The Color Conversation

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Jay dot M, a production of I Heart Radio Microphone check one to what is this? Welcome to Jay dot the Podcast. I'm here with Layah st Clair. Hello, people, and agent great and dance. Yes, the five nine assassin with the rough neck business. Wait, I'm like, I think I cut lay off. What are you gonna say? Book? No, I'm just saying, what's up? Book, that's all over you. Okay, just just make it sure, work, just make it sure. I don't want to cut you off lying. I want no, I want no smoke with you. Well a little bit. We haven't done it and so out. Sorry, it's crazy. I really can't wait to see y'all in person, though, I'm happy to see you right in this moment, but I feel that it's time. Okay, we've been on the zoom. It's time to see one another. I'm going to warn you. I think I warned you before, but I'm warning you now. I'm going to bite you. I'll take a bite. I'm going to bruise. Yeah. It's too much love we have had. We have shared too many thoughts and feelings together. Damn zoom. That's right now, You're gonna get bit you, Finna get it. Okay, you're about to get it. I'm mark because you know, this thing is like it's gonna be there for the next two weeks. It's gonna go for red to black and purple. One. Oh my god, I got a new bruise. Like it's fading now, but I got a new bruise. I was like, what did I though, that's that light skinned thing, that problem when you come from. When did this happen? I don't even know. I don't understand y'all's skin problems. But I know that because I'm looking at this Zoe and I you're you're a fair carmely I'm a carmely color. I just said. But I had a mother. I had a mother who was was quite light, and she had issues with that too. She would literally have a bruise and we'd be like, mom, what did you do? She's like, I just I get these bruises living. I don't know what. I don't know why this happens to me. But I'd be like, mone, that's terrible. That thing is perfect. You hit something, she said, I did. I don't know what, and I do not remember. But and of course, growing up because I had like skinned mama as pf okay, I was not one of those. Yes, we had we put on something block. That's what my mother had to have it on or she would peel so a lot of it in the eighties and nineties, like yeah, yeah, my mother, my mother did. My mother did. The first time you saw a black person burn, that ship blew my mind, Like I saw a black girl bubble and I was like, I don't even know because the doc a dumb chick baby or on to get a better more than I was like yes, like sis, You're like, sister Melanin is not like completely yes, it's not. It does it, it's not. But I didn't know that. I didn't know. I got sunburned on my chest one time and it completely like it changed the color of my chest like forever. I had no idea. I was like, why is my chest hurting it? I had no idea. I didn't know, not for nothing, but the increase of the ozone layer become missing. Black people are more endangered than ever and they have no idea that. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, Actually, I will tell you that I didn't have my first experience burning in the past five years where I had my shoulders, and I was like, oh wait, this is painful. What is this um that hurts? I know, White people said somewhere laughing at us, like what the funk? How Like how y'all didn't know that the sun burns because it's whatever did before. And that's how you know that the sun is getting stronger and the ozone layers getting weaker. That's how you know because all these years, all these years in the sun just turning different colors like crazy, all some long. I remember some green one time because like a like a army green, because they had so much chlorine in the water. And we had gone to a family reunion and I swim. I swear with my cousins all day until the sun went down, and even after that, sometimes to three o'clock in the morning, we were swimming. I took that bathe in camp Off, Yes, bathe and cap. I took my baby and I had a line right here from being in the sun. Just you remember that you got to do that. Well. I never had a swim cap. My mother would just braid our hair, but I always wanted to. I always thought that any it ain't never worked. Caps. Moms loved them a little bit more and when you put it on a hurt. It hurt, and then you'd be mad because you were to do all that pain to put it on, and then your hair still wet. It's like still wet. You ain't missed nothing. Changing colors like that, you know, changing to some green person because of the chlorine in the water, Like deep that's on the skin. Yeah, that's so good. It was like a you know, Motel six, one of them drinks, so they had that. They probably had bleaching. What I feel like when we were little and we grew up, you know, in the eighties, you know what I'm saying. And I think about like black women and what black folks period and how we talk about color is the most interesting situation. It's like if you talk to old people, they got certain ways of saying things and talking about things, and talk to our generation. I remember that. You know. My husband always says, I don't know when the light skinned boys went out of style. He was like, but when I was young, that used to be like a cool thing, and now it is not. And I think to myself, when we were little, we had such a terrible view of our skin tone and color. I mean, I mean it was just awful, And for me and for everybody on this call, you know, and having a conversation about colorism is really a deep thing because it's like none of us really had to experience what it was like on the other side of that for real, for real, like to really be young in the eighties and have to sit there and have people talk about your skin color in such a negative and derogatory way. Black people go through such ways that it's not even just uh, it's not even exclusively to dark skinned folks, and it's not even exclusively to life to skinning folks. It depends on the decade. I feel like it also depends on the way your family looks, because because when I was growing up, I definitely thought I was darker than I am because all my family member they was lighter, and my dad was really dark. And so for me, my grandmother said would say, you know, your father's handsome, and he's so black, you know, so these things that was normal for people to say, you know, for and so in my mind, I'm thinking, oh, I'm dark because I'm darker than all y'all, and that's