Paul Williams, Gleaner Writer

The subjects of this week's His Story have no names and belong to the variegated race. You see them in the inner cities of downtown Kingston, in Cross Roads, Half-Way Tree, all over Kingston and St Andrew. Many of them are students. Their necks, hands and torsos are very dark, but their faces are pale, deathlike, some replete with blotches and sores. And you wonder what affliction has beset so many of our young black-skinned Jamaican youths.

Sociologists will tell you their sallow facial skin, caused by bleaching, is the physical manifestation of deep-seated psycho-social malaise that goes way back to colonial times, to the plantations of slavery days, when the black-skinned man was reduced to the status of beast of burden. His identity was taken away from him, and he was told that his black skin was a curse.

What's their story?

But after 200 years since the abolition of the slave trade, 170 years since the abolition of slavery, after the black pride teachings of National Hero Marcus Garvey, the liberating songs of Bob Marley and the black-conscious movements of the 1960s and 1970s, we now have a generation of inner-city youths who are not happy with their black skin and are bent on expunging the abundance of melanin from it.

So, parading with pride in this land of predominantly black people, are variegated men - neither brown, nor black, nor white. But what is the variegated man's story? Who and what are telling him to rid himself of his black visage? Is what he's doing really a strong statement of rejection of his black identity? Is it hip, perhaps to hop away tomorrow? Does it matter whether he bleaches or not? To find answers to these questions, this writer recently spoke with some of these variegated youths themselves.

For the most part, not one of those who were approached was willing to be photographed, understandably so. Some only smiled when the questions were posed. The ones who answered gave only one-word or short-phrase responses. Even in Jamaican Creole, they could not explain why they were bleaching.

None did not get into the argument that skin bleaching is as a result of low self-esteem and self-hatred. One very pleasant one said, "Big man, mi a black man, but yuh done know ... ." Another claimed his bleaching came by accident. The créme that he used to treat his acne, bleached his face, and he loved the look, so he continued to use it.

The most interesting response came from a young man who doesn't bleach. He said that the females are, in fact, the ones who are pressuring some of the youths to bleach because they want "pretty man". He explained how it was the women, in many cases, who actually got the bleaching agents for some of these 'thugs' and apply it to their face. So, in 2008, in some quarters in the inner cities of Jamaica, the benchmark of male beauty is a bleached face.

Women bleaching for years

Some of these 'thugs' are influenced by what they see their women do. But, the practice of skin bleaching among women, not only blacks, is nothing new. Women have been bleaching for many reasons. In Jamaica, it is mainly because many darker skin women are of the perception that Jamaican men prefer 'brownings' more. Some bleach because bleaching 'is in style'. And some really do not like their black face. But the social dynamics that are driving the men to join in the practice of blanching are yet to be clearly identified.

However, what the youths do not understand, perhaps, is that there are forces, some subliminal, some deliberate, that are leading them to indulge in a very dangerous practice. Media images, seemingly innocent racial epithets, the disregard for certain values, and the association of the colour black with all that is negative and bad, are telling them directly and indirectly that their black skin is not good enough, thus their effort to get rid of it. I can relate to this notion.

My experience when I was a youngster was sometimes unpleasant and, at one stage, I believed the negative comments about my black face, and wondered sometimes why I was born black. Even some of my own teachers would be very sarcastic about how I look. I noticed the preferential treatment they would give to my brown and light-skinned classmates. And we, the black-faced ones, never sat at the front of the class.

It was when I started to study Caribbean history in grade 10 that I became proud of my heritage and my black face. I became defiant and 'boasy', and would challenge anyone who dared to comment negatively on my blackness. It was a life of basking in my black pride, until one afternoon in 2004, in a taxi from Papine, St Andrew, the driver stopped at a certain juncture to allow a brown-skinned female driver on to the main road, Old Hope Road.

He said to me, "Boy, anytime mi si de brown woman dem, mi affi give dem a bligh yu nuh." Wrong comment to the wrong man. "So, if it were a black-skinned woman, you wouldn't let her through?" was my subdued response. This man, whose skin is as black as coal, looked at me (whose skin is just as black) and said in a very strong tone, "No sah, mi grandmother sey anything black nuh good and a true!" He went on to say how much his babymother and daughter were "brown, brown, brown." I told him how much of a "black, black, black idiot" he was before exiting his taxi, which is predominantly supported by black people.

Back then, there was no bleaching phenomenon among black-skinned inner city and rural youths. Sadly, today there is. It is a cause for concern because sooner rather than later we are going to have a generation of black-skinned youths utterly confused about their identity, living in shame because of their black face, and wallowing in self-hatred, which can destroy their self-confidence, render them useless to themselves, their community and the wider society. How much we have regressed.

paul.williams@gleanerjm.com