It is no secret why blacks have identity problems. Throughout our history in this country, we have been told that our skin color is a curse, we have been depicted as caricatures and buffoons, and when Madame CJ Walker created the first hair relaxer, black people would never wholly embrace their natural curls. Essentially everything associated with African-Americans was undesirable and unattractive.

Black people continue to perpetuate this idea, especially the entertainers. Entertainers have a great deal of influence amongst the masses and blacks especially look up to African-American entertainers more greatly because their skin color represent us. When rappers are constantly gloating that they have a “redbone” (light skin black woman), it reveals the reality that light is better and dark is undesirable. They continue with this message by almost always featuring light-skinned African-American models in their music videos. No one wants to be dark skin because even black entertainers thinks it’s unattractive.

Equally as important, when a black man makes it to the top, he very often neglects his African-American woman for a non-black woman. This is the case with many entertainers such as Kobe Bryant, who left his girlfriend in Philadelphia for Vanessa. Kevin Hart makes this clear also in a YouTube video. He made the comment that now that he has a better career he has to get him a white girl. Although I’m pretty sure he said this jokingly, his current girlfriend is a light-skinned African-American woman and his wife was a dark skin African-American woman.

In addition, the most flamboyant represent of this assertion is Lil Kim. She began as this beautiful brown skin African-American woman and with the aid of plastic surgery, she morphed into this Asian woman ( trying to look white); unrecognizable.

I take issue with these behaviors. Little black girls suffer from identity problems at such high rates. My seven year-old cousin cried her eyes out to me saying that she think she’s ugly and wish that she could have long blond hair and green eyes. It broke my heart but our young girls are dealing with this everyday. There is nothing to represent them. No one tells them that their skin color and the texture of their hair is definitive beauty. When they turn on the television there aren’t any black girls to represent and be the symbol of them. So when they look at music videos and people such as Lil Kim, their image is even more convoluted and dreaded. The most popular African-American singers are light-skinned, many with surgically enhanced European features. A prime example is Nicki Minaj. She began as this beautiful woman from Queens and now her nose is European. Our kids have to continue to look at figures that don’t even feel secure in themselves.

These people don’t appreciate the blessing of possessing African lineage and traits. While they are so busy transforming themselves to fit the image of a white person, the white people are transforming themselves to look more like us – tanning, lip injections, butt implants, etc. White people know that dark skin and African features is beautiful.

You Can barely recognize that this is Lil Kim