BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Mar 14 - 08:10 PM

Damn, Greg, you beat me to it.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Greg F.
Date: 28 Mar 14 - 08:05 PM

"improve" Q? You mean get rid of them nigger attributes?

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Mar 14 - 01:40 PM

The urge to improve one's appearance and acceptability, from make-up preparations and conforming dress to surgery, is wide-spread in society, but human foibles do not traitors make.

I deplore the attempt to relate expressions such as "lighten up" to racism.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 27 Mar 14 - 07:23 PM

Q. I feel very vindicated by your view. It's what people used to say about Irish jokes, Paki jokes and nigger jokes. Maybe you still do.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Mar 14 - 07:20 PM

G-Force: I think the 'brown-ness' is a class thing rather; from the time that only the lower classes were suntanned as they had to work in the open, so he rejects her as being socially beneath him. What I love about that ballad is the way that, when he changes his mind & tells her he will die for love if she doesn't return to him after all, she replies that when he does her mourning will take the form of dancing on his grave. LoL & Goody for her!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 27 Mar 14 - 07:11 PM

Richard should lighten up.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 27 Mar 14 - 09:10 AM

Do Big tattoos count?

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: G-Force
Date: 27 Mar 14 - 07:54 AM

Coming back to 'The Brown Girl', I always assumed it meant a brown-haired girl, not a brown-skinned girl. Rather like the modern French un homme brun meaning a brown-haired man. Or am I wrong as usual?

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 27 Mar 14 - 04:14 AM

Hahahahaha Bert! The Tar Baby! I remember that from a reading series in my Infant School. Wasn't it something to do with Brer Rabbit? I also remember a very early TV advert for Esso petrol (gas) which had a catchy tune, "The Esso sign means happy motoring..." Every chorus was sung by a cartoon character from various countries (rather non-PC nowadays, but charming just the same.) The Chinese character sang, "Velly happy motoling" and the black one, with fruit hanging from her ears, "De Esso sahn mean very heppy motoring" (presumably how black people in USA spoke in those days.) Talk about racial stereotyping! But we felt only intense interest and a wish to actually meet one of these foreign and exotic people. My husband calls it 'going to see the giraffe', as if they're exhibits in a zoo. He calls himself 'the village giraffe' sometimes, but only in fun. Bit of thread drift, but it does show that racial differences can be interesting in a perfectly innocent and nice way, and to change everyone into the same colour and shape would be terribly boring!

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Bert
Date: 27 Mar 14 - 12:48 AM

Lovely story Eliza.

Reminds me of a story that my wife tells of when her son was a toddler and saw a black baby in a nearby shopping cart and said (loudly of course) "Look Mom, a REAL TAR BABY". She beat a hasty retreat down the next aisle.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Greg F.
Date: 26 Mar 14 - 07:04 PM

Just givin' you a little jab, Eliza- no big deal.

This whole business is one example of why I get pissed off when folks tell me that the U. S. isn't a racist society.

Be well-

Greg

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 26 Mar 14 - 06:25 PM

I'm so sorry, Greg F. I should indeed have addressed my agreement to you. I wonder if Richard will explain his 'omicron' question?
Bert, it was about the same time that I saw my first black man. It was on a trolley-bus passing through Southall on our way to Ealing. The Woolf rubber factory had, I think, encouraged black men over to work there. I was quite small and delighted to see this man get on the bus. Unfortunately I shrieked out, "Mummy look! A chimney sweep is on our bus!" My mother nearly sank through the floor with utter shame, but I can still remember the gorgeous smile and dazzlingly white teeth of the chap, and hear his deep chuckle. And now I've been married for many years to a black man with just the same smile!

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Greg F.
Date: 26 Mar 14 - 03:45 PM

I don't recall having changed my name ro Richard, Eliza.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Bert
Date: 26 Mar 14 - 01:53 PM

I remember the first time that I saw a black man. In England, about 1946, just after the war. Dad said to us "Don't stare, he's just an ordinary man with different colored skin".

So I have never understood why people are prejudiced.

Unfortunately that is the way that OTHER people behave, like ignorant jerks.

