Gabrielle Union Had to School Dwayne Wade’s Sons on the Beauty of Dark Skin Women

When Gabby recognized a glaring red light when these young black boys only saw the beauty of light skin, she stepped in and began pulling up dark-skinned beauties on instagram, including actress Ryan Destiny, star of Lee Daniel’s ‘Star.’ Gabby says, 

“They’re like, ‘Oh, she bad!’ ‘But do you know how many Ryan Destinies there are?’ I pull up every Black model, women from all over the world, and they’re beautiful. But they don’t see the beauty unless it comes from an actress or a supermodel or a video vixen. They have to have somebody else tell them that a chocolate woman is attractive for them to believe it.”

Bingo!

Black boys do have to have someone tell them that chocolate women are beautiful for them to believe it. It’s the same with our girls. We have to go that extra mile because we’ve been shown time and again that society isn’t set up for people are darker hues…But it’s not impossible. I’m encouraged by men like Kofi Siriboe and his rumored relationship with model Duckie. Dude is smitten like a kitten!

Model Duckie and Kofi Siriboe

President Barack and Michelle Obama

Now did they grow up in a household where black beauty was reinforced in the home? For Kofi, who grew up with a strong Ghanaian mom, perhaps. For Barack, who grew up with his white mom and then white grandparents, it’s unlikely. But it can’t hurt, and can only help. 

I’ve seen the difference it makes with my own young daughters to proactively show them photos of beautiful brown and dark-skinned women (women who look like them) on TV, instagram, and in real life. Now they point out beautiful black women to me before I can even say anything. We have to educate them on how to see black beauty. Admittedly, my own education has come largely from instagram where dark-skin beauties are in abundance. See them and you know they’re in a league all their own….you know, maybe we don’t have these conversations with our young black boys because we think that there’s nothing we can do to combat colorism and this seemingly automatic turn towards lighter-skin women. This country is old and this has been going on a long time. But hopefully, what Gabrielle Union did with her step-sons, and what many of us parents are doing with our own younguns, will show that it’s possible to reshape this colorism conversation. After all, look what we did with hair.