‘Red Bone Girls,’ ‘Chocolate Legs,’ and Eric Benet’s Color-Complex Payday

http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/08/singer_eric_benet_cashes_in_the_color_complex.html

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“Redbone is one of several identities that are about a racial mixture. It allows people to be a few steps away from blackness,” says Blay, who has interviewed several generations of self-described Creole women in her native New Orleans about the relationship between color, hair texture and their culture. “For the so-called redbone, her value comes from the European and Indian parts of the mixture. In this way, the woman is a trophy. She becomes social capital, particularly for a black man who doesn’t have this genetic makeup.”

Even worse, says Blay, is what the use of the “redbone” label in the song says about the humanity of the woman at the center of it. “The assumption is that you know something about a so-called red bone just by looking at her body. In that way, she’s still on the auction block. The message is, ‘You ain’t sh#@t ouside of what I can see.’ And by the way, I see ‘chocolate’ the same way—it reduces people down to something to be consumed. That kind of thinking robs us of all of our humanity.”

For all of my snark and Blay’s wise words, I know that Eric Benet is winning right now because we’re actually talking about him. And that’s what I resent the most here. Colorism is a legitimate problem in our communities. But it’s certainly not about whether Benet, Lil Wayne or your cousin and them are willing to give brown women play. Really, who cares what arouses them?

The tragedy is that once again we’re playing out internalized white supremacy, a system that keeps so many people of color —and white folks—hypnotized by flawed and dangerous perceptions. We only make this cursed system stronger when we celebrate aspects of it in our music and our merchandise—especially when we put it on sale for the low, low price of $19.95.