Now, because this society of ignorant jerks have forced their erroneous beliefs on society, the victims of their ignorance feel that they have to respond and try to fit in.

Now, along come other ignorant jerks, and blame the victims for their behavior.

I am not religious, but I recall that someone once said "Love thy neighbor".

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 26 Mar 14 - 01:43 PM

I'm ashamed to say that I think you're right Richard. White racist dominant colonials set these mad 'benchmarks' for appearance, and even nowadays nothing's changed all that much.
An omicron is an 'o', but what is a rough, and how can it breathe? Would you please explain!

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 Mar 14 - 01:32 PM

Shouldn't there be a rough breathing over the omicron?

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Greg F.
Date: 26 Mar 14 - 01:28 PM

in the eyes of whom, may I ask?

Easy-peasy. In the eyes of dominant White culture and the legacy of colonialism and racism it exercised/exercises world-wide.

Next question.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 26 Mar 14 - 01:17 PM

My heart ached for poor Michael Jackson. He was a perfectly normal, attractive young African-American at first, but he felt the need to alter his face so much it became monstrous. And my husband told me this morning that you often see women in Ivory Coast with huge patches of skin disorders on their faces, arms and shoulders; yellow, white, black, even grey, powdery or weeping, as a result of the strong 'whitening' stuff they plaster on. I've heard that beautiful Asian women pay for an operation to make their eyes 'round' and not almond-shaped. It's all perfectly sick, and all just to be 'acceptable' - in the eyes of whom, may I ask?

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Mar 14 - 09:40 AM

BTW, Richard, going back, slow-burnwise, to your reply to me back a bit,

--"The traditional songs you mention, MtheGM, are about, I think, discrimination against Romanies" --

I think not. The point of Child #73 is that "The Brown Girl, she has house & land; Fair Elinor, she has none". Romanies do not have "house & land".

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 02:33 PM

That's mighty white of you to post this, Richard. If this Dencia woman ceases and desists from such backwards thinking, she will be a credit to her race.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 02:22 PM

You're very kind Michael. No, I wouldn't really whack him, tee hee. But it's true that the hoi polloi are used as a standard from which richer folk like to distance themselves in appearance, speech and fashion. And I agree Guest, all this Botox, boob jobs and liposuction are part of the same 'syndrome' of people lacking self-confidence and the bullying that goes on when someone is perceived as 'different'. I don't know how one can convince people that they're fine just as they are. It takes a lot of courage to tell the critics to 'go and boil their heads', but that's what's needed.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 02:07 PM

This sort of idiocy is not a new phenomenon, of course. Always gone on -- see Wikipedia article on "Shadism", esp refs to toxic use of white lead by upper classes in C17, to differentiate themselves even further from οἱ πολλοί who had to work outside.

Eliza, I do not believe lovely you would hit your lovely husband on the head with the frying pan in any circumstances. You have been listening to too many calypsos! Still, I am sure your wishes will prevail in this particular even so, as he is obviously a man of very good sense anyhow.


~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 01:57 PM

The same sort of thing happens with liposuction, botox, various enlargements like lips, boobs, etc. The malaise is general and not limited to people of colour. We should have turned off our TVs sixty years ago and left them off.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 01:56 PM

All my husband's many sisters and female cousins lighten their very dark skin with horrible products that smell disgusting. They all look a kind of yellowish, sickly shade of yuk. They're all without exception extremely beautiful, but most Ivorian women apparently do this, and on a crowded bus the smell is over-powering. I asked why, and they appear to think that white skin is infinitely preferable because white people are superior to black (!!) They also plaster their hair with straightening products which eventually make them go half bald. It maddens me to the point of grinding my teeth. I'd give anything to be jet black like them with elegant features, huge expressive eyes and beautiful raven-black curly hair. Even my husband's mother, who's very, very old now, is beautiful. (She doesn't use these products thank goodness.) I suspect they've been brainwashed by Colonial influences (in Cote d'Ivoire, it's the French) to feel inferior and 'primitive', (More teeth grinding by me) I've warned my handsome husband that if he ever, ever did anything like this to change his African looks, I'd hit him over the head with a frying pan.
It's up to black 'stars' and popular singers to reverse this stupid trend. Black (or any race one is born with) is beautiful. Leave yourself alone and be proud!

