Posted by Rude One
I've said it before and I'll say it again: When Nancy Pelosi belts up
the strap-on, it's just a matter of time before someone's screaming. She
rode serial molester Dennis Hastert like a monkey on an elephant. She
made George W. Bush beg for more ass reaming. And now she's locked and
loaded the extra-large dildo, the one shaped like a tentacle, and she's
skullfucking Donald J. Trump. She's thrusting that footlong right into
his eyehole, tickling his brain, and driving him completely mad. He is
pretty much shouting at her to stop, but she won't. She'll just keep
skullfucking until he begs her to stop or she goes right through the
back of his pumpkin head.
You can watch it happen in real time on video of an event yesterday
where Trump was supposed to be announcing more socialism for farmers,
$16 billion to farms affected by his idiotic trade war with China.
Where's that money coming from? "This support for farmers will be paid
for by the billions of dollars our Treasury takes in," he reassured. No
shit, motherfucker. So does everything we spend money on. But in that
precious way of stating the obvious, Trump continued, "We’ll be taking
in — depending on what period of time we’re talking — many billions of
dollars. Far more than the $16 billion that we’re talking about." So
it's good to know that we happen to have $16 billion just sitting around
in a slush fund or something and don't need, say, Congress to approve
it.
Then you can see when Pelosi commenced the skullfucking. Asked about
Pelosi's comment that he needs an intervention, Trump went off the
rails, if his train was ever on them in the first place. He went around
the room, demanding that staff and advisers who were at the meeting tell
the cameras that he was perfectly calm when he told Pelosi and Chuck
Schumer he wouldn't work on an infrastructure bill (or anything) while
Democrats investigated him.
He asked Kellyanne Conway, Mercedes Schlapp, Larry Kudlow, Sarah
Sanders, and Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley to testify that he was
calm. Here's how Trump put it to Sanders: "The narrative was I was
screaming and ranting and raving, and it was terrible. And I watched
Nancy and she was all crazy yesterday...Just out curiosity — you were
there — what was my tone yesterday at the meeting?" Sanders attested to
this frantic fuck's calm demeanor.
Here's the thing, though. I think it was absolutely planned. I think
Trump told everyone he was going to ask them if he was totally chill at
the canceled infrastructure meeting. All the answers he got seemed
absolutely practiced. So Pelosi's thrusting so far into his dullard's
brain pan that he can't get her out of there.
Throughout this whole frankly fucking odd display, Trump kept making all
kinds of asides, like to Kudlow, "Larry has done more live television.
Maybe Regis has you by a little bit, right? Not by much." Yeah, that's
a Regis Philbin reference. And this: "I don’t want to say 'Crazy
Nancy,' because if I say that, you’re going to say it’s a copy of 'Crazy
Bernie,' and that’s no good, because he — Bernie is definitely crazy."
But he couldn't help but attack Pelosi more because, you know, chicks,
man: "It was sad when I watched Nancy, all moving — the movement and the
hands and the craziness — and I watched — that’s, by the way, a person
that’s got some problems." He's gonna be mocking her movements soon
because that's what this lump of shit thinks is funny.
The rest of the appearance, which, to remind you, was about giving money
to farmers who he himself has harmed financially, was just as alarming.
Trump criticized Rep. Jerrold Nadler by saying, "Jerry Nadler. I know
him well. I’ve had great success against Jerry and I will again."
That's an allusion to a 1980s zoning battle. Seriously, Trump's fucking
brain stopped functioning around 1990.
"I'm a very capable person," Trump said at one point and wasn't joking.
(He was joking when he called himself "an extremely stable genius," so
let's let that on go.) He insisted repeatedly that he knew things,
understood things, was well-versed in a subject. I teach students who
lie to me all the time about studying something or reading something. I
know that Trump was fuckin' lying when he said of the release of John
Walker Lindh, "Believe it or not, about two weeks ago, I went to the
best lawyers in our country that work for government. I said, 'What
could we do about this?'" Bullshit. He probably saw Tucker Carlson
jacking off about Lindh and wondered why they weren't talking about him
for five minutes.
