Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post presents a complete reprint of the November 1, 2011 blog post by soyluv (Soyini Ayanna) entitled "In the Castle of Our Skins: Darkies, Brownings and Red Woman".
Three comment (responses) from that blog posts' readers are also included in this pancocojams post.
This pancocojams posts also presents a complete reprint of the November 30, 2018 post entitled "Being Brown Skin in The Caribbean Facing the Issue of Colourism" by Krystal Penny Bowen.
The content of this post is presented for socio-cultural purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to soyluv (Soyini Ayanna) and thanks to Krystal Penny Bowen. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post.
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Click
http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/08/what-redbone-yellowbone-and-browning.html for a closely related 2013 pancocojams post entitled "What "Redbone", "Yellowbone", and "Browning" Mean".
Also, click
https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2019/07/orlando-octave-darkie-2008-hit.html for a pancocojams post about the Trinidadian/Tobagan song "Darkie" by Orlando Octave which is mentioned in the post reprint that is given below as Excerpt #1.
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PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S NOTE
These reprinted posts explore the socio-cultural implications of the Caribbean racial descriptors "darkie" (also written as "darky), "browning", "red", "dougla", "yellow" etc. These descriptors predate by a century, if not by more than one century, the currently popular use (among some Black Americans and by extension probably by Black people outside of the United States) of the term "melanin" and "melanated". However, it's important to note that the Caribbean terms "darky", "red", "yellow" don't have the same meanings and the same socio-cultural (positive, negative, or neutral) implications that the similar terms "blacky", "redbone", and "high yellow" have for African Americans.
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WHY I FEATURE REPRINTED ARTICLES IN THIS BLOG
I re-print complete internet articles/blog posts or lengthy excerpts of those articles/blog posts (and particularly those that are five years or older) as a means of increasing awareness of those articles and their subjects.
Hyperlinks to these articles'/posts' internet addresses are given as a means to encourage pancocojams readers to visit the original internet sources of those articles and read/watch the entire content or view (in the case of photos/videos).
Article writers/editors and editors of these featured blogs are asked to contact me if they have concerns about my showcasing their article/blog post.
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BLOG POSTS REPRINTS
Reprint #1:
From
https://soyluv.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/darkies-brownings-and-red-woman/
"In the Castle of Our Skins: Darkies, Brownings and Red Woman" by soyluv (Soyini Ayanna)
"The proliferation of “darkie” to describe women of a dark skin tone in Trinidad and Tobago is a fascinating and complicated space within which to explore. Though “darkie” and its popular conflation with “sweet” may exist as catcalls alongside a sout [1], frequently proclaimed by men to dark-skinned women out in the street or elsewhere, this term is not solely reserved for females. Men can and are categorically defined as “sweet darkies” too. Most importantly, darkie is understood to be reserved for those of a specific skin shade and ethnic group simultaneously.
In Trinidad, where “darkie” takes root and flourishes in the local parlance with t-shirts available by a local designer proclaiming, “I love my Trini darkie,” (as well as “my Trini reds” and “my Trini browning”), the term functions as an important reaffirmation of Afro-descendant beauty, by calling attention to a certain skin tone in all its chocolate splendor. Its contemporary usage in Trinbagonian society is also markedly different from the American term “darky” (or other cultural uses, with or without a “y”) which is an old termed racial slur, rooted in the era of blackface, epitomizing the negative stereotypes of all dark-skinned people.
This is a country where “madras” refers to a dark-skinned East Indian person and a “dougla” (any person of mixed African and East Indian descent), may fall within a range of skin tones from fair to dark. Darkie functions in a slightly different way, where it serves to singularly encompass an Afro-Trinidadian aesthetic of perceived attractiveness. It certainly can be used as purely descriptive, along the lines of a general physical trait, but darkie is usually understood to be nuanced in a way that makes it different from the terms mentioned above. Darkie is flexible, in that it may solely be attributed to implied attractiveness or one’s skin tone and usually, the context involves an understood interconnection of the two. Far from simply objectifying the individual, darkie is a celebratory, verbal sound-kiss against ebony skin and represents a reimagining of who can be declared attractive.
Against a backdrop of slavery and colonialisation, religious doctrines, heterocentric and patriarchal norms: prescribed gender roles and perceived female desirability become informed by a variety of these institutions. Skin shade, socioeconomic class and perceived attractiveness often become interconnected. One term that comes to mind in correlation to darkie is “browning” and the two terms function differently in distinct ways. Patricia Mohammed describes the usage of “browning” in Jamaica and the rest of the region as connected to “a preference for ‘brown’ as opposed to black women or unmixed women” (22).