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 12:52 PM

Developed with a "Swiss dermatologist," Dencia's product does not contain hydroquinone (a part of most lightening products), mercury or steroids, she told Ebony Magazine.
However, there are some reports of skin rashes.

She has sold 20,000 units at $160 a pop; a real money maker!

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 12:39 PM

According to the World Health organization, 77 percent of Nigerian women lighten their skin, the highest percentage in the world.
It helps with upward mobility.
Look at Ghanian-Nigerian films. The female leads are lighter-skinned.

I suggest that you read the reports of the WHO. A better line of attack is to condemn the use of toxic materials in some skin-lighteners, especially mercury salts. (httpc.www.who.int.ipcs/assessment/public_health/mercury_flyer.pdf)

Dencia, with her line of cosmetics, including her skin-lightener, is merely tapping a lucrative market.

One may regard the practice as deplorable, but it is a fact that millions practice it. Calling a practitioner a traitor to her race and heritage is tabloid overstatement.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Bert
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 11:32 AM

Right you are ~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Will Fly
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 10:49 AM

The issues relating to body perception and image in social groups - including ethnic groups - are complex, and I don't think you're qualified, Richard, to pronounce on them. As Michael said, I find your attitude a tad patronising as well.

I can't even begin to imagine the social pressures on people who desperately feel the need to change themselves physically in a belief that it makes them more desirable or better placed to get ahead in society - and Dencia, whatever you say - is working within those mindsets. Who knows what pressures have been placed on her during her life to think this way.

You're highlighting a self-loathing (as you call it) that leads to black-on-black prejudice about skin colour but, at a more general level, this wish to conform to a perceived role model or more "acceptable" stereotype has been endemic for generations in both black and white society. I feel very sorry for anyone who feels they have to change their appearance in order to feel more acceptable to the world at large - and this might be applied to all races and segments of society at different times. Skin colour, hair, breast size, excess fat, etc., are all typical factors in this.

Leave the issue of skin colour and take, for example, the issue of hair style. For years black people in this country and in America have been using hair products which take the crinkle out of curly hair. There's a hairdresser's in Brighton (owned and run by a black Jamaican woman at the moment advertising this very service. What's inherently "wrong" with crinkly hair? Well, it doesn't take a PhD in social science to guess the answer that black people might give. Is the woman who runs this salon a "race traitor" in your view? Why do some black people wear straight wigs...? Why did white kids once have a vogue for Afro haircuts? Why do women use Botox? Why do white people often value a tanned, bronzed body?

It's a phenomenon which is as old as the hills - and a very, very sad one, in my view. I don't believe anyone should have to change themselves physically to feel happy and comfortable with themselves. But tell that to Joan Collins, Mae West, Dencia, Dolly Parton and millions of others. To single out one black woman and call her a race traitor from the benefit of your high horse is simplistic.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 10:36 AM

Laws don't usually initially work entirely of themselves in such matters; but can be of service as a formal pronouncement of public disapproval of some attitudes. And they are, of course, not incompatible with the love & kindness Bert recommends, but can be complementary to it. The l&k and the Laws are by no means mutually exclusive concepts. Both have their part to play.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Bert
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 09:43 AM

Well said Keith. Which post? All of yours.

Laws won't make a difference. Love and kindness will eventually work, so keep giving it; it will be a long hard road.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 08:55 AM

Huffington Post, October last year.

A campaign challenging prejudices against skin colour in India is gathering pace.

Dark is Beautiful seeks to redress the hierarchy of skin tone in India's social caste system and eventually halt the sale of controversial skin lightening products.

Actress Nandita Das is a poster girl for the campaign and tells AFP: "Magazines, TV, cinema, everywhere being fair is synonymous with being beautiful.


"I started getting tonnes of emails from young women pouring their heart out about how they were discriminated against.

"Some wanted to commit suicide because they couldn't be fair."