And asked about who he was accusing of treason, after being reminded
that one can be sentenced to death for that, Trump responded, "If you
look at Comey; if you look at McCabe; if you look at probably people —
people higher than that; if you look at Strzok; if you look at his
lover, Lisa Page, his wonderful lover — the two lovers, they talked
openly." Trump's weird fascination with the Strzok/Page affair is just
pure dickishness, his default posture. But, yeah, sure, let's just move
on from him implying that leaders of the FBI deserved to be executed.
By the way, several farmers and Farm Bureau officials were forced to
stand there the entire time and had to be wondering what the fuck they
had gotten themselves into. And Trump proclaimed once again that
everything is really about him and him alone. Talking about farm states,
he said, "China has openly stated they’re going to use the farmer. The
reason is because I got the farmer’s votes. You look at a map; it’s all
red, meaning Republican, meaning Trump. It’s all red in the middle
states, as you know. It’s got a little blue here and a little blue
there." I guess it's useless at this point to try to say that California
is the largest farm economy in the nation and is being hurt badly by this trade war.
Look, I've got a problem
with how Pelosi is handling the lugubriously slow walk towards
impeachment. But I'm all in on her penetrating Trump's tiny mind and
buying a condo there. One thing he hates more than anything is being
bested by a woman, and right now, he's frantically trying to figure out
how to degrade her and get her out of there. No, it's not impeachment.
It is, though, making Trump look weaker and weaker and more easily
defeated. It's not a great plan, but it's sure as shit an entertaining
one.
Side note: Here's an exchange that didn't get much notice between Trump and Conway.
MS. CONWAY: Very calm. No temper tantrum...I’m sure somebody has it on
tape too. But you were very calm. Stood at the edge of the Cabinet
table.
THE PRESIDENT: They have it on tape someplace?
MS. CONWAY: Sure.
THE PRESIDENT: Good. That’d be good.
Um, are they taping the Cabinet Room?
(Correction: I originally said the meeting took place in the Oval Office. That was wrong.)
“Here we go,” I mutter, pressing enter.
My profile has been created. It seems simple enough: swipe left to dismiss, swipe right to express interest.
The first eligible bachelor appears – not my type, I swipe left. Then another follows – too young, I swipe left again. Ten swipes in, and I find myself texting my eldest sister this was a bad idea. A feeling of vexation settles over me.
I didn’t think I would ever have to use a dating app, but men don’t talk to me any other way.
I’ve spent so much time trying to understand what is so unattractive about me that men shun me. At first, I thought it was because I was intimidating – a word I’ve heard used to describe me. For a while, I concluded I was “not that interesting,” a line I subsequently used as my biography on social media. But those explanations won’t do.
The real issue is staring me right in the face: my deep mahogany skin.
Colorism – the prejudice based on skin tone – has stunted the romantic lives of millions of dark-skinned black women, including me. We are not as valued as our lighter-skinned counterparts when seeking romantic partners, our dating pool constricted because of something as arbitrary as shoe size.
Like other systems of racial inequality, American colorism was born out of slavery. As slave masters raped enslaved women, their lighter-skinned illegitimate offspring were given preferential treatment over their darker counterparts, often working in the house as opposed to the fields. This order has since been perpetuated by systemic racism and internalized by black people. It remains alive even now, insidiously snaking into my life.
I have many memories of being degraded because of my complexion, the most piercing is from middle school: two girls giggled in my Georgia history class during the showing of a documentary about slavery. As the film explained the origins of skin tone prejudice, one girl – biracial, hazel-eyed, and the only other black girl in class – whispered that she would have been a house slave, but that I would have been a field slave. As the famous image of whipped Peter played on screen, I sank down in my chair, silently greeting the weight of oppression on my 12 year old shoulders.
In many ways, nothing has changed since that day. Dark skin still not only comes with the expectation of lower class but lessened beauty, not to mention uncleanliness, lesser intelligence and a diminished attractiveness. Meanwhile, everywhere we look, women like me see successful black men coupled with fair-skinned female partners who pass the paper bag test – a remnant of the Reconstruction era, where the only black people worthy of attention had to be lighter than a paper bag. This “test” was even instituted in places such as historically black colleges and universities as an informal part of the admissions process.