On the other hand, in the Caribbean, like many regions within the diaspora, where gradations of color and their categories sometimes abound, there is no such confusion as to who constitutes a darkie in Trinidad. In Jamaica, stereotypes of an economic frame, such as the so-called “brown tax”[2] are directly linked to the assumed socioeconomic status of persons of a particular shade. Browning then, operates in Jamaica as a kind of attributed socioeconomic marker as well. It is class, color and status (and for women especially: desirability) all rolled into one, in a way that darkie is not. Comparatively, the term “darkie” does not confer any particular social or economic status for the ascribed individual, other than, being a dark-skinned person. For women in and of the Caribbean region, brownness is usually directly linked to perceptions of beauty and desirability.
Much like the infamous paper-bag test in America, “browning” embodies the notion that browner is better and lighter is better. Concurrently, the “redbone”[3] in American culture, especially in hip-hop pop culture, is almost always a desirable female of a particular shade. She is the counterpart of the desirable brown-skinned woman and the similarly lauded mixed raced woman. One of the things that colorism enables is the separation of some people from their trace blackness, as well as systematically serving the role of helping people to distance themselves from blackness as a whole and the legacy of that association. It also allows some people to safely attribute some non-specific racial heritage with just the right amount of select African heritage and/or physical traits.
In Trinidad, Aisha Khan notes that the term “Spanish” functions in that way where “ ‘Spanish’ is used in part to affirm an ethnic hierarchy where ‘softened’ or ambiguous ‘African’ or ‘black’ convey and confer a higher status that modifies stronger more clear-cut expressions of ‘African’ or ‘black’ attributes” (185). And what of the desirable dark-skinned, phenotypically black looking, African descendant woman one might wonder? The counterpart to the “browning”, “redbone”, “spanish”, “dougs”[4] and the “red woman”[5]—except for “darkie,” it’s like she doesn’t exist anywhere in the lexicon.
Darkie then is more than just a kind of vocabulary to describe dark-skinned Trinbagonians; rather, it allows a site for asserting unambiguous black beauty that rarely takes place in some spaces. When female desirability becomes stacked inside culturally prevailing Eurocentric ideals, dark-skinned black women are usually relegated to the bottom rung, esteemed occasionally for a redeeming factor like quality or length of hair, or watered down, strategically placed African derived attributes.
In 2008, Orlando Octave Jr.’s hugely popular reggae love song “Darkie,” rode a wave of popularity on the airwaves in Trinidad and Tobago and throughout the region with its sweet melody, verbal play and recognizable hook of “darkie, whey yuh from?—a long time me a call you but yuh never wah come.” Paying homage to the lovely dark-skinned female who is “a helluva girl” with “de face and de figure,” Octave’s darkie is desirable, beautiful and elusive. Her elusiveness is embodied by Octave’s constant quest to know “whey yuh from” and Octave is careful to distinguish exactly what kind of dark-skinned beauty this is, lest listeners make presumptions. Similarly, he is personally invested in unpacking some of his darkie’s attributes, both internal and external, while being acutely aware of the responsibility behind the creation of this anthem for darkies.
Thus, his darkie “went tuh school and she came out a scholar,” is a “leader of de pack, rest ah girls have tuh follow.” She is “from down South” though she is liming/espied or visiting “on de Beetham”[6]. Similarly, she is fittingly “nuh gold digger / When yuh come to she / Yuh better come to she proper / ‘Cause, say, she got all she need in life / And, she doh need a boyfriend fi survive.” Most significantly, he asserts that “most of all gyul / I’m in love with yuh color.” In an interview in Abstract magazine, Octave explained his intention behind the song noting, “I sang about darkies because darkies don’t have a song,” added to the fact that “red woman always get the ‘rate-up’ ” (“Orlando Octave”). Somewhat ironically, when asked in the same interview about his own preference for women, Octave admits with a “blush” that “actually I go for red-skinned girls but complexion does not really matter” (“Orlando Octave”).
Still, for many dark-skinned women and most significantly, the young girls who tune into new popular music in droves and are especially susceptible to the images within, the message in song was widely appreciated. In a continuously media driven world, where pop cultural images in music and media assault us from every angle, West Indian women of every shade may grapple with self-identity and beauty issues. It is imperative that we all continue to contextualize, challenge and deconstruct these long-held notions of beauty and desirability with regard to skin shade. “Darkie” then, by its mere existence as a construct within the lexicon, as well as through its semantic power of implied endearing meaning, helps us to do so. It does so through its direct simplicity, its self-affirming implication of beauty and desirability and its locale, deep within a dark skin tone.