my dad, you know, and I'm closer to his color that I thought than I was to my mom. It does depend on the environment, what was said to you and what were the thoughts around those things. Maybe even also to like what part of the country you lived in that too, But it also has to do with with the time, Like like life said that, you know in the fifties, Oh honey, you needed to be fried by died ladies decide you need to have that that hair popping, you know, you had to get pressed baby, and the lighter you were, the prettier you were period, That's how That's how it was. And if you were on television, you know, you had to be a maide. There was really nothing else for you to do. I made a mammy, you know, something of along those lines, and nanny that was nothing else. When was the first time you saw a brown skin person, like truly brown on television? Do you remember that? Okay? And then here is the night I'm sorry that just popped in my head. Yeah yeah, well Sydney Portier was it was brown. I for my earliest recollection of black people on television would happy like cartoons? Oh god, the Tom Jerry of it all. Yeah, I think I probably my first I think black people that I oh no, no, Sesame Street. That was the first black person. Gordon, Yes, Gordon, who is dead still around, Yeah, Mr Gordon. I think it was the late night television. Um, you know, trying to think because you know TV used to go off. TV used to go off. I will tell you with something special about Woopy Goberg when on TV for sure, for sure? Yeah. Yeah. And she was the lead a Beauty Jumping Jack. She was the lead that that is, you know, until Ghosts until but she rocked that. She rocked that. Yeah. Yeah, she's the star of that movie. Yeah, but she was the first of her I feel like that had that look that it was okay, mixed the hair, but I still don't even think it be. It's like, it's interesting the representation part, right, people get we get the representation, and that feels good. But on the playground, it's still if you dark you African booty snatcher, it's still if you light skin, it's still if you light skin, you think you you think you better than everybody, or you might end up getting beat up or something just showing up light skin. I mean in real life, in the way that we we interact with each other, you know, or I want to marry this type of person so I can have pretty babies, oh my god, or you got that good hair? Or you know, are you real pretty for a dark skinned girl? Or you know what I mean like And these are things that really, in my opinion, we still dog whistle these things to this day. People may not say those exact words anymore, but it's like, come on, we even down to like the natural hair movement where it's like when you see a lot of the models for natural hair, they got a certain kind of natural hair. That curl pattern is the number one, not the four right, that's the number one. It's not a number four. It's a four y that needs me a strong for seed. We're just start That's funny. I think as of this year, we are just starting to see women in commercials but a little bit of force, a little bit, and typically those women are paired with white men. God, come on with your truth, jail, and nobody got time for listen. I to be to be light skinned, and I'm telling you that this is that's new for me. I just I didn't even believe it. I didn't believe it. This is this is new to me. I just found out I'm light skinned. Damn. Like even now, to say it out loud, it's just like jagging me up, because but what's wrong with this? Because there's I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with it. I'm saying I really didn't know. I don't know. How could you be that delusional? I look at myself. I washed my face every day, you know what I mean. I get in the shower, I see myself. But I just never thunk it just a little bit more diluted than you did before. Something is missing, something that's missing. I just didn't know. I don't know because all of my well i'll say most of my really close girlfriends are brown. Yeah you know, I got I got one light skinned homie. You know that's been around for more than than ten fifteen years. But don't you find color and black folks so interesting? I think it's interesting when people see a person and they see their parents and they're like, it's no way that that child came from these two people, not knowing that like this child, they may be dark and their child may be light, but they had a like parent here, and you know, just the way, yeah, the way the whole thing works. Yeah, I've had a couple of friends that have been accute, not accused, but you know you must be mixed. Oh yeah, what are you mixed with? What do you mixed with? Black and black? Black and black? Black and black? But then also too, there's always this assumption that light skin also means you know, like we talked about the hair thing, were just like, I know, light skinned people will foresee hair, you know what I'm saying. Like, it's like black people have just as all these different combinations of the ways that we look that and we had to discuss it. But you know, we've been moved around, We've been moved around, mixed, added all of these different things. We have so much variety to the way that we look, you know, what we consider to be black or look black, or be black, all of the all those things start to come into questions and really like, and we're talking about the DNA tests. You know, I had a good girlfriend who her test came back. She's like European mad as hell, she's mad as hell, but she black black girl. And you know, once you get into those type of percentages, you could you can look at yourself as being quote unquote bi racial. At that point, you feel me then there's some people who just identifies black, you know, identify or I'm black, and and that you might look at them in their face and their face is so light that you wouldn't necessarily immediately say, oh, that person is is black. You know what I'm saying is so I just think we we we have to be able to get to this point where we really embrace all of the ways that we can look at all the ways that our beauty looks, because I don't think that we even keyed into how much diversity there really really is. It's not we still always talk in terms of light skin and dark skin. You've got light skinned people, You've got dark skinned people. Because really, Jill, I can see how I mean, I'm gonna give you a little bit of a break on this. I can see how you could have been a