I grew up in a house where being light-skinned was the “dream.” Being around that while being young truly fucked with my brain and thought process with stuff. I hated seeing full Black families out in public because I thought, why would you want to do that? I hated who I became around my Black friends; if they had their hair in anything but straight, I was disturbed and disgusted at why they wouldn’t want to have straight hair and why they would want to have their hair naturally. I hated seeing mixed kids or lightskin kids because why wasn’t I like them? I couldn’t stand seeing Black men win. I always thought that should’ve been a white man . I hate dating anybody that wasn’t white because I didn’t want to have a child that wasn’t white. I hated having to wear my hair naturally; I saw that as “unprofessional,“ which is exactly how my family did. I loved getting perms to feel like the white girl and mixed girls with loose curls instead of tight ones. Every time I would see a Black person with Black features, I would call them things I wish I could take back. TW: I used to cut myself and drip it on white paper with the hopes of being seen as a white woman. Yes, I have come to terms with how bad I used to be.
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Uncle Ruckus?
I hope you continue to heal and see your Blackness as beautiful. We are beautiful.
ETA: y’all stop responding to the troll.
You can’t go back but you can always be better going forward.
I mean it happens, especially with the racism within our own culture. As long as you grow out of it everything is all fine and dandy. Let this be a your family problem but not a you problem (If your family still wanna be weird fine, but you can move on and become a better you <3)).
Also, as i (black) got older i learned to embrace my natural hair, however my grandma (Black) hated it because “No one wants to look at or hire a nappy headed ————-” Sometimes the hate is just there.
You weren’t anti black, you were anti yourself. Self hate that bleeds into projecting you insecurities onto others.
I see this way too often. Internalized racism has to go. Embrace your natural beauty. Own it!
Michelle Obama. There. That probably won’t fix anything but I wanted to mention her.
NGL…I don’t care if I get downvoted for this, but are you even black? And I ask simply because of the other comments you’ve left on your own post. Sometimes, people pose as black people to get a rise out of us.
IF YOU ARE, I sincerely hope you are able to move forward without any hatred on your heart for yourself or others.
Been there I’m a “light skinned” black guy, hate myself more than some of my darker colored counter parts. Feel you. Love you much though
The scourge of white suprmacy has has infected the collective psyche of people of color. It’s tough when you are constantly bombarded with eurocentric beauty standards. It’s gotten better but it was a lot worse when I was growing up.
Unlearning internalized hate that you’re indoctrinated into as a child is so difficult. Healing yourself from it is an accomplishment. I’m an Internet rando, so take this for whatever it’s worth: I’m proud of how far you’ve come.
Wtf 😳
Do you live in the US? I only ask because it seems that the racism there is rife.
I hope you can and want to live in the UK.
We don’t care about race. If you’re a decent person, that’s all that matters.
I wish you all the best anyway.
mate, normative standards in society make people do the craziest shit imaginable. people hack themselves up. they gamble away everything they own. they kill their kids and themselves. they rob banks. they become drug addicts. i am sorry you grew up with that. i can’t imagine what a mindfuck it must be to attempt to leave it behind. but just know that your family were only responding to the same need to be accepted and valued that drives countless others to equal levels of insanity, and beyond. we were never designed to live under this much pressure. there are too fucking many of us. it turbocharges societal standards. and everything we view as “ideal” is piped at us 24/7 on the sides of billboards, through TVs, through our phones and even out of each other’s mouths, constantly. the pressure to be things we are not is constant and inescapable. forgive yourself. and even try to forgive your crazy fucking family.
I’m confused as to what you were hoping to gain from cutting yourself and bleeding on white paper? Can you explain that a bit more because how I’m reading it is that you would do this and I guess, hope you would magically be turned into a white woman.
I understand some of what you went through but on the flip side.
I grew up in a predominantly black (medium to dark skinned mostly) neighborhood where racism was quite heavy. I am a very ivory skinned white woman. I hated the color of my skin and hated my body. I thought black girls were soooo much more beautiful with curves I could only dream of.
It didn’t help that since the age of 7, I had to carry a pocket knife with me to school because black girls, boys, and yes even parents of black kids and other black adults would attack me both physically and verbally. I literally lived across the street from my school and feared for my life going to and from it every day.
I wanted so badly to fit in and be liked for me and not be seen only for the color of my skin. Many black folks claim that white people could never imagine what it would be like to endure true racism but I did. My upbringing was incredibly difficult. I hated my family for making me go to a school where I clearly wasn’t wanted and to force me to deal with all the violence and hate for something that wasn’t even my fault. I always felt ugly and felt like an outcast.
It wasn’t until I got a bit older and could fend for myself better. I started standing up for myself and holding my own which then I earned some respect and slowly my black neighbors accepted me. I had friends and people started seeing less of my skin color and more of me once I found the courage to first accept me for me so others could do the same.
Then my parents decided to move us.. and where? To a fkn predominantly white preppy neighborhood where I fit in even less. I couldn’t make friends there at all, I was fully miserable and I was also struggling with AuDHD that my parents refused to take me to a doctor for despite many pleas.from school counselors and teachers.
I didn’t get diagnosed with it until my 30s and by the my life was a mess (still is but it least I have answers and a way to improve it but only after wasting my life away from so much struggling.).
Anyway my point is, we are a product of our environment and our parents shadow until we find the courage to break away from that and begin to not only accept ourselves for who we really are but to find the beauty in what we see in the mirror in order for others to see and experience that same beauty.
