MEASURE THE MELANIN
CULTURE
Until you make society notice certain things it will never
treat you as you deserve but rather as it wants you to feel you deserve.
According to how skin colour and racial physical features are dealt with in various countries of the world, there is a subjectivity involved. As a writer, I am inclined to tell stories so I will draw a handful from personal experiences.
I come from a conventional middle-class
Nigerian family. Both my parents are academics and so I have been sent to
school in very academic environments right from childhood. In my secondary school, there were a number
of students from Arabic and Indian descent and two bi-racial sisters partly
Nigerian, partly British coloured with recessive black genes, this is a
categorization.
These students were allowed to wear their
hair down without braids although their hair could very well braid (for the
girls who didn’t wear a hijab), and the boys kept their hair styled with gel and
longer than the allowed length. In both cases, they broke school dress codes
and were allowed to. They weren’t subjected to the detestable corporal
punishments the rest of the student population were subjected to, they could
very well be named the “untouchables” (not likened to the Indian caste system
of course). And as a prefect, whenever I called them out on their defaults, some
of the other prefects would assume I was jealous of their category or passively
state I was overreacting even though this never is the case for the rest of the
student body.
Although there were Cameroonians, Ghanaians
and Nigeriens, also embodied in our student population, they weren’t part of
the ‘untouchables’ because it wasn’t a foreign origin that gave birth to this
categorization. It was rather because they did not possess a certain amount of
melanin, they weren’t black.
Here is where I would like to put forward
that being from African descent and being black are two completely different
things. One is about race and the other is about skin colour and/or racial
physical features, the former and latter respectively in reference.
Perhaps this is a form of neo-colonialism,
an inferiority complex ingrained from a traumatizing history of slavery. It is
a tragic thing to feel inferior based on the colour of one’s skin. Whereas this
isn’t to say that the white person is smarter or more intelligent, the idealism
of white in our society is as pragmatic as stating we aren’t far drawn from the
Kalaharis caricatured in The God’s Must Be Crazy. Perhaps just more clothed and
educated. Colonization might have left us decades ago but there is still a
residual shackle it left in its place –mental slavery.
The kind that compels you to conform to
unrealistic westernized standards, regarding beauty, lifestyle –a person should
never be taught how to be themselves.
Let me make this as clear as possible,
beauty in itself is subjective and shallow. It exploits flaws on a scale of a
standard devised by a few and fed to a multitude.
Feel free to count me amongst the guilty
because growing up questioning beauty and skin colour was a very wide ocean I
had to swim through. Whether we choose to admit it or not, during the course of
our lives we have fallen victims time and again trying to look like glorified
models in magazines, pop-stars etcetera. The problem here comes from our
silence, the unwillingness to talk about it.
I have very intelligent well-meaning
friends who want to marry white partners or very light-skinned ones because “bi-racial
children are just beautiful; no nappy hair and the ‘ideal skin tone’ of a
tanned white person.”
Note the sarcasm.
Lovely intelligent friend 1 puts it as
passionately when she said, “a black person and a white person can both be ugly
as F**k, but I’d rather a white ugly child than a black one because if alone
for just the “good hair”, pink lips and light skin, people would cut the child
a lot of slack.” Lovely intelligent friend 2 laughs, nods in agreement and
flicks her long straight weave over her shoulder. Lovely intelligent friend 3
adds that his girlfriend is so light-skinned his dark skin would be diluted to
a lovely shade of brown in their already pre-planned offspring. Lovely
intelligent friend 1 and 2 snicker in derision that the girl’s yellow is
bleached.
I’ll have you all know that skin colour is
the shallowest way to judge a person’s worth, I said, before they all navigated
the subject to mid-terms because in their words “They could not walk into
another one of my rants.” Soon after they were rating the boys that passed by
under the blazing Minna sun, they rated a boy 9 who had no striking features at
all.
His skin was pretty light, and his nose
very French.
Then of course it doesn’t take rocket
science to realise that this issue is so wide spread that the broader solution
goes beyond just talking about it although that is a start. Only after years of
sunburns did I finally realise that abusing spot removers didn’t make me more
attractive, and although I am lucky to have deduced this early in my life (I
still have the scars to remind), a lot of people finish theirs without ever
realising that until you make society notice certain things it will never treat
you as you deserve but rather as it wants you to feel you deserve.
Everyone has enough authority to take
charge of their lives if they choose it, also considering the sacrifices of
challenging society.
So, I do love my damned melanin count and nappy
hair! (harmattan loves to break it too!)
And everyone is damned beautiful
(Subjectively of course) in whatever skin shade they come in.
Movies have been written about conformity,
Linda Ikeji has gossiped about it more times than we can count and On-screen
characters especially Home-based keep getting whiter by the second because we
fuel this culture, this culture of self-hate.
I believe in being happy for all the right
reasons.
Whatever the measure of melanin, Skin is
skin.
I’m sure this makes sense.
Apart from hinting on my absolute abuse of Ab-Soul’s latest
Album(DWTW), this is where I perhaps say Merry Christmas, Happy holidays, Happy
boxing day, Happy St. Stephen’s Day (to all my faithful Catholics) how’s your
mother? Father? Etcetera, etcetera… ‘Tis the season to be jolly, overeat and
wear one too many sparkles cue expensive outfits and experiment those dreary
YouTube sensations ‘Holiday Flawless makeup to have you looking like the goddess
you are’, ‘the perfect dress to make him drop dead’ or the cringe-worthy sexual
innuendos that come as ‘the outfit to make her drop down on her knees’.
Keep nursing those protruding stomachs people! And be careful not to
make too much dents in your bank accounts.
With love…
P.S : Due to the absence of the holiday colours in this post, my actions may be misconstrued as 'Grinching it'. I have no comments to this allegation.
Malformed cape-coat - Ejato
Sheer black top - Ejato
Ballad palazzo trouser – Ejato
Model // Mustapha Bello
Studio // Majestic studios
Editing // Ene Ijato
16 comments
Hahaha, absolute abuse on DWTW? Thumbs Up
ReplyDeletelol. Thanks for the read Majesty.
DeleteSimply amazing...#NiceWrite-Up
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot Patrick for always stopping by.
DeleteBeautiful writing.
ReplyDeleteWell done
Thanks a lot you, for the unconditional read.
DeleteAs usual (is 2 to few to b as usual??) You write eloquently and this especially captivated me, it's something I can relate to having had a similar experience In school. You took the words right out of my head. SEASONS Greetings Ene. You're doing a great job here.
ReplyDeleteP.S: little critique for the editing team The models In the first two pictures either have abnormally excessive amounts of Melanin pigmentation or the pictures are slightly over Contrasted
Thank you so much for always reading and always commenting, I am honored to have written about this issue.
DeleteAlthough the intent was to produce something abstractly aesthetic, I appreciate your critique.
Nice article. I hope it hits home with people bearing this distasteful mindset.
ReplyDeleteOh I hope so too as that is the purpose of writing about it, thanks for the read.
DeleteJAPH...awesome..i kept reading dz over & over again..keep it up angie..hop dz gon b first of many i'l read
ReplyDeleteLol. Thanks japh, I hope so myself
DeleteReally captivating write up.
ReplyDelete����
I'm so glad you found the read enjoyable
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is a powerful message
ReplyDelete...hopefully black people stop being racist to themselves someday
Eager to hear your thoughts!