little thrown by being called light skinned because maybe you felt I'm just brown. I'm just like you know, I'm I'm the brown girl trying to look at her. I'm looking at her skin. To me, I'm just trying to get You're a good friend. That's what you're doing being a good friend. I'm telling you, how could I how could I not know that sounds so nuts even to me, But I just never really I thought about it. I didn't, I didn't think about it. I was just brown. What was the illest thing somebody said to you about your skin tone or about skin tone to you that sticks out to your mind? Well, as of late, my family is busting on me for being light skinned, you know, with with this newfound and I'll say new because you know, the television hasn't been representing properly in my opinion, in every sitcom, you know, the husband is is some kind of brown skin and the wife is some kind of light skinned with one seed curls, you know, like seriously, no, right, like every think of them. Let's go. It was. It's interesting, they're trying to make a little change. You just made me think of what, Yeah, of the new Gossip Girl with with like with Kevin Hart and that beautiful woman I don't know her name who was also in them. You know, it's having lapide and young girl as a lead. You know, seeing brown skinned women being loved is it's like a whole new concept, you know. And when when the new I'm Viv came, I was mad, right, how dare you? How could you do that. She can't even be brown, like I'm viv We loved mass well read, but it was all hot. We was all a little bit filth, a little betrayed by that boment, Like, yeah, crazy, because we know vivis brown. She made them brown babies. You know she got one light skinned daughter, but her stand is brown and her daughter is brown. So how are you gonna were all the way in fantasy? I love it, But no, she's only saying, she only saying will all of us thinking, even everything, None of us understood where Denise and Sandra came from. None, we all wonder why they were so light. I'm telling about what you didn't wanted. Yes, did y'all not come on? No? No, no, no, no, no no never the grandfather or grandmother, the grandfather mother? Yes? And and um yes, the Huxtable. What's his name? I keep wanting to say Bill, But Joe it was Joe Williams was Claire's daddy, And um no, that and close father was Brad. I was light, Yes, yes, Russell, Russell Russell wasn't as a light as he was. Like we let that go. It's okay, y'all, We let because all the way down to Rudy and it was like, Okay, you're doing a color for Sindough, right, we do that. We have a color spectrum in our family. Yeah, you have a friend who's who's twin sisters. One is light, one is dark, Pierre for nothing. My father is one of nine and my grandmother was as dark as his background we're looking at. But he is lighter than jail, you know. So it's kind of like that's why I was saying earlier about the beauty and black and what we can make. And people are so even we get confused as to what we can do. Right, you gotta give it to the one who do it, you know what I'm meaning, like so many flowers in the garden. So I think even when you talk about TV, right, And we had this conversation with my daughter was talking about movies that she was looking forward to, and like people who are casting for these movies that she's looking forward to. So there are several movies that are coming out that are in the works and she's just like, if they cast that person and who with light skinning curly here, I'm gonna lose my mind. And so it caused this conversation in my household about colorism. And it's my thirteen year old who was talking about it, and she tried to explain to my husband. She was like, you know, Dad, the problem is that, you know, not that people don't see beauty, she said, but there's so many dog whistles. Basically, when they do cast our skinned women's people, they cast him in these ways that make them look aggressive, angry or you know. And it's gotten better over the years, but it's like and he he laughed, and he said, you know what, it's funny because they talk negatively to men about being quote unquote light skin. They're not looked at as manly. He was like, whereas when people talk a dark skinned man is always presented as a really strong character. And the game in the Jam, remember that it was like light skins out right, or or even New Jack City, because I always tease Christopher Woden, you know, and about that whole you know, the the juxtaposition between him and him and Snipes and so you know, and we were talking about that and see my daughter, right, and my daughter broke it down. She said, the reason why that is, dad, is because it all goes back to black women. She's like, light skinned black women are considered more feminine, more so off, more beautiful, she was like, and you know, in the world of television and media, she was like, and so when you have a light skinned man, his features are considered softer, more feminine. So she was like, so this is why this happens, and how how light skinned men get um, you know, portrayed as being softer and being not as strong, she said. But think about how that looks for women, she says, So when dark skinned women are presented in media, and she then they're they're presented as more masculine, less feminine, she said, And this plays itself out in the real world in a very real way. So you get dark skinned girls who are punished more in school, you get dark skinned girls who are considered more aggressive, you get she said. So this is really important why we have to be clear on the way these messages are sent to us about our skin color. And she was like, in media, and my husband's mind was blown. He was just like, Oh, won't they do it those I know one of the actresses, and she's probably excited about that. I know, I was excited about to see her, was Dominique fishback seeing her and uh Judas and the the black Besidah, and that they had the love and the respect and the banter, the intelligence. That was a really lovely way. I mean. And and that's a girl who looks like your girl. She looks like you and she myself, she's beautiful. Yeah, yeah, I love that. That was that was on point. That was the point when he was talking. I was like, okay, yeah, I feel like she beat but no, this is only the one of the twins. We'll be back after the break. Let's think about this. Most of the successful black men that you know, oh here we go, their wives are typically light skin Yeah. Only Denzel, Thank