Yep, you can remove the bars, but the prison cell remains....
----- Original Message ----- From: "Mr. Worf" <hellomahog...@gmail.com> To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 8:52:56 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Skin Color Prejudice in "Precious" Casting? A lot of that is self imposed racial thinking. We were keeping ourselves down by then after years of social programming to hate ourselves. That is the true danger of racism. On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 9:59 AM, Keith Johnson < keithbjohn...@comcast.net > wrote: When I was growing up in Texas in the '60s and '70s, there was a lot of talk about colors applied to black women, be it lipstick, eye shadow, rouge, or even the color of clothing they wore. It was often felt that darker-skinned black women had no business wearing really red lipstick, for example. Now, if the sole objection were that many black people already have naturally pink or brown lips, that'd be one thing. My wife, for example, has a beautiful tone to her lips that is a mix of slight pink and soft brown. She doesn't need lipstick, just like many sisters. But she chooses to wear it, in shades from red to brown,a nd I'm cool with that. But the context was usually that the red lipstick looked bad against really dark skin. Of course, lighter skinned sister got more of a pass. Clothing was a big thing too. I remember some of my aunts and older cousins saying things such as "I can't believe she's wearing that loud orange dress as black as she is!". It seemed that any bright colors--reds, oranges, yellows, etc--were verboten for dark skinned people. There were often comments about our kin from Africa who'd wear such loud clothing, and how it didn't look good on them. When I moved here to Atlanta, my wife and I attended a Caribbean parade. Talk about a breath of fresh air! I had never seen so many colors on so many people of so many hues, especially dark. Now, I had of course seen blacks dress in vivid colors all my life, such as high school bands, people in church, etc. But the number and variety in that parade was a whole new level. It helped me shake off the last vestiges of even entertaining that bright colors are only for "bright" people. ess/
