Tatum Chapter 3: "Is my skin brown because I drink chocolate milk?"

Tatum writes in Chapter 3:

"In her book Sisters of the Yam, bell hooks relates a conversation she had with a Black woman frustrated by her daughter's desire for long blond hair, despite their family's effort to affirm their Blackness. Observing the woman's dark skin and straightened hair, she encouraged the mother to examine her own attitudes about skin colour and hair texture to see what messages she might be communicating to her child by the way she constructed her own body image"(46).

A question that arises out of this text is: Why do we all feel pressured to transform our natural bodies into artifices of "beauty"? And, more revealingly, what ideal form are we inclined to strive for, if there is a single particular one, and why have we adopted it?

This is one of the most fundamental and pressing questions that we can ask ourselves at any time, in any place. I can't answer it for everyone, but I think that if we all really gave it some thought, we might peel off layers that we put on, or we might feel more conviction for those that we do. But it is one thing to internalize self-destructive ideals without thinking about it, another to be conscious of the way we "carry" and care for ourselves.

And secondly, how much of this hurt (I don't know how else to describe it) can be traced to the way young minds integrate examples that older generations provide into their personal understanding of the "way things are"?

This is again a large question but one that may elicit a greater understanding of our place in between the world we inherit and the way we leave it to future generations. When confronting this issue, my thoughts often turn to lines from Kanye West's "Bring Me Down" (Late Registration, 2005). West maintains:

"You see, if you ever wanted to be anything
It always be somebody that would shoot down any dream
There always be haters, that's the way it is
Hater niggas marry hater bitches and have hater kids."

Unfortunately, we are all fallible human beings, we internalize pain, insecurity, and anger and also are the ones given the responsibility of preserving and propagating human life. The mother described in bell hook's Sisters of the Yam has for whatever reason chosen to straighten her hair, and I think it is very important not to judge her choice as a type of weakness, in the context of what Tatum describes as an "affirmation of their Blackness." Her daughter has chosen to dye her hair blonde. This choice may have nothing to do with negating her Blackness but with affirming some other ideal. Unfortunately, for both women, the ideal form they embody is one that is not natural. But everyone does this, supercede the natural to become an ideal. Hopefully the ideal will be a healthy one.

As discouraging as the predicament may seem, there is hope. This hope resides in the power that we hold as inhabitants of this earth, the power to transform the world we have been given into something better for our children.

West continues in a positive affirmation of this very power conferred by our own responsibility:

"But they gon have to take my life fore they take my drive
Cause when I was barely livin that's what kept me alive
Just the thought that maybe it could be better than where we at this time
Make ya out of this grind before I'm out of my mind."

--http://www.kanyeuniversecity.com/