Why do we describe ourselves in candy and desserts?

Chocolate, cinnamon, butter pecan, caramel...

I think that Black people use so many skin color descriptors because while we typically don't have the variation in hair and eye color that white people have, we have a greater variance in skin color than any other group of people in the planet. Hence, the "she was a caramel cutie; he was a dark chocolate brother". I don't see anything wrong with that, and I think the differences should be celebrated.

Unfortunately, I know they aren't and are the cause of contention.

How? Well, my closest friends since middle school have been light skinned (two of my closest/oldest girlfriends have the light skin/non-brown eyes combo). My family is from Louisiana and looks as one would expect a family with generations of Louisiana heritage to look. I've got aunties that could pass but would slap you if you called them anything other than Black and uncles that look about like Wesley Snipes would if he took a two week vacay in the DR. I am a dark-skinned woman with African features, but my daughter caught all the white genes that went unexpressed in me. LOL

Anyway, in my own family I have seen grown ass women make light skinned children cry by calling them "white" or "daddy's maybe" behind some tricky recessive genes. What is stranger is that I have heard LIGHT SKINNED WOMEN do this to LIGHT SKINNED CHILDREN. The self-hate we have as a people is strong.

Newsflash, sisters: light, bright, damn near white is still 100% Black in many families. Hating light skin is STILL self hate!!

Then again, if one more person uses the phrase "good hair" around my baby or jokes that she is not my ex's child, I will smack them. Favoring one sort of hair or skin color over another--well, to me, that's self hate, too.

Black people need to learn to appreciate the full spectrum of "us".

A year or so into our friendship, one of my light skinned, blue-eyed girlfriends told me that I was one of the first dark skinned women she had been friends with, and that she had lots of poor experiences with dark skinned girls growing up. The typical. The girls that should have been her sisters had called her names, cut her hair and made it known that she "wasn't cute" a few times too many.

Today, this girl will go to town on how Black people hate themselves and are a confused people and etc. I KNOW she feels so strongly because of experiences like these. And it is sad that despite the fact that I have never had ANYBODY speak disparagingly about me because of my skin color (I've never so much been told that I am "pretty for a dark skinned woman"), I am inclined to agree.

I grew up with a light skinned sister and my father always reinforced that we were both beautiful effortlessly. It never seemed forced or as though he was trying to teach us a lesson. I spent my formative years in an Afrocentric school wherein I loved my very light skinned, green-eyed principal every bit as much as I loved my very dark-skinned 1st and 2nd grade teachers. They loved me too. They never played favorites with those of us of a certain color. We were all praised as smart, beautiful children. They were convincing enough in their praise that we believed them. This multihued circle of love (hehe...corny) is what I accredit to my own self-security.

This weekend, I was teaching my daughter the color brown. Her puppy is brown. The chair is brown. Her skin is brown. And, as she pointed out, "Mommy brown, too!!" It would be nice if things were that simple. But they aren't. She'll notice the good hair/light skinned comments soon enough. That's life. But, we have to accept and celebrate the differences in skin color, eye color and hair texture so that more children can grow up feeling okay with themselves.