find the

adjustment to canadian societal norms

too difficult yet i wasn’t young enough

to forget nigeria as a whole either

actually i remember my life there quite

clearly before we moved

six is such a unique age to move to a

new country because

i can easily remember how different the

people in the two countries

looked in nigeria the majority

if not all of the people i personally

had come across were black

so when i moved to canada and that

wasn’t the case i wasn’t necessarily

shocked per se

i mean i had been watching western

television

i was however under the illusion that my

blackness

would not influence my development i

mean why would i ever consider

that me being black would pose any

problem

i’d never been exposed to racism so as

far as i was concerned

my blackness and my classmates whiteness

were akin to us having different hair

colors

different yes significant no

so like many other people of color i

began to have social experiences that

made me

hyper aware of my race it’s different

for everyone

for some people they get looked at funny

in high-end stores because

how could someone of that color possibly

afford something so expensive

for others they got completely ignored

in academic settings because

someone of their color couldn’t possibly

have anything constructive to contribute

to the conversation

but for me it was being told that i’m

pretty for a black girl

when i was 13 years old now this might

not sound too bad initially i mean

they had just called me pretty right

wrong

i soon learned that this was not a

compliment at all

as the second part of that statement

turned the sentence from

i appreciate how you look too despite

your skin color you

somehow managed to turn out okay looking

and while that may not comparatively

have had an immediately detrimental

effect as say

racial profiling or being neglected in

academic settings

for a 13 year old girl who was just

becoming more conscious

of physical appearance and beauty

standards what comments like that did

was perpetuate a social ideal that we

have all subconsciously come to accept

to some extent

now this experience is not unique to

just me

in fact as i get older i have realized

just how common

compliments like these are i also

noticed that they seem to be especially

reserved

for girls with darker skin who have

smaller noses

colored eyes thinner lips etc what

society generally considers

to be eurocentric features now i use the

term eurocentric with a bit of

hesitation

and hopefully by the end of me standing

here and talking for the next few

minutes

you’ll come to see why now to understand

why the stipulation for a woman of color

is so often added to compliment about

appearance when it comes to women of

color

i first looked at the usual suspects the

media

and i’m talking about all types of media

broadcast

print support media and of course social

media

i mean this idea that race somehow

defines the limit to which someone can

be beautiful

they just fall out of thin air in the

middle of the 21st century

it had to have come from somewhere so

while present-day media can be shown to

clearly be uplifting one race as the

beauty standard

the same can be said for historical

media

right now beauty standards are

perpetuated by social media

and print media like magazines for

example but a few years ago the message

was spread by public advertisement

posters

on every street corner and even before

then well

it was books all these things have

influenced the thought process of the

general public through the years

to give us a visual representation or a

literal description

of what beautiful is now when someone

wants to explain the theory of evolution

they usually start from the past and

work their way to the present

we’re going to apply the same method

here and see if we can fully understand

why women of color always find

themselves being complimented

in backhanded ways that imply that

finding beauty in our race

is something outlandish don’t worry

i won’t bore you all with an intricate

history lesson dating back to the 1400s

about the

development of beauty ideals i will

however

mention writers like christoph meaners

who is a dedicated practitioner

of scientific racism through his works

including a book by the title

the outline of history of mankind he

breaks down mankind into two

distinct groups beautiful in white

and ugly and black this is a perfect

example

of how the idea that there is a superior

race

was and is perpetuated through the media

you might ask yourself

why in the world was something like this

a lot to be published

well it was published because those who

had the authority to do so

had similar ideals concerning white

racial superiority

and they were not just regular people

they were rich

they were powerful they were white and

they were racist

and they had a clear understanding that

we as human beings tend to

associate beauty with goodness and value

as well as other positive

connotations hence their decision that

beauty simply could not be associated

with darker-skinned people

this is understandable considering that

practices like slavery worked

specifically to dehumanize black people

thus publishing words that worked to

further dehumanize people of color

reduce the threats to white superiority

by solidifying that

no other race should be put at the same

or at a higher level

as the white majority now moving forward

through time

we still see this idea that black people

are not to be considered beautiful

being pushed forth through media such as

plays in the early to mid 1800s

which would use blackface to

hyperbolically represent the features of

black people

likening us to monkeys gorillas and

other

similar animals in the late 1900s though

we start to see the usage of the term

pretty for a black girl

kelly golf writes in an article

published by the cuts about the first

black supermodel dania luna while

recognized for her undeniable fierceness

and elegance

luna still found herself having to hide

the features which made her

too obviously black and present only her

eurocentric features

in her first cover for harper’s bazaar

her race was intentionally covered as

the cover was done

in the form of a sketch which prevented

her skin color from being too obvious

canadian author alicia liu writes about

how the recent representation of darker

skinned women in the beauty

pageant world has opened the floor to

discussions

about featurism and colorism in that

industry

the first black miss america vanessa

williams yes

very beautiful but many have argued that

women with what may be considered

traditionally black features may have

potentially been met with more racially

driven

criticism than she was because of the

idealization of eurocentric features

that exist

in our society and how well her features

allow her to fit

into that ideal while i in no way am

intending to

discredit the prejudice and racism these

two women undoubtedly faced

reading about them did reveal something

to me i realized that while these women

are both black they were featured for

their european resembling features

as this is what deemed their ability to

be accepted in the western media

as beautiful why well because like i

said

the teachings of christophe mieners and

many others like him

didn’t just filter themselves out

through time they became

better hidden more subtle more incognito

subconscious in our media i noticed that

the western world has a skill for having

his cake and eating it too

the best way to claim yourself to be a

progressive nation

while also maintaining your inherently

racist ideals

is to show representation in the media

but we often find that that

representation still somehow

uplifts eurocentricism by dismissing and

oftentimes

demonizing colored women whose features

are similar to those mocked during the

jim crow era

bigger noses larger lips big eyes these

features were and still

are being looked at as less than

beautiful but black women whose features

conform to the eurocentric ideal such as

having a small

and straight nose and everything else i

already mentioned are seen as beautiful

enough now i can see why people

racialize their comments

what stipulations like for a black girl

implied to me is that although your skin

color lowers your score on the beauty

scale

your eurocentric features bring you back

up as they can easily be associated back

to those shared among slider races

i don’t think i speak too bluntly when i

say that this is

a bad thing the blaring truth is that

there are no such things as eurocentric

traditionally black features if they are

on my face

and i am black then for me they are

black features

if a white woman happens to have a

larger nose she’s not said to have

african features she simply said to have

a larger nose

futurism exists it is deeply rooted in

racist ideals

and it is damaging not only to the black

community

not only to the brown community but to

our society as a whole

it blinds us to the abstract nature of

beauty giving us all

tunnel vision to what we are allowed to

find attractive

if nothing else i have said today stays

with you all please remember this

beauty is too abstract a word to be

defined it is too vast to be compressed

into one race

so when you leave here today when you

stop watching this video

look for someone who doesn’t look like

you look for someone whose beauty you

see

regardless of what the societal

definition of the word is

and remind them that they are beautiful

because they are

and you are too thank you

you