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The lighter the shade, the higher the probability of marriage
Jasmine Turner, owner of BlackMatchMade, a Chicago-based matchmaking company, agrees this affects all black women. “Honestly, I think black women tend to lower their standards because they’re finding challenges in dating. Now I’m finding that black women are like ‘You know what, as long as he has a good job and he’s a good person …’ No matter how successful they are, they’re open to dating him.”I’ve never been one to settle. I’ve taken this attitude to the app, only searching for men who are gainfully employed and fairly decent-looking. But I definitely understand what she means.
Previously, dating has made me feel like I must drop some of my must-have criteria – a college education, a steady job, and able and willing to pay for the first date – in order to find a match. My mother has even scolded me for it, telling me to raise my standards: “I’ve been on a lot of dates, and no girl should ever pay for a first date!”
But my feelings of a necessary drop in standards have been validated by research from Dr Darrick Hamilton, a professor of economics and sociology at Ohio State University. Hamilton aggregated information from the 2003 Multi-City Study of Urban Equality to identify why so many dark-skinned women who date men remain bachelorettes. His assessment was designed to show how the imbalance of eligible black males – taking into account high incarceration rates and a limited labor market – affects the marriage market.
His research shows that a scarcity in available “high-status” husbands (defined as higher levels of education, not growing up on public assistance, coming from neighborhoods that had less crime), effectively leave black men in control of the dating selection process. His data concluded 55% of light-skinned women were married while only 23% of dark-skinned women had jumped the broom.
“[Black men] have unnatural power within marriage markets that enables them to bid up cursory characteristics like skin shade,” Hamilton told me over the phone. In other words, the lighter the female, the higher the probability of marriage. “One of the results that we found was that [darker-complexioned] black women who have ‘higher status’ faced a greater penalty in marriage markets than those with a lower socioeconomic status.”
According to his research, I am the epitome of the “high-status” option. College educated, familial middle class background, age 16-30, able-bodied. But according to the equation, I haven’t the “social capital” (read: skin tone) to seek a quality match.
But before even entertaining thoughts of marriage, I have to get past the dating stage. Turner says she often sees black men pass up perfectly eligible dark-skinned women. “Black men will say, ‘complexion doesn’t matter’, but they might give that lighter complexion woman who is very comparable to a darker-complexion woman a chance, when they wouldn’t give that darker-skinned woman a chance.”
The effects play out in the lives of women like me and my friend Larissa. We usually like to talk about sci-fi books and traveling, but today I ask her if she’s ever felt diminished by men due to her complexion. “Sometimes, I can kinda feel their eyes sliding off of me to go the pretty white girl next to me, or even the fairer-skinned Yara Shahidi type,” she says, a twinge of sadness in her voice.
While she sees herself getting married, she doesn’t know if she will end up with a black man. “I don’t necessarily see myself walking down the aisle with a black guy. Not because I’ve written them off or because I don’t want to, but just realistically, based on how the dating life has been treating me and how I’ve been approached.”
Julia Wadley of North Carolina’s matchmaking service EliSimone, which caters to a mostly black clientele, has observed this dynamic in her field. “I’ve had colleagues who were like, ‘Hey, I have a black client and he’s open to any race’. I’m like ‘Oh, OK, great! I’ll send you a couple of matches who fit what he’s looking for. Then they’ll come back and say, ‘She’s too ethnic looking’.”
I know exactly what she means, but I ask anyway: “What would ‘too ethnic’ mean, in terms of look?”
“Dark skin. Someone who is probably brown to dark skin. Someone with natural hair. Someone who is over the size of six,” she answers. “I would bet $5,000 every single one of my black colleagues have had that happen. Where they’ll come back and say, ‘Uh, well, he’s only looking for someone who is very fair’; or, ‘He’s looking for someone who is light-skinned’.”
Still, Wadley tells me, she hoped I’m not writing a “woe is me, nobody wants dark-skinned girls” article. I wince hearing it, hoping for the same, deep down. But this topic doesn’t lend itself to optimism.