you, Denzel, thank you, saying well, sam thank you, saying well, thank you, thank you, Samuel. Look, I mean, I feel like I'm I'm a trader on my team because I have I do. I feel like I'm a trader on my team. I'm finding out I'm light skinning, and I'm like, oh man, wow, I've always had an affinity to brown skinned women. Those are the ones that I seek out at at the party. Those are the ones that I ended up hanging out with that realize because I wanted to be that. So I was you know, you know, attracted to those kinds of friends because they were they were brown. I never considered it until I looked at my best friend, you know, uh, And I looked at you know, the girls that I will hang out in high school or whatever, and I'm like, oh, snap, you know it has been well. I mean, like I said, man, my girlfriends, my cousins will be like, you know, they walk in the room, ain't nobody said a word to him like, oh, she's stuck up. So this is the eighties and nineties when we're growing up, so you you probably definitely internalized some of that, thinking I have a better chance of making a friend with a girl who's not light skinned because she's gonna think she better than me, or she's gonna be stuck up, or she's people were thinking Jill was thinking that she was better than them because she was a shot sitting around like why y'all don't like me? Exactly? I don't understand what's happening here. I don't like and you think you belt tea what you mean? Yeah, I don't understand this. And and the conversations that grown up has had about babies. How about that look at the ears they don't know how doctor, they're gonna how it donna get Yeah, but that wasn't necessarily like yeah, not like that. It's a bad thing. It's just like you you can see how dark you know. Not We're not bad, it's just our obsession with it with color. Why why is this even a conversation. Let me tell you something. You give me a fat five brown skinned baby, I'm done. I'm in for the day. Allow you, sweet wonderful thing. I don't know, I haven't offinate fix Listen. It's real, it's real. I have an affinity to to brown skinned babies and brown skinned people. I just do. I don't want to tell you. And my my dude is light skinned with freckles, is he? I know it's a shock to me too, and some of the most I hate to say this, but you know what about the other the other theory too, about how light skin folks sometimes how the biggest mouth, which is why sometimes some of our biggest I need to throw the questionnaires in the game. Do y'all think it's a little bit of survivor's guilt? I hate to say, this is a little bit of the house privilege, where you feel like you cane a little bit more empowered than the thing. I just never thought about it, and I never thought about my skin color. I didn't think about it. But you've definitely seeing other people. I mean, you're looking at the people around you thinking, I mean, you gotta I mean, haven't thoughts about that though, like how it played out in front of you? Though, yeah, you know what I mean, Yes, for sure. Mostly I thought about who was pretty and why, you know, who was handsome and why, because even it was to me, I wasn't. Look. I was in North Philly, and I'm like, we all broke, we all here, we're all trying to survive. I ain't worried about color because we're all black open here, you know what I mean. I just didn't. It didn't occur to me when you got in the world about color like it is either we're black, we're black, we're everybody here black. But I'm telling you, I noticed when my mother worked. My mother works the secretarial pool for many many years, like an administrative assistant. She worked in a several law firms, and back in the eighties, y'all remember how you know, cubicle situation and everybody big area where the cubicles are and you know the offices are behind it, and real a d story. You walk in the receptionists is light skin, right first person. All of the people whose cubicles are closest to the front, light skin, you walk further to the back, dark skin. It's like everywhere I turned as a kid, I saw colorism, and even now DC it couldn't have no choice because it was a class thing too at some point, a class thing, a color thing. And even still you gotta figure as well, like I'm gonna earlier, like instances of education for us as black folks happened to the kids who were the black children of slave masters. They were the ones that were taught to read those they were the ones that had that went back to what I was saying whispering to you that I didn't never a little comfortable, I was gonna say when we talked about revolutionaries and activists and things of that nature, especially we talked about the past and a lot of them, see, you know, from education, Alice, you know you know what I'm saying. Just it seems like would that be one of the reasons that you know, I feel a little bit more empowered, a little bit more free and maybe because more generational education and wealth to access. Yeah, access, because I mean if you look at the early colleges and stuff like that, obviously you know there's the infamous paperbag test. There's all those different things that happened, you know amongst the educated elite blacks. W WE DWO boys talked about it a lot. He's like, you know, yes, around black folks it matters that I'm light skinned, but around white folks, I'm just black, don't matter, you know, always dealing with that, you know, that situation in terms of y'all just started like this, this this growing headache in my head from thinking about how hard others have fought to keep us separated and hate ourselves. Like this ship is ill and it's and it's it's so contagious that it's gotten to the continent and they are like bleaching, there's cad. I am. It is very serious. Even sometimes when I see, like I follow a lot of makeup pages, even though I don't do makeup. I'm terrible at it, but I follow the pages. And eventually, when you follow a lot of makeup pages, you'll get to some pages where it's a lot of where women on the continent, and what you notice in terms of the makeup style is a lot of heavy foundation. A lot of times it's very light. Yes, it's like it's a little which is the the whole ashy song? You know, you can't be classy if you make up ashy. You know that's a that's a thing. I'm come getting under the I'm I'm on my way under the table. It's it's a whole song. It's like big on take top, you know what I mean. I'm sorry to choke poof be Gone. You make them too strong? That's the lyrics to