In India Dalits, formerly known as the Untouchables, tend to have darker skin, are said to be the bottom of the social hierarchy and are often ostracised and forced into menial jobs.

SEE ALSO: •Vagina 'Brightener': Indian Feminine Hygiene Product Promises To Make Genitals 'Many Shades Fairer'
•Vagina Whitener Hits Thai Beauty Market (VIDEO)

The fair-skinned Brahmins are generally considered to be the highest caste group, although laws banning discrimination on these terms have failed to make much difference.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 07:42 AM

I don't see any attempt to 'justify' racism there, Richard; merely the objective report of a phenomenon. And I appreciate that your point was confirmation of this phenomenon. But I find "race traitor" for one who is behaving predictably in well-recognised circumstances a trifle harsh. I should say that the either-way black-on-black discriminators might perhaps be more deserving of the epithet, insofar as anyone is; but feel it would be more seemly to allow the community involved to deal with the situation among themselves. I can't imagine they would welcome your (arguably patronising) input from without.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 07:31 AM

The traditional songs you mention, MtheGM, are about, I think, discrimination against Romanies.

I thought I had made it very plain that the social toxicity of this product was related to "black on black" colour prejudice and the self loathing so induced.

I remember another person telling me how, when she was young, she noticed that scar tissue left a light mark on dark skin. I'm sure you can guess the rest.

I find your reliance on a blog that seeks to justify racism rather disturbing.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 07:22 AM

I recall a novel, but regret I forget its name & author, telling of a dark-skinned black woman ostracised, or patronised as "dark meat" (that locution remains with me) by her lighter-skinned black contemporaries. I think the setting was Chicago.

Natalie Cole has said that, when her parents married, her mother's family did not want her to marry Nat King Cole, because they were light-skinned blacks and he was not. Conversely, Rihanna has told of being discriminated against at school in Barbados for the lightness of her skin --

http://www.debbieschlussel.com/3995/pop-star-tells-of-black-on-light-skinned-racism/

It must be pointed out therefore that even in some black communities there is discrimination of their own depending on the how light or black someone may be. In re this thread, this surely provides some explanation, & motivation, for the behaviour which Richard denounces so vehemently.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 06:37 AM

Think of songs like "The Brown Girl", Keith (Child #295); & "Lord Thomas & Fair Elinor" (#73 - confusingly often called "The Brown Girl" in USA, by eg Hedy West et al).

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 06:25 AM

I did know that the fashion was different, but a tan has been considered desirable for more than a generation.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 05:53 AM

There is no assumption of "inferiority" about very white skin on white people.

You maybe do not, Keith, realise that before the advent of the foreign holiday as an accessible aspiration, whiteness of skin was much prized in English society. It indicated that the person was not of the peasant class who laboured out of doors and so became tanned. After foreign holidays initially became available, the ability to have one indicated significant disposable income, so being tanned acquired social cachet. Amongst a certain class of person it still indicates a possibly expensive, maybe Caribbean, holiday.   

Tanning is not regarded as socially aspirational in Australia, where the dangers of skin cancer from over-exposure to sun are better realised. Where TOWIE orange comes from I have no idea.

I am not criticising the users of these products (other than for folly). They are victims of the racist standard applied by black people amongst themselves. Dencia however is Nigerian-Cameroonian and is complicit in the racist standards applied in the countries of her immediate forbears. A quisling.

I note the assertions about film casting, but I would have thought that in the eyes of most white people, the distinction is binary. In that view one is white, or one is not. In this view mixed race people are classified as "black" - much as in apartheid or slavery era America. Last year I spent a lot of time with a young woman who told me of the way she was a mere 30 years ago regarded as "the only nigger in Crayford" (her words) whereas she was mixed race, relatively pale-skinned, and also of relatively English cast of feature.

The view that a paler black is better than a blacker black seems to me to be a fetish amongst those who are, in binary terms, "black". I have only fairly recently been personally alerted to it, but have been told a number of stories, by pan-Afrikan people, about the presentational value attached to being paler skinned. Indeed one person whom I suggested might like to take the issue up with some political connections of hers declined mainly on the ground that she would be seen as a bitter old dark-skinned woman.

