I Th-ought Black Was Ugly
Telling on myself as a black woman.
That “Th-ought” is very deliberate. It is a work in progress to peel off layers and continue to find more biases.
First, thank heavens for the internet.
I am African. I grew up in Africa and until we got the internet- I like many of my folks was indoctrinated to hate everything about us right here on African soil.
- Our mother tongue is ugly.
We hate to speak our mother tongue in school. English is the language of the cool and polished. Our mother tongue is vernacular.
Until I knew the meaning, I thought vernacular was a dirty, unlearned unschooled group of people. Honest.
Many of my peers will straight up ignore you if you spoke our mother tongue to them or in their circle. We abhorred it so much, we pretended to not understand it. I remember a senior pestering me-
“How do you say you don’t speak Igbo language when your name is Igbo?”
I kept lying. “I understand”, I told her. “I just don’t speak it”
“At all?”
“At all” I confirmed.
“Can you say, cup in Igbo?” She implored.
“Iko” Tired of being pestered, I answered swiftly.
She damn well fell on her ass laughing. “Iko was not just a common name for many Igbo speakers. It was so deep into the heart of Igbo language, we both knew I was lying my ass off.
I stuck on though to my lies.
Pathetic.
Even more pathetic was when I pretended to be too English to hear my grandmother.
Pathetic.
Ever heard of “mother tongue interference?” A fancy shaming phrase many of our teachers and later, peers, devised to insult and degrade each other for our accents as NON-native speakers of the colonizer's language.
- Our skin is definitely ugly.
“According to the World Health Organisation in 2018, 77% of Nigerian women use skin lightening products which is the world’s highest percentage”
No one from my country is ever “naturally dark”. We blame the sun- so we gotta bleach off that black.
We blame aging- gotta bleach it off.
We blame stress- got to go, got to go, black.
There are legit, people here, who are so bleached that their veins are dark purple- looking so bruised and ugly. The knuckles are black or purple too.
All over social media, there is a clarion call to “get this (thousands of money) product and “return to your natural white”. I am Nigerian. Natural and white as a skin colour, do not belong in the same sentence. (And yes, I am aware of the beautifully white-skinned albinos.)
READ: “5 Pains to Use as Writing Inspiration”.
- Our names are ugly
When I got into my secondary school, many folks would not believe me- “You don’t have an English name?”
No. I don’t. Never have. Never did. Never will.
They will try to trip me:
“Okay, which English name will you choose if you were to choose?”
Never thought about that until they asked.
In my country today I hear- “Brian”. Brian? Brian who? Brian Okeke. Brian, what is Brian? Brian, can your grandmother pronounce Brian? Brian, what is the cultural linkage of this your name? I am not saying you should not have an English name but Brian? I can understand- Victor, Lily, Oliver, and the like but Brian? Liam? In my country? How?
Sorry- the questions are for Brian’s mother and father who also struggle to correctly pronounce Brian. I mean, can you Brian like the American? Can Brian’s African classmates Brian like Americans? In fact, can Brian surrounded by our vernacular speakers pronounce his name correctly?
I can roll my eyes to the high heavens all I can but Brian is here to stay.
Everyone wants to “Americanize” their name. We want to be as far away from our black that we are daily killing off our footprints.
Every local name given has to have a shorter English version otherwise we “D-J” (abbreviate) it.
What a shame.
READ: (West) African Traditional Marriage is Glorious
- And yes, our gods are ugly and dead because they are not the Gods of the whites we adore now.
I was shocked when I traveled to India to find their proud displays, homage, and worship of their non-white people's gods. In fact, people go to India to find spiritual meaning.
I am a Christian but I am still baffled at how we rejected our gods so terribly that we ‘bind’ and ‘cast’ anyone who associates themselves with our traditional gods for whom many towns and villages claim their existence was because of their valor during wars and plagues.
Now- damn ye, gods! Indeed, gods need humans to endure. Sadly, like everything else black, we have decided our gods too are ugly and to be done away with.
The internet taught me to rethink my deep-rooted hatred and disregard of Black.
Why is black ugly? We were sold on a lie- the colonizer's lie. That was the burden of the colonizer- to teach us how to think what they wanted us to think.
It has been years and years and years since then.
The burden isn’t on the colonizer anymore. The burden is on me/us- to rethink why my foundation and composition are not good enough. The burden is on me/us, to reject the lies and ignorance sold.
Black is beautiful through and through. I remember Gladys Casely-Hayford’s beautiful poem that I always recite from memory:
Rejoice and shout with laughter
Throw all your burdens down
If God has been so gracious
As to make you black or brown.
(I will stop here as I do not know if it is permissible to quote a full-length poem of anyone’s without permission).
What a beauty…what a privilege to be black and beautiful.
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