Imani Tafari-Ama | Skin bleaching signals self-hate

Skin bleaching and hair straightening are indicators of self-hate. Chemically processing oneself to look like a contrived version of brown or white people shows the internalisation and reproduction by Africans and other people of colour of racist colonial discourses of the body. These practices convey the idea that white bodies are superior to black bodies. Instead of loving the skin that they are in and wearing their natural hair, many people of predominantly African descent are duped by these contrived cultural myths. They are the ones spending enormous sums trying to be the browning that Buju Banton sang about loving.

More and more black women and men are bleaching their skin in a bizarre attempt to acquire the psychosocial status associated with brown or ‘socially white’ skin. As one participant said in a documentary I directed in 2006, “Well, it come in like black don’t have any talk again, so everybody want to turn white,” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KugYhuuuL0k). This shows the extent to which threads of racial self-loathing have been woven into the cultural fabric. Bleaching and straightened hair show how racism is entrenched in popular definitions of beauty and sexual desirability. When you drill down, the root causes of these behaviours run deep into centuries of the tragic enslavement experience. Called the Maafa, a Swahili word for complete disaster, enslavement fundamentally fractured the framework of black/African identities.

Skin bleaching norm in jamaica

Skin bleaching is such a norm in Jamaica that it is not unusual to hear the police describing a criminal as having a bleached complexion. And the before and after pictures show the drastic changes. Are you able to verify that the person that you imagine yourself relating to is really who you think it is, or is the new creation another entity? In this sense, weaves and chemical body conversions are the ultimate identity cover-up. These disturbing self-violence practices demonstrate what Antonio Gramsci called hegemony. This is the process by which people are brainwashed. Hegemony is at play when the oppressed internalise and reproduce the very domination discourses that otherise them. By altering their bodies with lethal products laced with hydroquinone, they are complicit with their own disfigurement, without the benefit of consciousness. This inter-generational problem is an obstacle to sustainable development and a hydra-headed public-health crisis.

DEHUMANISED SUBJECTS

What is even more alarming is the ease with which dehumanised post-colonial subjects have been duped by big business entities to engage in the unhealthy practices of embodied alterations. This self-violence syndrome has resulted in the evolution of multibillion-dollar industries of hair and skin products, laced with chemicals, that target women of colour. The victims of this dangerous profit-making industry are already from the low self-esteem that results from prevailing institutionalised narratives of self-identity representation. This business model promotes European “looks” as the benchmark of sexual and social desirability. Conversely, being African is treated as a badge of shame. Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair (https://youtu.be/Qzd0Q1qfWPs), provides enlightenment about the extent to which Africans negate their own identities while producing fake self-representations as their idealised selves.

The value system of embodiment in colonial Jamaica persists to this day. This ensures that the codes of colour-class definitions of privilege and disadvantage still inform the social locations of the ethnic groups occupying this Northern Caribbean island. These hierarchies are even more magnified in the urban grassroots, with value-loaded distinctions being made among shades of black, even to the extent of the self-destruction of melanin-rich skin via bleaching agents. And do you remember the woman in Montego Bay who died from using the Jaffrey’s brand hair straightner? In a documented response, the company representative remarked that black women’s hair is so resistant that they put more hydrochloric acid in their product, which was removed from the market. Women who straighten their hair know that if this product stays in too long, they will suffer serious burns that turn into sores. But then, such beauty drills know no pain, right? This practice alludes to the continuation of discriminatory definitions of racialised embodiment that were constructed in plantation society.

Make no mistake though. Colourism transcends boundaries of class and permeates the upper echelons of society as much as underserved communities. Stylised bleaching creams like “Ambi” and “Nadinola” have been sold in uptown pharmacies for decades. They may not be as vulgarly packaged as those sold from vats on the streets downtown, but they sing from the same song sheet. In the bigger picture, there is a political economy of identity politics that ensures that the 1% of the population that controls the economy are also from the ethnic groups that bear lighter complexion than the majority class of predominantly African heritage.

EVIDENCE OF EPIGENETICS

The science of epigenetics provides evidence to link the violence of the colonial past to present excessive practices of self and community violence. Institutions of socialisation facilitate inter-generational transmission of dysfunctional beliefs about identity. It is no coincidence that Jamaica has the most churches per capita in the world and also has the third highest murder rate in the world. Worshipping a white image of God, a cultural contradiction in terms, reinforces the racialised distortions expressed in violent self-identity compositions. Loss of African identity is so deep that street talk is that “Black naw wear again.”

This psychotic behaviour will require the application of a profound project of social re-engineering to arrest, reverse, and replace it with a sustainable development agenda, headlined by concerns for spiritual healing and cultural rehabilitation. That is what the demand for reparations is all about: the damage done to multiple generations of Africans begs the question that intentional repair has to be financed by the progeny of the perpetrators because this acknowledgement and respect will free us all from the gridlock of asymmetrical development.

Beauty-in-reverse practices of skin bleaching and hair straightening are norms that are abnormal. How can it be natural to use products that cause skin cancer? Why should beauty practices cause you to dress so that you can hide from sun exposure on a tropical island known to have temperatures of “ninety-six degrees in the shade?” Is it worthwhile to process your bodies into imitations of yourself? What values cause you to desire silky tressed, bleached-out interpretations of idealised beauty? This model is not sustainable and poses a clear and present danger to the agency of Africans in the diaspora and on the continent. There is no human tragedy so profound as performing one’s African body in self-destruction mode. This self-violent mechanism of retrieving erased self-concepts and esteem must have been what catalysed Marcus Garvey to shout, “Up! you mighty race! You can accomplish what you will!”

Dr Imani Tafari-Ama is a research fellow at The Institute for Gender and Development Studies, Regional Coordinating Office (IGDS-RCO), at The University of the West Indies. She is the author of ‘Blood, Bullets and Bodies: Sexual Politics Below Jamaica’s Poverty Line’ and ‘Up for Air: This Half Has Never Been Told’, a historical novel on the Tivoli Gardens incursion. Send feedback to imani.tafariama@uwimona.edu.jm.