THEY DON'T LOOK LIKE ME (Part 2)

In part 1 of this blog I spoke about the prejudices that coexist in the black community and how I believe we need to tackle this agenda before we can really address the race agenda. I remember a time when a friend of mine told me when she was younger that she would never speak to anyone who was of a darker complexion than she was (Seriously???). Another friend expressed to me that his mother told him never to date a dark skinned girl (even though he was black himself). Imagine how many unheard conversations of this kind that are still crippling the black community, it is heartbreaking to know that this still exists.

To the black men and women who feel the need to whiten their skin, I would like apologise on behalf of the illiterate beings who made you feel your skin colour was not good enough. Evidently in Jamaica, the bleaching of ones skin has become the norm and before now I never considered the root cause. I used to criticise those who chose this path but now I have began to understand the pain of the individuals who feel the need to lighten their skin in order to be accepted by the wider community; this is largely unacceptable. We criticise them yet we have not really considered the 'WHY'. Surely if the battle between the light skinned and dark skinned never existed, I believe there would be no need for my brothers and sisters to "Bleach" their skins. We need to celebrate the beautiful shades of black in which God created, because we were all fearfully and wonderfully made.

I could extentsively expand on this topic all day however there is a specific message I would like to emohasise: "United we Stand - divided we fall." I strongly believe that we cannot continue to suppress and kill each other with the expectancy of overcoming the greatest fight that our ancestors began many years ago. My black brothers and sisters, we want to be accepted by the wider community but struggle to be accepted amongst our own. In the words of Marcus Garvey, 'we need to be emancipated from mental slavery' and see that whether we are dark brown or lighter, we are still ONE. We ought to lead by example and bridge this gap that has caused the divide amongst nations.