Black is beautiful

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Black is beautiful is a cultural movement which began in the United States of America, beginning in the 1960s. It later spread to much of the Black world, most prominently in the writings of the Black Consciousness Movement of Steve Biko in South Africa. It aims to dispel the widespread notion in western cultures that black people's natural features such as skin color, facial features and hair are inherently ugly.^[1] John Sweat Rock was the first to coin the phrase "Black is Beautiful" during a speech in 1858. The movement also encouraged men and women to stop straightening their hair and attempting to lighten or bleach their skin.^[2]. The prevailing idea in American culture, perpetuated by the media, was that black features were less attractive or desirable than white features. The idea that blackness was ugly was highly damaging to the psyche of African Americans, manifesting itself as internalized racism.^[3] This idea even existed in black communities^[4] and led to practices such as paper bag parties.

Among other achievements, the "Black is beautiful" movement was largely responsible for the popularity of the Afro hairstyle.

Even now the movement has not fully taken hold. According to figures compiled by the Essence market research team, African Americans spend 25 percent more of their disposable income on personal care products than the general population.^[5] Natural hair styles are still considered "somewhat rebellious" or "unkempt" in parts of the United States.

“Black is Beautiful” came from the Black Cultural Movement also known as the black aesthetics movement and Black Arts Movement. The central purpose of the movement was “to make African Americans totally and irreversibly proud of their racial and cultural heritage.” During this movement, there were a few other topics addressed besides that of having black pride. Art became increasingly important because of a newly appreciated relationship between art and politics. Political struggles bring about art that can later be used to explain things.

Kwame Brathwaite, president of the National Council of Artists (NCA) New York chapter stated,

"We came together to deal with the arts, to tie them to what was going on in Africa. We had the idea; you can’t divorce art from the struggle.” As a result, “artists were no longer artists, but the organizers of a movement.” We replaced the word “negro” with “African”. Another topic or perspective is that of “black nationalism”. This principle introduces the idea of blacks having a totally separate society from whites. The last of the issues was that black culture is not completely explainable. Most people call this just being black."

Before the movement, blacks were taught that they were less only because of the color of their skin. Many blacks learned not only white hatred but internalized hatred. They began to put themselves down and had low self esteem and deprecated their own kind. If you were dark skinned, you were looked on as even less than other black people. Black people discriminated against other black people by having paper bag parties that allowed only people who were as light as the color of the bag. Wallace Thurman’s Blacker the Berry described a family that wanted to be “whiter and whiter” until they were white or looked as though they were white.

The Black Cultural Movement helped blacks to pay attention to something extremely simple like art to awaken minds. The phrase “Black is Beautiful” is a statement that helps all black people to boost their self esteem.

[edit] See also

• Racial transformation
• Natural hair
• Afro
• Cornrows
• Dreadlocks
• John Rock
• Blackness
• Jewcy
• Cool (aesthetic)

[edit] References