Thoughts on the Phrase 'Black is Beautiful'

Photo: Rachel Marquez
Model: Janica @ Best Models
rachelmarquez.com

Whiteness, of course, isn't a colour, it's a normative cultural value; an ideal we are all obliged to accept and aspire to whatever our race or ethnicity. The paler the face the better the person; not only more attractive, but more noble, more spiritual. Darkness of skin betrays darkness of soul; something base and bestial.

Such thinking, of course, which has a long and ugly history, deserves to be challenged; I absolutely support those who subscribe to a political aesthetic that promotes black pride and defiantly declares in the face of white racism that black is beautiful.

However, things become problematic when those who subscribe to such and refuse to cosmetically alter their appearance start to assert their own moral superiority, sneering at those who don't sport afros and accusing them of racial treachery.

To turn a slogan conceived as a form of self-affirmation into a weapon with which to censure others is not only a form of militant asceticism and bullying, but often also betrays sexist hypocrisy on behalf of black males who, on the one hand, voice disapproval of the millions of women who do use skin lightening products and straighten their hair, whilst, on the other hand, dating light-skinned models or marrying white women.

Sometimes, when a woman of colour bleaches her skin, she's not denying her blackness due to self-hatred and internalised racism - she's not betraying her roots - rather, she's simply making a considered choice about how she wants to look and acting with a degree of realism in the world as it is rather than as it could be, should be, and hopefully one day will be.

In a miscegenated future I would like to think no one will feel pressured to wear whiteface and pass as something or someone they're not; but neither will it be any more reprehensible or controversial for a black woman to lighten up cosmetically or surgically modify her body than it is presently for a white woman to work on her tan and have lip injections.

In a world after Michael I hope that all skin tones and facial features are seen as beautiful - be they natural or artificial (human or inhuman) - and a free spectrum of colours replaces the rigid black and white binary designed (like all such binaries) to keep us in a fixed identity.

On Doing (and Not Doing) the White Thing

Having earlier this year evicted lesbians from their store in Brighton for kissing in the aisles and taken the decision to exploit the tragedy of the Great War for a Christmas ad in order to flog a few extra bars of chocolate, Sainsbury's seem eager to now demonstrate their racial insensitivity with a new poster campaign designed to promote its company values. Paying a marginally fairer price to British dairy farmers for their milk than some others in the retail sector, is just one way in which Sainsbury's are, apparently, doing the white thing.

Obviously, I get it: it's a pun that even has something of a history to it. One recalls, for example, a popular campaign launched several years ago by the National Dairy Council in which various celebrities encouraged us to drink more of the white stuff. However, speaking as a black man, I have to say I do find the Sainsbury's ad to be contentious at the very least - if not overtly offensive.

For unlike the Dairy Council slogan, the Sainsbury's one crosses a fine line and passes onto extremely unpleasant territory. One can't help thinking of skin colour and normative Aryan values, rather than a pint of semi-skimmed; can't help recalling a long and depressing history of racism in which all of the ancient virtues were associated with fairness of complexion. Nietzsche writes of this in the Genealogy (I. 5).

And so Sainsbury's should stop using this slogan and they should apologise to their non-white staff and customers. They should, in other words, do the right thing by all of us who reject entirely the false and pernicious equivalence made between skin colour, purity of blood, and nobility of spirit - all of us who have no wish to play the white man.