song, Yes, be Gone make them too strong? You make them too strong. That's the those of the lyrics. You can't be classy if you make up ashy. Like listen, shout out to Rihanna right now for creating colors that actually worked with all of our skin tones. Yeah, for long, you know, there would be that ashy color, particularly with brown skin women. And now at this point it's like it's a choice. You're you're you know, trying to be lighter. I noticed when some people do my makeup that they'll make me lighter. And I'm like no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what I want. Don't do that to me. I'm not Let's talk about Instagram filters and I'm just here to be a black woman in the ball. Okay, I'm here for that. I didn't I don't this the other stuff. Listen, they'll shoot me just like they shoot you. Please believe it. But yeah, let's I've told let's talk about filters on social media. That's a big deal. Girls, all across black, white, whatever, they will use a filter, do you know. I'm guilty, but we all have used a filter. But let's discuss how that filter immediately makes you lighter. You're about to make me open my ship. I'm like those filters. Yes, those filters make you lighter. I don't want to be lighter. I don't know what she's talking about. Hold on, lord, I gotta. I don't mean you just to teach me about the filters on the things. Okay, Well, maybe it just it provides a glow on the cheekbones and the t zone, you know, So that with me, filters on Instagram, Instagram, on Snapchat and all that, when they put on you can feel, you can feel right here, and you can feelter a picture on your regular phone. That's that's an option. If you take a photo, you can alter the phone me after you take a photo. Yeah, like video, and I don't here, I don't know how well. I'm not trying to. I'm just I'm not trying to look lighter. Listen. I had such appreciation, such an appreciation for my grandmother in her skin tone. I thought that was the prettiest thing I ever saw in my life every day, every day, and I didn't want to. I didn't think outside that I could be anything other than what she was period. And then you know, I knew for me to like it irked me when somebody at school, like when I was a kids, when somebody in school did not see the brown skin beautiful girl, when they didn't see her, that irked me. I'm like that that's pretty, but automatically, if you were light skinned with long hair, you were already you know, you were beautiful, just automatically. And I was like, not so much, yeah much, not so much. You know, I don't see it, but that I could see. I could always see brown. So you never played with the towel on your head. You know, it was a shirt. It's a shirt, mom, was a shirt, yeah, mom, shirt, Mom, yeah, cross in the fan, Yeah I was. I was Susie from Soul trained um with her, the lady with the long long hair, Yeah, the Asian lady with Sometimes I would put like a little a little scrunch you on it too, fancy scrunchy design, because being a black girl is vicious. It is a hard situation to be a black girl and to look at your skin and your hair and actually in your gut and your conscious and your subconscious feel that it is beautiful and it is the most beautiful and and I just can't sit here and pretend that, even though things have gotten better, that that wasn't a huge part of my growing up. It just was. My mother said, I don't know, did you get the I ain't buying you know, white dolls. Oh no, we weren't allowed to have like we were not allowed. I was not allowed to have white dogs. Yeah we know. My barbie wasn't black. I had a Barbie. Oh no, the my child, my cabbage passed dolls. I mean I had dark skin, and cabbage passed dogs to me too. My mother was bad. What I told you. I borrowed my girlfriend's cabbage friends down all the babysit and take it back. She had a carriage and everything. It was great, it was it was enough for me. I didn't have the cabbage patch am. I just had. I just had and some clothes, clothes, you know, I needed. I needed clothes for me. It's why what? And I enjoyed my life And now you can buy the Cabbage Patch Company if I want to, if I want to, if I want to. Growing in the guard and sorry, I just thought about the sock. It was rough. I strove, if that's the right word. I just never wanted to be one of those girls. They urged my soul were getting to it. They I never wanted to beat that. They bothered me so round, thinking that you're so cute because you light skinned with hair. That just urged me, like are you funny? Are you cool? Do you have a personality? The do you know? What are you into? You know, all of a sudden, you know, this girl walks in and everybody's like, oh she she So the anxiety being viewed that way, yes, the anxiety you felt from being viewed as a light skam girl and how people thought that that what that meant made you go so hard in the opposite direction that girl. But wait, so I gotta even deeper question because I know Jill. A lot of times people confuse this video girl for you, and she that's who she is, That is the perception of her. Is that why you get mad when people ask are you the girl in the Glamorous Life video? Because the way that she's prose in the video, she is the light skinned girl that don't want to talk to nobody, and she stuck up into I'm sorry, I just went real deep, but I was just cious, well that that's a character that you know, I don't I don't care for. Yeah, okay, I'm gonna get it. I know I asked, But I've always been in that, you know what I mean. So there's times when like even Hazel Rochelle is I don't know if it's because she's life, you know, because she's you know, a singer or successful or whatever. You know, she's got an air about her that irks me. But nonetheless, that's that's not my job played your character. It's my job to play the character, you know. So yeah, even that, like I just never on a new platform. I'm just saying I just wanted to shout that out was another platform, you very much, and we just got picked up for a third season. Yes, I mean yeah on two TV shows. That a time girl that way. She works hard for her money, so you've got to treat her right. Come more on, somebody, Lord, let me manifest multiple streams of income. Listen, come on, come on, Lord. We come to you as humbly as we know how, and we asked that you put multiple streams of income into the pockets. So these here black in man, just because we like skin, not just because not just because we like skin? Can we get it for the brown and the