I also note those who have so far on this thread sought to justify the concept of a whitening cream. And I didn't say it was only women who suffer from the promotion of this colour-based self-loathing amongst "blacks". Indeed Michael Jackson and his skin-lightening and facial surgery was in my mind as a victim: but he did not make money out of oppressing and undermining other "blacks" based on the colour of their skin.   

It seems perhaps to be a pity that there are so few 'catters of colour to put the matter in perspective

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 05:25 AM

Does it not just reflect the fact the people prefer to be neither very black nor very white?

White people go to great lengths and expense to darken their skin.
It does not make them "race traitors."

I think you are patronising Richard.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 05:03 AM

It isn't only women, tho, is it? Michael Jackson?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 04:53 AM

It's pretty tragic that black women feel pressured to appear white. And I think it's fair to say that successful black women have participated in the virtual erasure of female blackness from the mainstream media. Notably Beyonce has presented herself as increasingly white over the years, with paler and paler skin and straight blonde hair. Black artists also often use contacts to even give themselves the appearance of blue and green eyes which are only typical to the fairest races.

While I think they certainly should be criticised for their part in encouraging young black girls to aspire to look white, it's also something of a chicken and egg problem however. Have you ever noticed that on US TV programmes, black women are invariably considerably paler than their male counterparts? Especially if they are young and beautiful (you will sometimes see older darker skinned women playing roles) Are these women being hired by black or white people, my *assumption* is the latter. I don't think black people can be criticised for a system that promotes 'whiteness' in black women. However it is disappointing when they collude with it, promote it's maintenance and thereby undo work that has previously been done to try to undermine it.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 01:33 AM

That doesn't apply to the baby. The baby has gotta be changed.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Bert
Date: 25 Mar 14 - 12:19 AM

We should all treat one another in such a way that nobody feels the need to change themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Mar 14 - 10:35 PM

Great folly here from some of the usual suspects (none of whom are I think of colour or interested in discrimination against people of colour).

The USP of this loathsome product is that light skin is better than dark skin. That is racially discriminatory.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: pdq
Date: 24 Mar 14 - 02:39 PM

Perhaps Richard "Low" Bridge is a Lizard People.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 Mar 14 - 02:16 PM

Is this person selling us out to the lizard people or something?

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 24 Mar 14 - 02:11 PM

Well, Richard, you may be interested in one of the skin-darkening treatments.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Mar 14 - 02:04 PM

Well, well. Profoundly disappointed in 'catters here. Indeed I might say shocked.

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 24 Mar 14 - 01:48 PM

Word left out--

Humans have tried to modify their appearance for centuries.

Perhaps that should be "for millennia."

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 24 Mar 14 - 01:44 PM

A recent study by the University of Capetown suggests one woman in three in South Africa bleaches her skin.

Skin lighteners have been popular since the British and European occupations world-wide and in the Americas since Spanish, Portuguese, British and Americans released slaves.
It increases chances of employment and customer acceptance in business and treatments remain popular. Women believe that it increases attractiveness to males.

"Dark Skin Becomes Lighter.... possible in just three weeks or your money back."
Dermalite Universal Skin Lightener.
".... safe and effective for males and females of all ages, races and skin colours."
"In just a few days your skin will become dramatically lighter and more attractive."
"Dermalite has been lightening folks skin all over the world for 27 years."
"Tens of thousands of delighted Customers"

Above is one of several offers in South Africa.
---------------------------------------
"New Nigerian Skin lightener range sold out in a day."
Whitenicious, by Dencia, sold online for $150 per 60 ml.-------------------------------------------------------
This is the one described by Robert Bridge, but it is just one of many such products, used by millions to lighten their skin.

Humans have to modify their appearance for centuries.

Ho Hum

Subject: RE: BS: Dencia (singer) race traitor?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 24 Mar 14 - 12:12 PM

Second proposition. No political movement that purports to speak for any native Africans (as distinct from white people who may claim to be African by birth or immigration)
Did I miss something here? Isn't the consensus scientific opinion that we are all African by descent?