I guess as the title says, have you?
As a kid, I had noticed that there really weren't many dark-skinned black males on TV, so I vaguely knew of the whole light-skin vs. dark-skin thing. I even noticed that my sister was a little lighter than me, but whenever I asked my mom about it, she'd hush me real quick.
It wasn't until my late teens that I really experienced up-front racism. I had some girlfriends (white gals) who all had a parent or two who was racist. One of them refused to meet me, though the other parent decided to finally meet me and turned out he actually liked me. Go figure. Anyway, at that point, I had never experienced up-front racism to my face. Then a group of black kids around my age and older decided to mock my skin tone, calling me midnight black, dark, and anything else you could think of.
I guess, I had always felt inferior to a degree among other black people, but damn did having insults from members of my own race just make that worse. To this day, I still don't feel 100% comfortable around black people I don't already know because I feel like I don't fit in.
As a kid, I had noticed that there really weren't many dark-skinned black males on TV, so I vaguely knew of the whole light-skin vs. dark-skin thing. I even noticed that my sister was a little lighter than me, but whenever I asked my mom about it, she'd hush me real quick.
It wasn't until my late teens that I really experienced up-front racism. I had some girlfriends (white gals) who all had a parent or two who was racist. One of them refused to meet me, though the other parent decided to finally meet me and turned out he actually liked me. Go figure. Anyway, at that point, I had never experienced up-front racism to my face. Then a group of black kids around my age and older decided to mock my skin tone, calling me midnight black, dark, and anything else you could think of.
I guess, I had always felt inferior to a degree among other black people, but damn did having insults from members of my own race just make that worse. To this day, I still don't feel 100% comfortable around black people I don't already know because I feel like I don't fit in.