browner and the brown? I will play an angel or devil. Lord, thank you to the table. I quit you all day. You can't quick you can you can't quit me. I'm I'm in here. Yeah yeah, we're twenty years and a't ain't nobody going nowhere. Were twenty nowhere. I ain't going nowhere. We're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be right back. Oh my god, I really feel like you just figured me out. Do you figured that I never really put together like your business animosity? Because I don't. I never wanted somebody to judge me based on what they thought you know, I don't like that. I don't like boxes. I hate them. I hate them. See if you want to sometimes a motherfucker if I have to be you know what I'm saying, Like, there's differ I think that's all three of us, don't We don't want to like like that box. Because that's the thing that's the problem with colorism. It's boxes. You're automatically this or that. If you're if you have if you're a brown skin girl with natural hair, you automatically smell like shade butter. You might not use that. You might use something completely different, you might not. Yeah, but let me just say that all being a sister who was a little in the middle a cormel if you will, that's when it all boils down to. That's what all boils down to. The hair. See, that's what you can't talk about colorism. What iout talking about the hair because you said something right there. Because for me, if I wear my hair natural, it's hay queen. You know what I mean. You wear your hair straight. You don't get that. But let me say this, and and and the conversation of the day, A lot of conversation of the day is about respectability and we're talking about colorism. But like I said, if we extended into stuff like hair in aesthetics, right, you started talking about that, that whole idea of you know, what is professional, what looks a certain way? And if you associate straight curly hair with light skin right at some point, but now anybody can have that look, so it may not be light skin, but it comes from those thinking that thinking of what is you know, what is adjacent to white and what that and that being you know, more acceptable, that being more beautiful, that being beautiful natural wig even though you have your own natural foresty going on under here, but you like, I don't know if that's gonna be acceptable to see you, right, to make it a little bit more acceptable, a little bit more quote unquote approachable, more beautiful, and just it the hair situation, I think we can't fairly talk about this and unless we talk about the hair part too, And like I said, the respectability aspect and what is the more palatable version of the black woman that people can you know, that they feel is representing and doing the right thing and being the type of black women that we want other people to perceive black women as. Because that's where it comes that's where the colorism thing came in with my mom's job. It's like, oh, the most palatable black woman for us is this light skin when we're gonna put her in the front, so it'll be really careful about that. It may not be known, but at Jet Magazine, Ebony and Jet, there were no brown skinned women in the building. Well his wife and in the building the well, if they were there, they were cooking. No, I wasn't saying. I was saying that he when I visited Ebony and Jet that the headquarters in Chicago, I think it's gone and they are dark in the kitchen. No, Jill, you find it's it's interesting that you said, because I visited too, and they are it was. It was no brown skinned women at all. And I remember saying that to Mr Johnson, like, you know, it's it's so nice to be here. Is there. We we took the whole tour of the entire building. I was like, there, it's beautiful brown skin women. You say that, I did what he saying. He was like, yeah, but I didn't see them in the fashion fare room. And then I asked the sister and I was like, are there any brown scanned women? She said, no, oh, they that white supremacy show. I just man, it is a powerful dry I mean, and can I say Angel that that term has been used a lot more lately. I mean in our news, in my real house, Real Housewives of Beverly. No, I'm sorry of New York. Shout out to Ebony Kay Williams. We're starting to understand the granddaddy of it all. But think about it when we get dressed up to go somewhere, and I am absolutely wholeheartedly guilty of this. There is a wig involved, you know, there is some kind of hair involved, whether it is you know, I prefer to have some braids or you know, some some bolocks or not even those, but you know, there's so many different kinds of braids. I prefer that to have that. But I also enjoy, you know, wearing my wigs too. Now the gag that I cannot do a straight wig, I can't do. I can't. It has to look like black girl hair. Now, I've seen that that's not saying in the nation, and why I wanted to appreciate it. It It was like a nice little kink in the curl. It has to be, you know, whether and I got a lot of flak for that. They were like, why you got up? Oh yeah, why she got on that hat, you know, which is what I call wigs anyway, hairts because it ain't my hair. It's a hat for my purpose, you know. In The Winner, I wear a scullet. You know what I'm saying. Decision What was the decision process though, Jill and wearing the wig versus your real hair, like your hair, and like, what was the why? I'm just curious. Up number one, I got a lot of damage in my hair from the other TV show that I was shooting. We did a lot of cooling back, a lot of pulling back because I didn't want heat in my hair, so we pulled her. And by the time I got to Nationwide, I was like, I don't know, I don't, I don't, I don't, can't pull nothing else back. I'm trying to hold on the Mommy said just right, yeah, yeah, we're not. We're not gonna do this. In site, I probably would award different one, but you know, it was what it was at the time, and I liked it, and honestly, it kind of reminded me. Damn, it reminded me of Blair from that's what Blair actually didn't have some good reminded me of, you know, I mean, like a good style, like she had that bouncy that thing was. It was a lot of hair, you know, and that's all the Facts of Life girls. Yeah, she was the one. Yeah, she had you know, I could easily say, oh no, Natalie's hair was always popping to please believe it, y'all just did. We didn't talk about it. Natalie always whoever was the stylist on that show. Actually, let's just talk about it because even