‘It made me feel like I would never be wanted’
Writing this piece, a memory I had long forgotten resurfaces. At university, on the line for the security check-in for dorms, I bumped into a friend of my former roommate. I inquired about something someone had said. Immediately, his face changed from joy to anger. “You’re too dark to be talking to me like this, Dream,” he sneered. Hurt to the point of rage, I bristled and walked away. We never had a conversation again.I aimlessly skim the app late one night, swiping left, right, right, left. I’ve only made a few matches since downloading it the week before. Then, I come across a profile. “I only date light-skinned women…” reads his bio, even though his skin tone matches mine. I wasn’t going to swipe right in the first place – he was not cute – but I still feel the bristle of my sophomore year. I roll my eyes, and swipe to the next one.
I would like to think I’ve grown up since that 19 year old who was insulted at the gate of my dorm.
My dark skin is not something to be ashamed of, even if past lovers made it clear they were ashamed to be associated with me because of it. I’ve been all of it before – I’m dating someone but there’s a secrecy to our relationship: hands that only hold yours in private, a reluctance to present you to family and friends, kisses that only meet your lips when no one else can see.
I hate that I’ve had to beg for legitimacy in my intimate relationships. I hate that my friends have had to do so too. I want love, but my self-esteem is too high a price to pay.
Sharlene and I met at a Kendrick Lamar concert during our freshman year of college and we’ve stayed in contact ever since. Knowing she’s shared similar sentiments about dating in the past, I get in touch, hoping to round out my perspective on the matter. “I feel like dark-skinned women were just the women that men had behind closed doors. They weren’t trophy wives enough for you to show to the world. Somebody wouldn’t want to show me off but, next thing you know, they’ve got somebody lighter and they’re showing them off … It made me feel like I would never be wanted.”
Deflated, I talk to Elizabeth, my former sophomore-year roommate, who is now in her third year of law school. I ask if a partner has said anything rude to her because of her skin tone. She names a man I know, to my dismay. “There was just a comment that he made one time. [He said] ‘I want a white family’.” She laughs: “It was just so weird to me because you’re telling me you want a white family. I can’t give you that! Like, why are you talking to me?”
“I want a white family.” The words stick with me for the rest of the day, weighing me down like a bale of cotton. It brings tears to my eyes. I wonder: are dark-skinned women just the placeholders until they meet their desired match? Do all these men really just want white families?
A few nights into the app, another guy pops up on my screen – decent looking and seemingly gainfully employed. I’m mildly interested. His profile bio is just one line: “The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice.”
My immediate thoughts warn me of a possible fetish. Dating with dark skin often comes with a double edged sword: we are unwanted, except by men who want to create an experience out of us, leaving our person hood out of the equation altogether. We become empty objects, vehicles for pleasure, rather than multi-dimensional beings.
Hunter vocalizes this sentiment. “At the same time, there’s also a kind of fetishization of darker skin. So sometimes you’ll hear people say ‘I only like dark-skinned women’ or that ‘dark skin is sexy’ or something like that,” she tells me. “Not that those things aren’t true or good, but they also kind of objectifying or sexualizing in a way that isn’t necessarily the solution to the discrimination. It’s an inversion, basically.”
The bachelor on my screen shares my mahogany skin tone. But I’m wary he, like other black men, may fall victim to this form of objectification. I remember how Sharlene expressed her frustrations with her beauty being seen as skin deep. “We can’t get just get a regular compliment,” she laments. “I know that people think that calling me chocolate all the time, or talking about ‘your skin is beautiful’ is a compliment. But why can’t I just be beautiful?”
I hear what she and Dr Hunter are saying, but my choices are few. I feel limited; I was made to feel this way. In the end, I swipe right. My screen darkens, proclaiming a match has been made. We chat, but the spark isn’t there.
But three weeks after joining the app, I finally hit a stride and start having more fun. I’ve matched with someone who seems promising. He’s smart, we work in the same industry, and our conversations online have been pleasant. I ask him to meet, and he agrees.
We are meeting at a food hall; for me, it’s a short walk and a train across town but feels like a world away. A slew of hopes run through me on the way over. I hope I’ll be just as attracted to him in person as I am online. I hope he won’t murder me.
I approach the hall, take a deep breath, and ready my fingers to pull the door open. “Here we go,” I whisper to myself.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/apr/08/dark-skinned-black-girls-dont-get-married
Share your experience of colorism: use the hashtag #ShadesofBlack on social media
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