From a Feministing discussion of the film Precious:
In the book, the description of Blue Rain, the half-messiah, half-educator that delivers Precious from the bondage of illiteracy and abuse is as follows: “She dark, got nice face, big eyes, and…long dreadlocky hair.” (39-40) This character in the movie is played by Paula Patton, a light-skinned African American woman with straightened hair. By no means do I doubt the talent of Patton, but it means something that the directors chose to cast one of the most central characters of the film against Sapphire’s original description.
I’ll never get why black women discriminate so strongly against light-skinned black women. This actress simply wasn’t black enough for this commentator because she didn’t have this or that trait expressed in the book. Apparently the director “wrote out” the character’s color and sexuality. It reminds me of a few bell hooks readings in college, one where she shunned the black students at Stanford as being too white, choosing to hang out with cleaning staff.
The second she talks about beauty standards and how black features are left out. In the class discussion I mentioned that Halle Berry, a black woman, was presently the People’s Sexiest person. But apparently she was too light-skinned and white-featured to exist as any counter-argument to the claim that society thinks black women are ugly (though admittedly the same ok cupid stats I cited yesterday say that black women are universally unlikely to be responded to while white men are universally preferred).
It is part of this whole authenticity thing that was lobbed at Barack Obama during the campaign…was he black enough for the black community given his white mother and his (mostly) white cultural upbringing. It is pretty clear that a good portion of African-Americans have white descendants, so playing this game seems pointless not to mention counter-productive.
I think it is part of a victim mentality. You get so used to crying out about prejudice and disadvantage that when something happens to contradict that mindset, you have to be creative to find a way to disassociate it and protect your claim of victimhood.