to whose hair was always looking good. But yeah, whoever was doing hair on the Facts of really had their life together. The garret ship was always tight. Everybody was tight. Everybody was tight on that show, everybody. I think the thing about wigs is wigs don't bother me in terms of Black women, Like, whatever we decide to do with our hair, I'm just talking about our politics about hair, like just you know, obviously black women can do whatever they want. But it's like, even down to the edges conversation, it's just like taming your edges because that even that has come up recently. It's like, why does everybody's edges have to be tamed. Tell you don't understand my way to have it. My edges are not tamed wild because a black, a black woman angel should not have tamed edges, and he doesn't. My life, it's been a it's been a struggle from having boyfriends to suggest, like you you're gonna wy, don't you just carry a brush, which I've had. I've had at least two boyfriends suggest that I carry a brush with me, and but so yeah, and so for us who can't, because yeah, because I can do, that's jail and that's cool. But if you sweat should change. And so sometimes I just don't feel like going through the motion. That's an extra ten minutes or you're getting ready, and I just got a full on headache from that memory. I'm sorry. It's no, No, it's okay, because somebody is getting the as swift retrospectively. And but it's a big The edge thing is a big deal, and especially now that girls can really play it down like there's some edge and B and I say this to the stylist that I work with, hair stylists that I work with for for film, like I I don't want baby here. There ain't no baby here on my whole body. I'm a grown ass woman. I got grown here. I don't have baby here, and I'll be trying to make those curls. It's so hard. It's a squirrels. Is a fight, it still is a fight for all of us to be our authentic selves. Now, mind you, everybody adds some akoul tramon to their beauty because the beauty is still defined by what men like. Still, but what white men like, particularly because black men don't even know that they are. Your eyes are white men's eyes. Like that's the partner sucked me up. It's like, carry a brush. I'll beat you with this brush. I'll beat you with the brush. How about I'll carry the brush to beat you with it? How about that? How about? Do you like me or not? Do you like me? Do you like your mama? Is the question? Do you like? Maybe maybe their mama was, you know, permed and you know, getting her hair fried every Sunday. You know, it's just about the rest of your We're carrying the stuff from the fifties and the forties and the sixties and the seventies. We're still we're still carrying this stuff and that we didn't start really wearing our hair until the seventies. That's that's something, you know, that's somebody's lifetime. And then everything about they were scorned. You know, these rebels, these these revolutionary saying it in such a negative way. You know, we're still we're still fighting to wear our hair to work girl. And then there's clearly there's the internal fight. That's the fight because I'm I've just been in therapy. My god, I don't think it's not about myself. Thank you so much. Friends. I just had to tell my girlfriend the other day who was scared to take her braids out because she got to be seen on her zoom and like her real I was like, what do you We can't do. We can't be thinking about them like that. No more. Like I think about it sometimes when I'm watching the makeup tutorials and I see girls contour so hard that nose down, that comment is just like wow, it's just so many little things that we do that kind of keep driving home you're not. Your beauty is not. Everybody else is trying to be like us all the while. It's crazy. It's like we're trying not to be like us, and they're trying to be like us, what, Yeah, it's it's a rough one. I didn't really give myself a bridge because I don't have no bridge. I just got a little I don't know what this thing is on my face. You know. They used to ask me in elementary school. They used to ask me how did I breathe? Because it's that flat right here between your little so they'd be like, how you how you breathe? As I said, I'm congested right now. Yah, Well, I got the opposite. I got my daddy's nose. I have a giant nose, and my nostrils are always flaring, and so I've always been so for me, the giant you're talking, I don't see that. I'm seeing the flare. Before that she said that, I was like, I might have seen the flare, but that's okay. We must accept from your nose to caress one's nose. It's all beautiful. It's beautiful, I mean, but we just don't, like I said, it's just a little ways. I used to the internalized fight about the way, about the way that we look at our obsession with that, about our complexions, about our features, about our hair, and it's there's a constant fight with everything. And so to me, again, if we don't really look at that and pay attention to it, then we don't realize is how much we heavily police ourselves as black women. Before you even think about how we're thinking or what we do. We're policing the way we look. We're policing eggs, you know, just just how we present in the room, from the from the hair to the features to want to make sure we're heard and not just looked at. That's right, It's like we're trying to be heard. I don't want to be distracted because you don't know what this is and you want to touch this, and uh, it's just like the it amazes me what, you know, how much we have to think about every single thing and how we're being watched all of the time, critiqued all of the time. There is this little meme on TikTok that was going around and the sound said black people are never lonely because there's always a white person all up in our business. And it's like and what it did was show black people chilling doing nothing and then focusing on a white person somewhere in the background staring at them. And it's the funniest thing. But it's like profound because that it makes you think about that term the white gaze and how we are obsessed with the white gaze, Honie, that white gaze, baby, baby, and you got to be pushing back at that on a consistent basis, on a consistent basis. It's one thing we did not always go win. You're always you're not. You're not. You're not you're not because you've been You've been living with it and perpetuating it longer than you've been pushing back. Yeah, you know, so you're