Artwork, “Forgive and Forget” by Tanya Marie Williams.
Notes
[1] A distinct, non-verbal catcall that is well known in TnT. It is sort of like a suck-teeth sound crossed with a hiss that can be sent across a distance to get someone’s attention that you may or may not know. It can be made and employed by both men and women to one another; may include a verbal accompaniment such as “darkie!” or “family!” for two examples.
[2] I learnt about this phenomenon through reading “The Browning Complex I,”a hilarious and revelatory blog entry that decried and explained the “BMS” or “Brown People have Money Syndrome” in Jamaica, which the writer has unfairly suffered and is manifested by the “brown skin tax” (BST) that he invariably has to pay higglers, fridge repair men and other assorted individuals.
[3] From my understanding, a light-skinned, black female (usually) on par with the red-skinned woman in Trinidad, who of course, may or may not self-identify as racially mixed. Some variegation can be found in its usage, as well as regional and cultural disagreements over where this skin shade starts and ‘stops’ so to speak. In hip-hop, the redbone is always linked to sexual desirability, being a prize and a “dime piece” (that is to say, the kind of female a man will covet, treasure and be proud to show off) and overall, is cast as the desired.
[4] A colloquial shortening of “dougla.”
[5] A light-skinned female: black or “mixed-up.”
[6] Refers to Beetham Gardens, also called Beetham Estate Gardens. A low-income, purportedly primarily Afro-Trinidadian community outside of Port-Of-Spain. Because of the perceived socio-cultural stigma of being “from” the Beetham (however ill-placed and ill-founded such things are), I interpreted Octave’s line as symbolic and significant of a couple of things. Firstly, of esteeming Beetham: because this gorgeous, highly educated, dark skinned girl, who is not from there but is comfortable with going there for whatever reason. Problematically too, this darkie is “on” the Beetham but not from that place, so this allows her the distinction of not actually being envisioned as one of them, in case anybody dared to place her there inside the song, simply by virtue of being a dark skinned female.
References
ETNT, “Orlando Octave.” eAbstractMag. Abstract Magazine, n.d. Web.
Khan, Aisha. “What is ‘a Spanish’?: Ambiguity and ‘Mixed’ Ethnicity in Trinidad.” Trinidad Ethnicity. Ed. Kevin Yelvington. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993. Print.
Mohammed, Patricia. “ ‘But Most of All mi Love me browning’: The Emergence in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Jamaica of the Mulatto woman as the Desired.” Feminist Review. 65 (2000): 22-48. Print.
Octave, Orlando. “Darkie.” Trinidad and Tobago. MP3 file.
Stunner, “The Browning Complex: I call it Discrimination!” Stunner’s Afflictions: My amazing Adventures and Perspective on Life, 09 Mar. 2006. Web.
A version of this essay first appeared on
Trinidad Junction."
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Selected comment responses (3 out of 9 responses, including internet notices about that post)
These numbers differ from the numbers that were assigned on that blog. I've assigned these numbers for referencing purposes only.
1. derevolushunwidin Says:
November 5, 2011 at 10:05 pm
"It was certainly difficult for me to wrap my mind around the use of the word darkie in Trinidad. I was initially suspicious b/c of the connotations of browning, red, clear, Spanish etc. but I realised with time the darkie was actually simply a descriptor that appeared to have no negative or privileged connotation attached to it. It was a positive and I would argue affirming reference in the diaspora that so often privileges that which is not African.
Thanks for fleshing it out. Excellent piece!"
2. soyluv Says:
November 6, 2011 at 11:09 pm
"Thanks! The manifestation of this piece came through an older blog piece where I spoke about loving being “a sweet darkie” myself, really liking hearing it tossed my way in the street at home because I missed hearing it, and I knew it warmed me on the inside because it was powerful and did something that other similar terms didn’t (couldn’t) do but I hadn’t begun to unpack why, until I started writing about it. I knew my color was being objectified in a sense–I didn’t feel I was, though I was too, in a way. As a feminist, writing about it was awkward at first, to begin to acknowledge the implications behind all this. But I stand by its positive affirmation more than anything else.
