I DO NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO THIS MUSIC
Over history, a list of smoke screens has been put over our people’s eyes to hide the true intentions of the other party. 13th amendment?… Smokescreen… Separate but equal clause?… Smokescreen… Blacks having rights that protect them?… Smokescreen… Let’s converse real quick on the fact that the light-skinned vs dark-skinned debate started during the era of slavery. Don’t believe me? Do you know about the Willie Lynch Theory? Let me give you a rundown on the topic real quick… Willie Lynch was a white man sought out by many slave plantation owners because they heard stories of a “secret” he had that was the key to controlling his slaves. He told them that the best way to control the slaves was to exploit their differences amongst each other (i.e. house vs field slave or light vs dark skin). With the slaves focus now on the differences amongst each other, the attention would be off the slave masters and would allow a smokescreen… Since that day, racist white men control continued to connive and set the slaves back even further…
Slaving in the baking sun for hours just
To see the master creep into the shack where your lady at
Nine months later got a baby, that’s
Not quite what you expected, but you
Refuse to neglect it, ’cause you
Know your wifey loves you, thus you refuse to accept it
That’s the type of shit that turned my granny light-skinned
Listen to these lines in the third verse of the song above… Cole speaks about the sad reality of husbands being “forced” to accept the rape of their wives and the fact that she will birth a light-skinned baby. The husband knows that his wife loves him, but at the same time he’s suffering from having to accept a baby from a man that enslaves his family and raped his wife. On the other side of the scale, the wife knows that if she fights back and refuses to have sex with the master then she will die or her family will die as the consequence for her actions, so what really is the best option? What if the white man ripped wives from their husbands and families apart with the intention of creating this hate amongst each other? I mean it’s not something that we could control and put a stop to per se… They systematically placed hate in our hearts for our own kind because of how we were created. Once again a smokescreen is placed in front of our eyes and has caused us to divide apart rather than come together and stand as one. We have seen several ways of not only the white man but also the white woman tearing families apart. Remember when Emmett Till was brutally killed for “whistling” at a white lady at a convenience store? Comes to find out, on the woman that accused him death bed she admitted that Till never whistled at her. In fact, she said regarding her allegations of Till grabbing her, being threatening, and sexually vulgar towards her, “that part is not true.” This only further proves how the word of a white man, let along a white woman was law at this time. Even when all the facts pointed towards the truth, injustice was still served on behalf of the African American on trial.
Growing up African Americans of a lighter skin tone tended to be more on display than those of the darker shades. Remember the first Claire on My Wife and Kids getting replaced with the lighter and dingier Claire? Or the most controversial of them all, when dark Aunt Viv was switched from smart and clever Aunt Viv to can’t ever leave the house and have more than 3 lines and light-skinned Aunt Viv… It was like the people in power were obsessed with the fascination behind light-skinned African Americans and putting them on display, huh? Even in commercials, we would normally see a lighter shade of African American families rather than a darker shade family. To add whenever it was a darker shade family they always had to have some type of struggle attached to their character development like being “ghetto”, isn’t that something? They created a subconscious hatred in our heads by constantly advertising different switches from dark to light characters. This only makes us fall further into their trick because we feel we are are the cause of our own downfall… Smokescreen.
How you were born into this world is not your fault, but how you die in this world is a reflection of all the decisions you made in your life. From the brightest to the darkest shade, there is no creation more beautiful than a black woman. The sparkle from the glow of their skin being touched by the radiant sun to the smell of their hair after wash day, the black woman will always be undefeated and held at the highest standard in my eyes. David Banner said you can tell the true essence of a man by how he treats his woman. If you can’t treat the woman you lay your head next to at night with the best respect and care, then how could we expect your intentions with any other human to be any different? We must love one another because we are all one. No matter the color, in the era of slavery if you were to have one drop of black blood in your DNA you were characterized to be a Negro. In that same connotation, we must realize since we are all one there is no need to allow smokescreens to blind us from the real issues in America. We can’t keep fighting each other and the man. The day we become one and show love to one another we will see the change in our lives. “Be the change that you wish to see in the world…”
-BruceG
References
https://genius.com/Kendrick-lamar-complexion-a-zulu-love-lyrics