I don’t usually spend more time than the split second it takes to rage-flinch and recover when a black man with a platform decides to publicly discuss his preference for non-black or light-skinned black women. More than half the time, the rapper or athlete or whoever, is someone I don’t know or couldn’t care less about. Such is the case with Kodak Black. With a gun pressed to my skull, I couldn’t name a single song this man has created, but because his comments point to a condition of severe misguidedness and utter delusion, I feel called to respond.
Also, I have time today.
I vaguely remember hearing about the comments that started the backlash, but I never dug into the story – after all, another day, another ignoramus with an opinion. However, this morning I woke up, opened Twitter to check on overnight shenanigans, and came across the following video:
Kodak Black speaks on his recent comments about dark skin women. "Light Skin Women We Can Break Em' Down More Easily" pic.twitter.com/TVbXBjB667
— say cheese (@Saycheese_Media) June 30, 2017
Now, it would be easy to continue to drag this man – his comments reek of misogynoir and he frankly has a lot of nerve talking about preference when I bet his parched-looking bantu knots are preferred by no woman at all. However, his statement starting at 0:25, “I just don’t like my skin complexion,” touched me wherever compassion resides within my heart, and so I feel that if I must drag, I should simultaneously strive to enlighten. Of course anyone with the ability to think critically could make the connection that his “preference” for women who are not as dark-skinned as he is points to a certain amount of internal self-loathing; but seeing this man actually speak the words without understanding how his “preference” goes much deeper than “I like this more than that” is terribly sad. While I lack the means to help him overcome this particular ailment of the soul, I think it’s at least important to disabuse him of the belief that projecting his self-loathing onto dark-skinned black women will help him feel better about himself. There are others who truly deserve his rejection and ire, and I think if he directed those feelings their way, he’d experience the catharsis he was probably looking for when he publicly expressed such an opinion in the first place. These others include:
1. His mom and dad.
After all, do we not inherit our genes from our parents? Instead of projecting his hate for his complexion onto dark-skinned women, Kodak Black should confront the people who are actually responsible for his skin tone. He should take the time to ask why neither of them prioritized finding someone lighter to procreate with so that their son could see a redbone looking back at him every time he looked in the mirror.
2. Himself.
As I understand it, he made the original comment in response to a question about liking Keke Palmer: “Keke Palmer, she straight. I’d bag her, but I don’t really like black girls like that, sorta, kinda." Instead of this knee-jerk remark, he should have taken the time to explain himself more thoroughly. Something like, “I don’t even like my own black skin, why do you think I’d like someone else’s?” might have garnered more sympathy and he wouldn’t currently be up for cancellation.
3. The sun.
If Kodak really took a minute to think about it, the sun is the source of all of his problems and it only adds insult to his injury by continuously making skin darker. I mean it literally has no chill – “yellow hos” and “black bitches” and even, Kodak Black himself are all subject to being darkened by its UV rays. Dark-skinned black women are powerful, but it’s not like dating one of them could make you darker. Go outside when the sun is high, however, and you’ll be at least a couple shades browner when you come back inside. Now it might be a bit difficult to get the sun to care about his preference for lighter skin, but at this point it seems he’d have a better chance of doing that than explaining his point of view without looking like a total fool.