That “darkie” is anywhere in the realm of complimentary, given that our society is still rife with color-complexes and everything connected–is very amazing. And we still know about calling people “blue-black” or “so black dey blue”–which is just a degree of skin tone description that’s not at all celebratory. It’s no different from how the “red woman” is always presumed to be appealing and attractive–unless said otherwise. Color helps carries the notion. This is evidenced by those instances when people might say of a certain person, “they only have color” but they’re not attractive. As if color is currency by itself–and we know to some people–it is. If color is currency, then what is the worth of “darkie” in the landscape of brown and light skinned notions of prettiness for women?
Knowing too that language is alive and ever evolving; I really hope that doesn’t change. But I see generational shifts already. When I was a younger, darkie was always implied with attractiveness embedded in there. It was almost implicit. A sweet darkie was sexy, attractive and dark-skinned simultaneously–male or female. And that’s some powerful assertions. Otherwise you could just describe someone otherwise. Teenagers now, I’ve noticed, sometimes use darkie to be more skin-tone descriptive in a way–so the pendulum swings a bit. Though for girls, you can still see it used as a barometer for good looks and skin tone at the same time. And that distinction is so damn necessary."
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3. Dave Says:
January 4, 2012 at 6:44 am
"If y’all want the “final solution” to this dark skin “problem” I suggest a visit to the new Republic of South Sudan and bring back some pics of the most gorgeous, tall, sexy and VERY DARK women who never need any condescension from Orlando or anyone else that “Black is beautiful” or any such patronizing comment. These women can stand toe-to-toe with any “lighter-coloured” women anywhere in the world. While you’re at it, check out the women of Kenya, East Africa, and South India, all very dark-skinned and all (or most) exceptionally classy and gorgeous. The truth of all of this will eventually come out and this tendency to make a spectacle of the very dark-skinned will die out, the sooner the better. Btw, how come no one in the Bible (except for the Queen of Sheba) was dark-skinned or ever depicted as such? Could that be where the problem for the dark-skinned started?"
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Reprint #2
From
https://medium.com/@krystalpennybowen/mystic-to-misery-df158eb587b "Mystic to Misery
Being Brown Skin in The Caribbean Facing the Issue of Colourism" By Krystal Penny Bowen, Nov 30, 2018
"It is ironic that people who despite their many shades are categorised by other races as Black while within the group of Black people there is an persistent issue of colourism.
So how Black are you?
In colonial Caribbean, particularly in Barbados, the tone of your skin determined what friends you had, the places you could live, what job you had and desirability by a potential mate. Controversial? Yes, but true. Today, this interracial discrimination still exists as everyday someone who comes from your same “race” judges you on your status and worth in society (ever so subtly) based on nothing more than the tone of your skin.
From childhood, if you are caramel, bronze colour, you are brown skin, if you are colour is lighter, you are known as Reds or Yellow. Confusing….there is also classifications within these tones, the lighter you are, you may be thought of as “pretty”, great”, “special” or even “sometimish” or “unmannerly/unmarley”. If you are have deep brown or dark skin, you are now “darkie” and your attractiveness may diminish.
This is not a Caribbean issue or African issue but a global issue which was further complicated by slavery, colonialism, education, its histories, media and fashion industry as to what is considered accepted notions of beauty. Soyini Ayanna in “In the Castle of Our Skins: Darkies, Brownings and Red Woman” summed up a reality Black people specifically women face in society. She stated that “One of the things that colorism [sic] enables is the separation of some people from their trace blackness, as well as systematically serving the role of helping people to distance themselves from blackness as a whole and the legacy of that association”.
Writer, Mary C. Waters in her book, “Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams And American Realities” wrote that the “social construction of race in the Caribbean has historically been different than in the United States”. Also she highlighted the similarities of Hispanic Caribbean to English Caribbean where both sets of societies recognised shades of colour between black and white.
Since independence of most Caribbean nations from colonisers and the civil rights movement in United States, some Black people have seen an improvement in their lives through education and work opportunities. However, many continue to be victims of poverty, leading a life of crime and drug abuse. Psychologically, the legacy of the plantation and European caste system still affects our society with many people particularly women opting to wear European weaves and bleaching their skin. As many people of colour continue to face discrimination and racism at a national level, dealing with the issue of colourism with the race is rarely addressed as this further divides this group of people. Presently, there are two camps of thought, those who embrace African styled natural hair and those who use hair extensions and bleaching creams to identify with European aesthetic. In Black. music, news reporting, fashion magazines, there is the whitening or lightening of the Black person. It is even more evident in Spanish speaking or South American countries. E.g. replacement of 2016 Brazil Carnaval Queen Nayara Justino who has a dark skin tone.
Noting this, there is a need to improve race esteem since the rules about colour which determined a person’s worth and position in society are systematically erroneous and without merit."
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