I believe that the black community has issues within itself that we must fix, and I think we need to love each other more before we can realistically think that outsiders will respect us. Do we deserve respect? Absolutely. Will we obtain respect without first respecting ourselves? Absolutely not. I look at the black race the same I look at women, being a black woman I think gives me the opportunity to see our situation this way, if a woman does not respect herself first how will she expect a man to respect her? In the same token, if we do not respect and love ourselves as a race how can we expect outsiders (white people) to, especially if they’ve shown us little but mostly no respect throughout history. So here are just four things I think the black community should stop doing in order to progress as a race, in order to show each other more respect within our race, so that we may demand respect from outsiders.
**1. Marginalize one another based on skin tone**
Black people continue to marginalize one another by the color of our skin. Light skin vs. dark skin: It’s almost as if the two have become their own races. But the shades of black people vary so much there is no way to marginalize our whole people into two groups. Light skin people tend to earn positive attributes based on the lightness of their skin while dark skin people get stuck with the negative. Does anyone see that we are perpetualizing the slavers idea of light skin blacks vs. dark skin blacks, house slaves vs. field slaves. They told us that there was a difference between the two; they told us it was better to be lighter than to be darker, and we continue to marginalize ourselves based on the racist white slavers scale.
**2. Criticize people for sounding “white”**
Too often as a child, I was criticized for sounding “white.” I never really knew what sounding white meant until I got older. Sounding “white” only means that you sound educated. This is not to say that people who do not speak in this way are not educated, but typically if someone says you sound white, that is what they mean. People who sound “white” typically use advanced vocabulary in casual conversation and speak at a fast pace with concise diction.
Throughout the years, I separated the way I speak to black people and the way I speak at school and to white people in order to avoid someone telling me that I sound “white.” But as an older adolescent, I realized that I was removing elevated language, adding slang and even changing the sound or accent of my voice to fit in. In a lot of instances, I felt using this way of speaking won me a lot of friends that I wouldn’t have been able to connect with otherwise, but why do I and other black people have to go so far only to fit in and not “sound white.”
**3. Oversexualizing black women**
Black people tend to complain that our women are being oversexualized by other races, for we are seen as a sexual commodity and fantasy. But I believe other races are not at fault for this notion, because we do it to ourselves. Our culture is full of rap and R&B music that oversexualizes black women mainly in mass media publications like songs, music videos and magazine covers.
I truly believe black culture is the only authentically American culture the U.S. has, which poses other races to consume it at a ridiculous rate. Other people pull from these publications and form their opinions about us. So when a white male turns on the television and hears a black man talking about booty and tits, along with the oversexualized images of black women on the screen — what is he supposed to think about our women? He definitely won’t be thinking about how smart they are.
**4. Believing the only way for our boys to be men is for them to be “thugs”**
Black people, particularly black boys, believe that the only way for them to prove they are men is for them to be “thugs.” Maybe not thugs in the literal sense, but from an early age our boys are taught not to cry or show unnecessary emotion. I’ve seen toddlers refuse to kiss their mothers because they’re “men now.” I don’t want to pretend that black people are the only people with these issues (society itself has to stop forcing gender stereotypes on our young boys), but I see it as a major problem in the black community.
Pay attention to the children you see on social media. It’s seen as cute for small black boys to claim that they are thugs or to even pose as “players”; they take videos flexing their muscles; yelling “I’m a thug”; scrunching up their faces to resemble a gang-bangers facial expression; and dancing to sexual music portraying themselves as sex objects, all before they turn five. We need to stop teaching our boys that in order to be men, they have to be emotional thugs, and we should work on sheltering them so they do not continue to believe that “thug” is their only option.