better at perpetuating it than you are at not so pushing. So so that thing. You've been living with that thing a long time, and it's generational in the past. Now listen, I remember perming my hair because I had I had purmed my hair for the most part of my life because my hair my cousin was a hairstylist, and you know, when she was in school, I was a guinea pig, so I had all the styles. I had to jerry girl, I had to snap back, I had, I had the lop sided diagonal, I had it all. She she she hooked me up on a constant basis, shout out to day. But when after I shaved my head in college because I was like, I don't want this, I don't I don't want this. And that's when my grandmother came in the house with my hair cropped, and my grandmother told me to get out of her sight. I was not ready for that. I was not ready for that. And I also was not ready years later when I purned my hair because I felt like and I just felt like and all of a sudden, I was so fine, Oh she we gotta allow space for and for that either that bothered me, it made me feelable. Yeah, but that's when grandmother's I mean, yeah, I understand that that, but now you understand, like our grandmother's a whole human beings from a certain time, and we're told about their beauty as well. Oh yeah, I mean think But but it's the feeling how it makes you feel in that moment when you when you're when you're getting in touch with your authentic self at that time in your life, and and your elder is rejecting that even even though you know you know why, you know why, but this is a feeling. But it makes me sad, honestly when I see it happening now in the world to our to our girls and our women when they are just trying to get in touch with whoever their authentic self is and they get told, no, that's not professional, No that's not this. No you're not a queen if you look like that. No you're not so and so. No you don't look neat, No you don't look you know. It's like I get really that hurts me because, like I said, as black women were being watched and judged and critiqued so much, if you can find that moment where you say I don't want this, and then you get in touch with something that you do want, you can look and you can look at yourself and say yes, so you know what I mean, Yeah, I think I think I think you should be able to do that. I think you're able to do that and go with that, go with that feeling it. You can't change your skin tones. It is. And I tell you, if you feel like you can't be appreciated, or if you choose to wear your hair the way you wear it, if you choose to appreciate your skin, and I hope you do. You know, whatever uh complexion you are brown skin sister, and you feel like, you know, you say whatever complexion and go brown skin, sister, I'm brown, I know. But just and if you if you black, you brown somehow, baby, Okay, I got you, all right. So you're saying a general browns I'm talking about brown skin girl, no matter how girl, I'm talking about brown skinned women. And I mean and I don't mean specifically brown, I mean black women of all different shades. Real rap, that's what I mean. If you feel like you can't be appreciated for all your shine and glory, Honeycota Italy. Okay, this girl, just now. Look then, my mama was in a sin. I see your white women and they didn't see them, watch women. All they saw was but listen, but listen more, but listen. Listen where am I also in Jamaica? Also in Jamaica, Got sore? Where you're appreciated, got darn it? Yes, come on and shake her shimmy, yeah yeah yeah. Just this for your ego boost to know that this is this is a clouded vision of you, and even maybe your vision is clouded too. Show to those women that are brought it to lightlight. I mean, I know it's controversial, but even Tessa Thompson, who was like, I am so conscious of my life skating privilege in this situation. Wow, it's a thing. Yeah, I haven't reached that place yet. I just found out. I was like skinning, I'm sorry a few months for me and I'm I'm like, well, you're a different kind because you're still in light scan but you're still nappy too. So sometimes it's a little different in my life. It's it's really interesting to be in Tennessee with with natural hair out here. Yeah, the response is different. I get called girl often. I hit him on when I was in Nashville, white man. I was like, wait, white man, I never had I been a girl in a very, very long time. But I appreciate your compliment. Now get me whatever I'm asking for. Thank you so much. Good one. You ain't here them. I don't know he's talking, Tom, but I'm doing don't do things differently. I'm not trying to. I'm trying to not trying to fight you. I'm trying to educate you. Baby, I'm I'm not a girl. On that note, thank you so much for listening to Jay dot L today. Thank you so much. We enjoy having these conversations. We're always like laughing and crying and uplifted and changed, changed just a little bit. I like that. I appreciate that. How do you eat an elephant? One by it time? Hey? Hey everyone, it's producer Eaves here again at the end of the episode. And what Asia mentioned about the social media filters making skin look lighter. That is an issue that people have raised. Of course, there are the overall problems of how filters affect self image, confidence, esteem, and our perception of beauty standards. But skin tone is one thing that is still super relevant and a problem, and it goes way back with light skin biases embedded and photography and filters since their early days, and it goes even beyond skin tone and into Eurocentric beauty standards in general. Yep, the trance of white supremacy is strong. I'll drop a few lengths about it and about colorism in the episode description. Hi, if you have comments on something you said in this episode called eight six six, Hey Jill, if you want to add to this conversation, that's eight six six four three nine five four five five. Don't forget to tell us your name and the episode you're referring to you might yeah hear your message on a future episode. Thank you for listening to Jill Scott presents j dot il the Podcast. This podcast is hosted by Jill Scott, Laia st Clair and Aga Graden Danceler. It's executive producers are Jill Scott, Shawn g and Brian Calhoun's produced by Laya st Clair and me Eves Jeff Cope. The editing and sound design for this episode we're done by Christina Larenger. J dot Ill is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcast from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows