Everyone knows Gilbert Arenas as the guy who flucked up his professional basketball career, and now seems to have taken on a new occupation as a professional internet troll. If you’re not familiar with his antics, do a quick Google search.
Recently he’s made his way into headlines again for comments he made about dark-skinned women. It all started with an Instagram post made by a pro-black activist by the name of Rashidi Kweli (@ProBlkThought). He posted a message saying,
Dear Black Girl,
You don’t have to be mixed to be beautiful.
He followed that up with a caption saying, “Your African features are all you need for attractiveness.. Never tell yourself or let anyone tell you that in order to be attractive you must be mixed.”
Well Gilbert Arenas saw the post and hit the comment section to voice his opinion on the matter:
How black are we talking??? Not to be funny can you name a beautiful black woman on the outside…not brown skin…like Tyrese black…top 50 most beautiful women off all time…the darkest women they have is (Keisha knight Pullam aka Rudy) (gab)) union) (taral hicks) (Serena Williams)
He then goes on to further comment how actress Lupita Nyong’o (Twelve Years a Slave)
is “cute when the lights are off” and said “sorry, but ewww” when referring to model Ajuma Nasenyana’s looks.
Now you already know, that once the world caught a hold of these comments, Arenas immediately began to feel the flames. But while I personally find his comments ignorant and COMPLETELY untrue, I also personally find this to be a reality of 90% of black men.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m the last person that would carelessly view a
certain group of people as a monolith. I absolutely hate it when that sort of thing is done to black women. However from my personal EXPERIENCE, I have no choice but to hold on to my little 90% statistic.
Allow me to explain…
I would be what you consider “brown-skinned,” but I know all too well the color biases
that African American men hold against women of certain shades. I was taught implicitly as a young girl that my hair in its natural texture was “nappy” and had my first chemical relaxer when I was 4-years-old. I know what it feels like in adolescence to overhear a crush speak about how he only likes light-skinned girls. Shit, even now in my early twenties I still see it. How a group of men completely stop talking and just stare when a lighter skinned woman walks in the room. A guy could literally be talking to me, but his eyes are glued to the light-skinned woman walking by.
I know what some of you are thinking. I sound like I’m whining, but this shit is so much deeper than most black men seem to realize. Humans live for each other. Men do what they do for women, and women do what they do for men. So a man can claim he finds all shades beautiful all day, but if his actions say otherwise, it WILL create a complex. I can’t even imagine what darker-skinned women have to go through.
I frequent VladTV a lot because I find that it gives me realistic insight into what men think of what’s going on in popular culture. When the Arenas story came out, all of the men in the comment section were going in on him claiming that they find all women beautiful, blah, blah, blah. But none of them mentioned that they found the Lupita and Ajuma beautiful. They went on to refer to Bria Myles,
a woman whose body has been oversexualized time and time again.
Gilbert Arenas is right when he says that when most men think of beautiful dark-skinned women, they really are thinking of “brown-skinned” women. And if they do happen to find a truly dark-skinned woman attractive, her body will more than likely be sexualized in unrealistic proportions.
I have my bad days, but thank GOD that I am able to see myself as beautiful. But I’m not perfect. I will admit, that I feel like I have to keep a weave because my hair in its natural state
doesn’t make me as attractive as I can be, romantically and professionally.
I also thank the Lord that I grew up in a family that doesn’t try to drown out its genes like Gilbert Arenas tried to do when he got with his ex-fiance. He has two beautiful dark-skinned daughters who I’m pretty sure he resents deep-down. I feel sorry for those little girls. They will grow up and learn that their father does not think they are beautiful, and that will be so much more damaging than Gilbert Arenas will EVER be able to imagine.
Vanity Media 