Hypocritical Injustice

All of my life I've watched the African American community look down on one another. One of the most well known stigmas in the black community is a black person with lighter complexion is better or has some type of advantage over their dark skin counterpart. It saddens me to see African Americans so aggressive and disheartened towards people of the same ethical background as themselves. This really gets to me considering I myself am black and majority of my family and community is African American. African American's are considered  as minorities and have been discriminated against as a whole race but they tend to go even further and discriminate against each other according to how light or dark ones skin is. I’ve often heard times where a person may say "your pretty for a dark skinned girl" as if she was in a different category separate from those who are of a lighter complexion. Even in the media you may see a woman with a lighter complexion with leading roles more often than a woman of a darker complexion. You will also often see dark skinned women showed negatively in today's media, while light skinned other races (non-black) are portrayed in a more positive light. All this foolishness started in slavery and has been passed down for generations and eventually becomes a viscous cycle that needs to be changed.

Even with myself I feel like people have always expected more of me because I was light skinned opposed to a dark skinned guy simply because of my skin tone. I've even had family members tell me "she thinks your cute because your light skinned, light skinned guys get all the attention" and I've even heard somebody say "you know I don't date dark skin girls" as if she was any less of a woman because she is of a darker skin tone. This angers me because it is unjust and my father and aunties are of darker skin complexion and I feel as if nobody should be discriminated because of their color. A lot of African Americans become easily angered when other races are prejudiced towards them for being African American but they are hypocritical because they are performing the same acts within their own community. How could someone expect to be treated equal if they do not treat others equally?

It’s disappointing that we even have to continue discussion centuries later because its irrelevant because at the end of the day we are all human beings. Even though we've progressed drastically this is still a issue that hold us back. Slavery has had several huge impacts on us as a people. It made the black community bond in some ways and made them stronger because of the struggle. It also effected us negatively as it developed a lot of self-hate and and created habits of judging each other and lowering each others self esteem which ultimately led to self-defeat in the black community. This combined with violence and drugs will lead to the extinction of the African American.