Light Skin or Dark Skin!- By: DANA

Gentlemen, ask yourselves this question: If there are two girls, they both have the same type of beauty: cute face, shape, and everything. Which one would you approach? However, the only difference between these two gorgeous young ladies is one is dark skinned and the other is light skinned. Ladies, the same question goes for you.

Fall semester 2007, my friends, Keisha, Monica and I gave a survey to at least 15 PVAMU male students by asking them this same question. 75 percent chose light-skinned, 20 percent chose dark-skinned, and five percent chose both.

The reason for this survey was that Keisha, a dark-skinned female, attempted to prove a point to Monica and me. She stated that male students on our campus tend to ignore the dark-skinned females. Monica and I had never encountered this situation before or even noticed it for this matter. After our research, we came to the conclusion that she was right.

Monica would be considered a light-skinned female; however growing up, her family encouraged her to believe dark-skinned women were prettier than light-skinned women. She was often ridiculed for being lighter than most of her family members.

I, myself, could be considered in between dark and light-skinned. I had never been exposed to the criticism of the color of my skin. Personally, my battle was with another African-American issue: which was good-hair versus bad-hair.

The media could be a huge influence on how we perceive certain images, regarding light-skinned and dark-skinned women. Rapper Young Berg, best known for his recent hit "Give you the business," was recently reported on an XM radio interview as referring to dark-skinned woman as "dark butts." He stated that deep, brown skin tone women are not dateable for him because they just do not look good enough. According to him the women he dates must pass a "pool test," meaning the woman must look just as good as she did before she stepped into the pool and her hair should not be "nappy" when stepping out of the pool. He is also reported to say that he wanted nobody darker than him. Furthermore, the next day, after the interview, Young Berg made a public apology to all dark-skin women, claiming that he was sincerely remorseful. Also, he informed the public that his mother is a dark-skinned female.

However, rappers and their influence should not get all of the blame, due to the fact that L'Oreal cosmetics shot an ad with Beyonce. They attempted to darken her skin in the ad for Essence magazine, but lightened it in the ads for the mainstream magazine. Is it possible that L'Oreal darkened the ad for Essence magazine?

The originality of the entire issue within our African-American community, came from the William Lynch speech and letter. A slave owner of the West Indies declared that he discovered the "secret" to controlling enslaved Africans. This theory was an address delivered by Willie Lynch in Virginia 1712 regarding control of slaves within the colony. The letter informs other slave masters how to control slaves mentally by setting them against one another.

"I guarantee everyone of you that if installed correctly it will control the slaves for at least 300 years...

I use fear, distrust, and envy for control purposes. These methods have worked on my modest plantation in the West Indies, and it will work throughout the South... Take this simple little test of differences and think about them. On the top of my list is "Age", but it is there because it only starts with an "A"; the second is "Color" or shade; there is intelligence, size, sex, size of plantations, attitude of owners, whether the slaves live in the valley, on a hill, East, West, North, South, have fine or coarse hair, or is tall or short...

I shall assure you that distrust is stronger than trust, and envy is stronger than adulation, respect, or admiration. The black slave, after receiving this indoctrination, shall carry on and will become self refueling and self generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands...you must use the dark skinned slaves versus the light skinned slaves, and the light skinned slaves versus the dark skinned slaves," said Lynch.

Willie Lynch discovered that when the slaves worked together, they were very productive and successful, possibly more than other races. Consequently, he figured out a way to keep the slaves ignorant and mentally dysfunctional.

Today, an issue that black people probably struggle with is attempting to conceive "pretty light skinned or light-brown skinned babies." As a people, we should strive to improve our personal perceptions of our race. So that when we do have children, we can teach them to love themselves and embrace the race they originated from.