After seeing so many post over the past week or so concerning Black women and “good hair” and beauty, I decide to post this from The Pawn Queen.
A chapter from The Pawn Queen
This thought pattern was the direct result of the first interracial children being born to the raped slave woman during slavery. During slavery the interracial children that the slave master or his wife allowed to live were considered to be better looking than the children of two slave parents. The slave master would sometimes even allow the child to have better clothing, food, and an education. These were things expressly denied to the other dark skinned “bad hair” kids of the slaves.
As the interracial slave child grew older, as any child would have, she would recognize the difference in treatment as did the other slave children. The child of two slave parents would then be ridiculed and called names by the interracial kids because they would here these names being used by the master toward the full African slaves and their children but they would hardly ever if ever be hurled toward them. So in their psyche they deduced that the way they looked was good and the way the other slave looked was ugly. And we all know how real children can be.
“This is the same attitude that they were taught by their mothers and their mothers were taught by their mothers and so on. So as you can see if the wrong reasoning was adopted during slavery and it was passed on to their children who then passed it on to their children, you can see how we end up where we are today.”
This became a major problem in the female slave child because women are constantly in need of affirmation of their beauty by those who they love or those who love them. It’s an archetypal thought that has developed throughout the ages as the most attractive women were the ones that the men of early tribes wanted as mates. Women have always been chosen as opposed to doing the choosing. So as this developed over time a female child would inherently have these same thoughts growing up. Then the father of said child would reinforce this thought by constantly telling her she is beautiful so as she gets older this is what she will come to expect from a man. The father did this so that she would have self worth and confidence in herself and her beauty. Without a father or father figure in her life a woman will search for a male that gives her confidence and assure her of her beauty.