Black women are absolutely gorgeous and so are women of ALL skin colors from as light as mine (damn near albino lol thanks to my Irish and Polish roots) to as dark and even darker than yours. We’re all beautiful but in order for everyone else to see and love the beauty we have, WE have to see and love our own beauty first.
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.“
– Audre Lorde
“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
– Nelson Mandela
Damn, this really sounds like my mother, I wonder if she has a similar mentality. Raised me to be over-aware of my race at all times (half black/half white). Finally at 27 I’m growing my hair out for the first time, but I have no idea how to take care of it.
I NEED CONTEXT- what country/state are you in? Its relevant because certain areas of america/ the world have a very different views on self worth.
What political affiliation do you subscribe to? Im independent…. i found that being left was taking a backseat to my best interests. And, to be Right was to almost never think or say anything positive about my own kind.
Are you just generally a unattractive person? So, you just kinda sub consciously blamed your background
this sounds like a sort of hell, Im so sorry you are going through this…however, I dont think that there is anything wrong with any black person due to their features…you should really look internally to see how unique and beautiful you are…. Im personally a white passing hispanic, however, my sister isn’t and we never raised her to think anything else about it…it’s not important…its just genetic expression…however how we act and fell and display ourselves to the world is all in our power…I hope you learn to love yourself, ignore your families thought frame…
i am truly disturbed with what i just read.
sorry you’re going through this..
My dads side is full black, probably some native American or white in there given slavery and being in the south but for the sake of this comment, all black. My paternal aunts best friend is white, they grew up together in 70s Mississippi.
Anywhomst my aunts yt friend’s daughter married into what we call a wanna be passe blanc family. They arent actually creole from Louisiana but their goal is to become lighter every generation. And they dog black people as much as a grand klan wizard would.
Her husband is light skinned but with 4c hair and he complains about it all the time, and he drags other women for having it. Meanwhile he and his white wife say the n word. Needless to say, they arent my friends, just people I unfortunately have to know of.
All that being said, people like this will always exist as long as racism and white supremacy does, and given the alt right administration, we will be dealing with it for a while.
At least youve acknowledged it and are trying to do better.
I know what its like to want to be white growing up in an all white town, I got relaxers until I was 16 and finally accepted my natural hair. I liked my white friends but they never liked me back. They would say the n word and racist jokes and I had to sit there and let them otherwise Id be dropped. When Treyvon Martin was murdered everything changed for me. I started researching my history, took courses on sociology and African Americans. I dropped my racist friends.
At one point I wanted to become darker because my family actively othered me for being lightskinned and would tease me for being so “for the cause” when I was “barely black”, when Im literally majority black.
But I can truly say I was not anti-black prior to that, I saw my peoples struggles through my family and community, I considered myself black, I loved my black friends, thought they were just as beautiful if not more so than anyone else. I suppose its because I could also recognize the racism in the white folks I was around and wanted no part in it.
Ill never forget my white “friend” coming over to my house for the first time and she was confused when we pulled into the same neighborhood as her and then was aghast when we pulled into our much bigger driveway and much grander house than anyone in her family had. She literally went home early and was weird after that, her family would make passive aggressive remarks when I came over and it wasnt until a specific outing I realized why. They thought black people didnt deserve to have nicer things then they had. And that solidified for me very young that it didnt matter that I had lighter skin, I was always going to be seen as an n word to them.
What I will relate instead is that I grew up in a homophobic cult, and I had some very homophobic views growing up, and said things that hurt people, people who never forgave me even after I left the cult, unlearned all that BS and even came out as Bi myself. And thats their right. We dont get to be welcomed back by others just because we have started to do better. Doesnt mean we shouldnt strive to do better even so. Do it cause its the right thing, not to get something from it.
what in the uncle rukus
I swear if I was black, I would have a 1973 Angela Davis Afro. When I was a kid, I thought that was the coolest look in the world.
its just something about white women that get me every time. i wonder where this type of thing came from.
I am so sorry.
I am Latina. I used to stare in the mirror and wish my hair was blonde and my eyes were light.
You definitely had it worse. It was so awful.
Learning to love myself was a challenge. The culture hurt us so much.
I hope you healed. You are awesome and worthy of love.
What changed ?
what shamar said
I think for a time I was like that. It was 100% due to my mom not liking her hair and a mix of being liked by people more when my hair was straight as well as my dad being light skinned. It didn’t help that I had mixed/latino and white friends at a mainly white school… it gets better even tho ironically my partner is Mexican lol
Gah damn OP…….
I don’t have much to say excerpt I truly hope you’re past that point in your life.
Are you sure you changed?
I feel this. I’m a brown person who grew up in an all white family (wasn’t adopted and mother is white. Dad is not there). Growing up, I didn’t hate others of color. My best friend was a black kid also in an all white family. But, I could never figure out why my skin was the way it was. I grew up with Batman, James Bond, Lord of the Rings, and DBZ. I would pretend I was those characters, but guess what? They aren’t brown, and they have no prominent brown people. There’s some black people here and there, but I’m also not black. Even now, as an adult, I still enjoy those characters and stories, but every brown person I see in films is the stereotypical brown Indian. Asian, black, and Spanish people are also always stereotypical, and I can understand why but I wish there were people like me and my background in media. As a kid, it made me both hate and question why I was given these circumstances. As an adult now I have far more to worry about so it doesn’t bother me as much but I have had talks with family where I’ve said I hated my skin as a kid and they can’t understand why. I have since married a white girl and have a son who is considered a white passing person of color. So, really, at the end of the day, I am alone as the only full person of color in my immediate family and extended family with my wife.
Self hatred is the saddest 💗