So sitting here tonight I ask myself “Self, would you rather write final exams tonight or rant on a bit with your favorite community?” No brainer. Kids don’t want to take the darn final exam anyway…. And I DO like to rant…

So after reading with great interest the thread that blew up regarding this whole colorism thing, I decided that I wanted to toss this out at everyone. I do NOT understand the colorism thing. At ALL. Oh, I read that thread. Had a discussion with someone on this issue. I feel like one of my students. I don’t get it….. don’t get it…. I… I… I … just don’t get it. Like a 13 year old adult Tom Hanks in “Big” sitting in a corporate staff meeting. Where is Robert Loggia to ask me… “What is it you don’t get, Jeff”? Though we may all detest racism, we often are able to understand where it comes from… the reasons… even if those reasons are, quite frankly, stupid. Racism within your own race though? Yet another issue that we wrestle with from the slavery days? And we wonder why we keep falling behind the rest of the world in things. OK, I understand the theory that the lighter colored house slaves were treated a bit better because they had some white in them (likely of Master’s bloodline?). Yet that tone or shading of a black person’s skin is still used to determine their worth? Their desirability? That such determination was based on comparison to a paper bag? A brown PAPER bag????

By the way, for the idiots that still like this test… note… paper bags now come in red and green too…. And you can feel free to go walk out and stand in waist deep water until you are no longer an idiot. I cannot even fathom the line of people passing by someone checking their tone with a brown paper bag. “You are light enough, you are good”…… “Dude… too dark… sorry, you are out.” Actually, now they have white paper bags too. “You are darker than this… too tan… sorry”. I will be in good shape though. Very fair skin. “Dang, dude, you are as white as a dead decaying sun-bleached fish on the beach. More white than this bag. You are IN….” Although, if I have a bad sunburn, do they then grab a red bag?

One last thought on this. Certain tones being more desirable than others? You can draw your own conclusions from this statement….. I don’t know about y’all, but I can’t see in the dark anyway…. So DOES it really make a difference? If we are all the same in the dark, aren’t we all the same in the daylight? Just asking….