Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: COLOR (07/30/20)
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TITLE: Dark Or Light? | Previous Challenge Entry
By Gloria Pierre Dean
08/05/20 -
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I had graduated from high school with twice Mary’s grades and more GCEs than she, yet she had been given the job and I had not.
I smiled weakly and walked away slowly. The news was not new. It reinforced the ‘sick feeling in my stomach that I experienced whenever I was faced with the insurmountable.
I was looking for a job with prospects so I applied to the two local banks in my small Caribbean ‘paradise’ island. Ex-classmates Kathleen and Gayle got bank jobs almost immediately. From years together at high school, I knew what their academic abilities were. One had graduated with 2 G.C.E. subjects and the other had 3 whereas I had 7 subjects.
*[GCE = UK High School Diploma]
So, I smiled serenely to myself. I was shy and introverted so I was not about to ‘rant and rave’ about the injustice, but I was angry.
I remember the first time I became aware of the difference in our multi-racial culture. Most everyone had African lineage but some people because of European ancestry had noticeably different skin colour. To me, it added to the joys of life except in this area.
I have a childhood memory that rancour.
“Good looking little darkie,” said the male visitor to my aunt’s home when he saw me. His words made my skin crawl. I was an innocent 7-year-old paying my daily duty visit, as instructed by my father. I was struck by his words. I remember thinking quietly to myself that ‘at least I was not ugly’ and escaped from the house as soon as I could.
Perspectives on beauty in the 1970s indicated that it was preferable for bank employees and beauty queens to be ‘light-skinned’.
So banking was out...
Quiet hope came in the news media. Imagine that!
"Jennifer Josephine Hosteen won the Miss World contest in 1970 she was the first woman from Grenada and the first woman of African ancestry to hold the crown."
https://black past.org/gah/hosten-jennifer-1948
Perspectives on beauty in the 1970s indicated that it was preferable for bank employees and beauty queens to be ‘light-skinned’.
I continued in my retail job and about four weeks later, I received a call from my old school principal. She offered me a job at a high school. I gladly accepted and became a teacher. The job was challenging. The students loved me, and we all learned a lot. I remember having to pray for courage because I was shy.
Eventually, God closed that door and opened another. I met my old elementary school teacher who had become a nurse in the UK. “You would love it,” she said with a smile. “You are more than qualified!”
I applied and was accepted by a London Nursing School. I moved to the UK where I had to deal with even greater and more intense issues of ‘light and dark’ but of different kinds. I was quite naive to Western life. I grew older and awareness of ‘The One who gave Light and Who Is Light’ grew stronger in me. I learned that being ‘dark or light’ has strong spiritual meaning. It was a matter of the spirit, heart and soul of a man which shows out in how we live, what we believe, what feeds our souls and what we do with our God-given gifts.
The purveyor of ‘dark’ is the enemy of us all. That, is a condition of the spirit, of the heart and it trickles into the soul and the body and shows out in actions.
The Light of the World, Jesus, through the Holy Spirit produces good fruit in us. “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” {John 8:12}
Light dispels darkness; when light shows up, darkness flees. Take a candle into a dark room and note the change.
In conclusion, in the minds of post - colonialists, my dark skin was a disqualifier or an 'ugly’. That was a condition of their hearts.
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PS - Names were changed to protect the identity of individuals.
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