Melville Cooke

About two years ago, a woman was walking toward our daughters, both of whom were happily grinning and heading for the expected hug. The older one was in front, and the woman, a young, dark-skinned, uneducated but very crafty person, dismissed her with a neat side-step and nary a glance, continuing on to slobber over the younger.

In that situation the only discernible difference between them that could have accounted for the dramatically different treatment was complexion, the younger being the lighter.

I despised that woman in an instant at that instance with an intensity that has not dissipated, even though I know ignoring a darker skin and embracing a lighter one (literally or figuratively) is not specific to her.

Neither is it a practice of her own design, not in this island society where the relationships through race firmly established proximity to the crumbs from the big house and 'brown' is beautiful is reinforced through song and the social pages.

Feeling of revulsion

Still, I cannot help the feeling of revulsion I get when a black person shows their self-hatred through the way they butter up to the brownies (not the biscuits or the girls' organisation, mind you).

That feeling came when I was in second or third form at Munro College and the art teacher, a very dark-skinned man, would dote on the lighter-skinned boys in the class.

It came about three years ago at traffic court in St. Ann's Bay when a hawkish judge, in face and nature, after haranguing the steady flood of persons who appeared before her in a manner that would indicate driving without insurance is tantamount to terrorism, preened as she spoke to a very light-skinned offender. "How do you pronounce your name, sir?" she asked, smiling, her braces showing like fencing wire meant to keep bulls in or out.

The relationships through race show themselves in curious ways and when one colleague asked me years ago how come all the bright children are beautiful I thought about it for days. Not least of all, because I did not notice, in the first place, this combination of brains and beauty that would make the people who organise the Miss Jamaica World and Miss Jamaica Universe contests salivate.

And then I got it. She meant that most of the noticeably bright children who are actually noticed ('noticed' being an important distinction) are light-skinned. Talk about visibility.

Self-hatred

And, in a situation where self-hatred shows itself in black persons buttering and kissing up to the brownies while dismissing those of their complexion, the waveof bleaching is unsurprising. For is it not better to always have the headlight permanently on bright and be noticed, even as an oddity, than to stay dark and go unnoticed?

There is the funny side to the black buttering, though, and I always have a good laugh when I encounter men who will tolerate and even be happy with treatment from a 'browning' that would earn a woman with darker skin at best a verbal redress and at worst a slap or two.

So it was hard to hold back the chuckles when I was in the gas station at the intersection of Dunrobin Avenue and Constant Spring Road one night and two young men were discussing private affairs in that peculiar Jamaican public way.

"She have a personality deh," one said to the other. "Two o'clock in de mornin' she wake me up an sey 'I want Wrigleys. Now.' An' me haffi go fe it my yute." There was a pause before he added, with the subdued but still evident pride of prized ownership, "Is a browning." And his pal said, "Arright sah."

I hate self-hatred, but it does have its funny moments.