

We espouse 'black is beautiful', but the true image of blackness is ugly - wozniacki
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/09/i-hate-being-a-black-man

======
daviddaviddavid
(disclosure: black guy here)

I applaud the author for voicing a perspective that rarely sees the light of
day. Here are a couple thoughts I had while reading this article:

1\. The term "self-hatred" always begs elaboration w.r.t. _why_ one hates
oneself. The hatred can come from internalizing perceptions of ugliness,
criminality, dirtiness, etc. These are all very different things and making
general statements about an underspecified self-hatred will lead to
confusions.

2\. Related to the above point, self-hatred is often talked about from a
female perspective because what's being talked about is self-hatred stemming
from internalizing a sense of female beauty that is at odds with blackness.

3\. Likewise, self-hatred (of the ugliness variety) is almost never talked
about from a male perspective because many aspects of black maleness _do_
cohere with general perceptions of male beauty (and this despite the fact that
black males are still horribly underrepresented on fashion runways).

4\. Self-hatred of the criminality sort is very complex and has to do with a
number of factors, among which are darkness of skin, body size, clothing,
dialect, loudness of voice, gait, body-language, facial features, etc. I
personally am of medium complexion, am 5'6" with a slight build and if you
spoke to me on the phone you would certainly think I was white. In my entire
life I have _never_ thought that someone chose not to sit next to me because I
am a black male. My guess is that body size and darkness of skin and facial
features are the determining factors in the difference between myself and the
author (basically, I look much less like the prototypical scary black guy than
the author).

5\. The psychology of "disgust" is very interesting and depressing. The idea
that people are viscerally repulsed by others and that the object of disgust
could internalize subject's feelings is fascinating. This is something that
isn't specific to hatred of blacks, of course. Jews and gays come to mind as
other groups on the receiving end of this feeling. I've never felt a sense of
self-disgust regarding my race.

~~~
__pThrow
I don't know what it's like being black, and I am not trying to diminish your
feelings or the author's on this, and thank you for acknowledging how Jews and
gays feel.

    
    
      I am Jewish.
      I am an older programmer
      I am older
      I am short
    
      I am slightly disabled (not enough to be disabled, but enough
      to make exercise problematic, programming difficult)
    
      I am overweight (see above)
      I am divorced
    
      I have lost my kids, and I will state their mother turned them
        against me, and as I say that, I can feel the thoughts of so
        many people blaming me and labeling me, but if someone only
        knew
    
      (I am thus an older bitter white male one of the few people the
        media and feminists can eagerly pile on and criticize and yes
        literally tell us we should feel criminal about (don't be that
        guy campaigns)).
    
      I am mostly unemployed these days.
      I had thought once I would be successful now I am 
        the furthest thing from successful
      I worry friends and relatives will see through this throwaway.
    
    

A ton of other issues as well.

My sense of why I hate myself: what a total colossal failure in every realm:
family, work, social. The family part really hurts.

Not sure whether I will click [reply] or [<-]

~~~
daviddaviddavid
I sincerely thank you for hitting [reply].

------
deckiedan
No doubt, there is still a huge amount of latent racism and bigotry around,
and I think it will take a few generations more at least before racism is
truly as past-tense as we would hope. I could be wrong, and I apologise in
advance if this is taken the wrong way, but I get the feeling it's a lot worse
in the Americas than in the UK, at least, but I have come across gross racism
in every corner of the world I've been to. In the Mediterranean, there's huge
stereotyping of non-locals. I grew up in Cyprus, and was shocked at times by
the attitudes towards (for instance) Filipinos and Russians.

However, one thing I've found, myself, as a white British male, living now in
the UK, in the north in a not especially multicultural city (alas!), is that
just being a fairly tall young man in general is a scary thing for others. If
I sit down on a bus, generally the only others who would chose to sit next to
me are other men. If I sit down next to a woman, they instinctively turn away.
Chances are that they're wondering if I sat next to them because I think
they're hot, as that's the ONLY image the media presents of men. Shallow,
sexist, misogynistic, egocentric pornography-reading adolescents who refuse to
grow up. (My description is of how I perceive the typical media representation
of men, not how I actually perceive us as a gender - as if a whole gender
could possibly fit into one description!)

Mike Moore made a joke of it, in his "Stupid White Men" book, but there is a
truth to the thought that pretty much all of the big league institutional
wrongdoing that's been done in the world for quite a while now has been done
either by, or for, white men (The Khmer Rouge and LRA being notable
exceptions). In no particular order: The crusades, the Native American &
Australian massacres and other atrocities, Apartheid and all the European
invasions and selling into slavery of Africans before that, Nazism & both
World Wars, all the recent banking scandals, the KKK, the America/Vietnam war,
European/USSR communism, the invasions of Iraq & Afghanistan, the IRA and
sectarian violence in Ireland, virtually every ecological disaster of the last
200 years, the insane official racial segregation in the USA up until less
than a generation ago, multinationals polluting water sources of villages in
India for commercial gain, destroying whole islands in Thailand and Malaysia
to obtain minerals, the whole concept of "sex-tourism" and all the slavery,
prostitution & poverty that come from that - and so on.

The whole concept of 'white-guilt' certainly has plenty of food for
ammunition, and it doesn't take much for white men to get a pretty messed up
complex about all this too.

We, as humans, have really shitty stereotypes of each other. Since we live in
a media saturated environment, we do tend to get both bad self-images, and
images of others from that. We desperately need good /real/ relationships with
others to actually realise we're all pretty messed up, and all have the
capacity for overwhelming generosity and love, and at the same time soul-
crushing evil. It's the human condition.

All that said, I'm really sad that the OP has this experience in his city, and
pray for the day when people don't find their self-image, or image of others
in what colour their skin or hair or height, weight, sexuality, religion,
shape, size, or cultural/racial background is, but instead are free in
themselves, and in their society, to define themselves by what they choose to
be.

I think I just wrote more than I intended...

------
mrng
I remember Tim Russ ("Tuvok") describing his encounter with Avery Brooks
("Sisko"); Tim said Avery was "physically intimidating"; Tim is no skinny-
fairy, either - but one can easily see that, besides cultural hangups, a
physically imposing body plus a certain assertive attitude generates the same
reaction around you.

------
RazvanPanda
Similar story, Angel Densetsu: [http://www.mangareader.net/178/angel-
densetsu.html](http://www.mangareader.net/178/angel-densetsu.html)

"The story is of Kitano Seiichirou, a very kind and pure-hearted young man,
with a horrifying, monstrous face. People being what they are, they think he's
a terrifying delinquent, and there are plenty of chance misunderstandings
(coupled with Kitano's convenient inability to understand what's happening
around him) that propel him into the position of &quot;school guardian&quot;,
a.k.a. head thug on campus"

------
wozniacki
Some context and elaboration:

CNN's Don Lemon talks with a columnist ( Orville Lloyd Douglas )who wrote
about his hatred for the color of his own skin.

Full video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DujnL7w5ic4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DujnL7w5ic4)

Shorter version:

[http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2013/11/17/...](http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2013/11/17/nr-
lemon-being-black.cnn.html)

Edit: Fuller video added.

------
davidsmith8900
\- Im still trying to figure out why people care about how other people feel
about them.

~~~
RougeFemme
If you live in isolation or aren't a member of a group that is perceived
negatively by a significant number of people, it's very easy to _NOT_ care.
It's a lot harder when how people feel about you affects you - _every day_ \-
in your ability to get/maintain a job, get promoted at that job, buy/rent a
dwelling, finance a business, enter a restaurant/elevator/bus without causing
a ripple. . .

