BRHood: Jesus christ, here we go.

So, for starters, let’s not compare the “body positive” community to racial attraction since said community tends to ignore black and other PoC bodies in general. Because only white bodies are allowed to be fat in that community. No.

Now, any preference, and this is my hard held belief that will never change ever, is socialized. If you say you are unattracted to ANYTHING physical on a person, it’s socialized. Period. Dot. End of sentence.

A white person to going up to ANY brown person and talking about how much they love their skin and how beautiful it is, even go so far as to say they WANT that skin for themselves, is extremely problematic. Why? Let’s explore. For starters, it trivializes what brown people have to go through having their skin so dark. Of course a white person can’t understand their skin color demonizing them, criminalizing the, and hypersexualizing them. It doesn’t happen to you, so how can you? In your world, “all skin is equal” and since you’re so flooded with white bodies, you think you’re being oh, so progressive by saying how you “prefer dark skin.”

There is a lot of racism, shadism, and colorism that goes into having brown skin. Something a white person will NEVER understand. Something just about every PoC group has that white people are exempt from since it’s their white skin that propagates it. So if all you can say in said discussion is “But I LOVE dark skin! I wish I was dark” you’re ignoring all of that shit. You’re ignoring that little black girls wish so much to be white and hate their skin. You ignore how black women have to permanently alter their hair to look “professional.” You ignore people in Africa, Latin America, and Asia who use skin whitening products to get to YOUR skin tone. You ignore ALL of that, just so you can hold to your “preference.”

And then, we have the issue of white people fetishizing dark bodies for, like, ever. Ever since Europeans saw these black people in Africa, they’ve done nothing but fetishize our bodies. There was a case (can anyone offer her name?) of a European who brought an African woman to Europe just to parade her naked body around to say “look at how these women look!” Then there was slavery, which in America had a lot of sexual discourse. White massas raping their slaves. And white women did it too. Which lead to the fear of precious, white women being raped by these black men. A fear that is still seen today. And all the while, white women fetishize black men’s bodies for their “oh so huge cocks” while simultaneously getting overly offended when black men approach them because they’re “too aggressive” and probably want to rape them. Or, even better, are used to make their daddies mad that their precious white lily is dirtying herself with those n***ers.

And then the hypersexualization of black women, which is still something modern -F-eminists like to pretend doesn’t exist. Where black women are seen as these sexual beings who are having sex from the age of 12, and popping out babies by 13, because they’re such sluts with insatiable sexual appetites. And it’s so normalized that in Japan, whose fetishizing of black bodies is already creepy enough, they have b-style, where little Japanese girls note how clothes that would be “slutty” on them look “cute” on black girls. Very telling that these “slutty” clothing looks normal on a black body, but not on a white skinned body. 

And let’s not forget how black people are always compared to foodstuff, particularly chocolate and the like, to show how our bodies are to be consumed.

And all of this is not even addressing the fetishization of (East) Asian bodies, the exotification of Arab and South Asian people, the sexual criminalization of Native people, and other groups.

So no. I don’t want to hear anything about a “legitimate” preference for brown bodies. If you say that you “prefer” darker skin or “love” darker skin as a white person, you need to step back and check yourself. Because there is a good chance that you’re fetishizing, and it’s creepy, racist, and wrong.