Telling DD the darker your skin the more beautiful you are but she won't accept it

[PatricksRum]

DD7 is slightly darker than me and consistently tells how she hates her skin because "it's too dark."
She says she wants skin like mine as then she could be beautiful.
The difference between us is negligible and barely noticeable.

She has lots of darker-skinned dolls, toys and books containing them but is there anything else I can do to reinforce that black is beautiful?

How does it equate to skin colour.

I'm light-skinned. I was of the belief that I was at ugly as I was too dark as a child and was jealous of white people.
I didn't think I was beautiful or more beautiful than anyone else then nor do I now.

I don't understand this question.

She doesn't measure value with how pretty she thinks someone is. Why do you teach that to your children?

Racism exists and black people receive it everyday. Me teaching the opposite is not reinforcing the negative stereotype.

I don't need to replace it with white as that is what white people do daily.

Why do I teach my children that they are equal?

Personally, I think if you are Black and grew up within a Black family, this dialogue between a parent and child would not be unfamiliar or surprising because you would have lived experience of this topic as well as historical context.

Take that as you may, OP, and my other melinated peers who are present.

I'm light-skinned so I'm used to this othering.

The darker your skin the more discrimination you experience. Thus, 'the darker the skin the more beautiful you are' is what I teach her. The prejudice and abuse one experiences due to something they can't change creates a true inner beauty.

I'm asking why you teach them that beauty directly correlates with being equal.

Are you suggesting I'm not black?

I don’t. I teach them that they are equal. You are the one linking beauty with skin colour.

Me too. She has pointed in bad faith.

Society is. I'm simply informing her that the darker the skin the more beautiful you are.

You can teach equality whilst also stating your opinion on what makes one beautiful.

Now you're just being ridiculous. What a waste of time.

Yes that is why we are encouraged to say those sayings that essentially promote the beauty and overall value of darker skinned Black people. It is complex.

On one hand, the validation one gets from wider/white society for being light skinned might compensate for any isolation one feels from the Black community.

On the other hand, that lightskinned person might not really benefit from that validation or it really might not exist and they have no societal belonging.

Either way, dark skinned Black people only receive that validation from (some of) the Black community so maybe it makes sense to push them up, even it it can be argued it is somewhat at the expense of lightskinned Black people.

I would never offer my opinion on what I think we should do unless explicitly invited to, like here, because I am uncertain there is one right answer but a parents' decision could have massive influence over their specific child.

I agree.

No, I am suggesting that some posters on here are not because this topic seems so unfamiliar to them. I think you had a similar hunch earlier.

You keep repeating over and over this thing about darker skin being more beautiful and you are totally stuck on it, but it's hugely flawed which even your child seems to understand and is rejecting it. Your child doesn't need her beauty to be defined in relation to other people. She is beautiful in her own right. You are inadvertently reinforcing the exact thing that you are trying to counteract.

"The darker the skin the more beautiful you are" implies a sliding scale where skin tone is intrinsically linked to beauty. Others have pointed out the glaring issue here that anyone who has darker skin than your daughter (in your eyes) is therefore more beautiful than her. You didn't/couldn't address that point when it was raised.

Not even. That's what it read like. I'm autistic and read things literally so I asked for clarification.

Oh sorry. I didn't really understand.

I think youre seeing this from a very literal perspective of who is actually darker from a mathematical or scientific perspective instead of through a lens of colourism where Black (and other non-white) people where broadly and subjectively classified according to their proximity to eurocentric features or whiteness. Yes skin colour was a major aspect of this, but not the only one.

Yes I totally see this. That's why I tell her the things I do.
I didn't see any representation as a child and it really made me have an inner hatred of my skin colour.

It's difficult to navigate and tricky to work out how to overcome it.

It's interesting how people are equating my description of beauty to looks only. To me, beauty isn't kin deep. I'm of the opinion that any and all abuse, trauma and pain one experiences only adds to their beauty. Beauty is strength. Black is beauty.

OP seems to be talking in very literal terms herself (like OP, I am autistic and can be quite literal in my interpretation) and there's nothing to suggest in her writing that she isn't purely talking about skin colour. Perhaps she can clarify if she means something different to what she has actually written, repeatedly.

Flawed how?
She rejects anything that I challenge, she's 7.
I'm trying to counteract racism by being pro-black.
There's no sliding scale. Black can come in all different tones.
If you think that a pink dress is more beautiful than a red dress does that mean you think everyone wearing a red dress isn't beautiful?

For example, being dark skinned would typically also mean you have 4c hair because it is less likely you are mixed with other ethnicities (Caucasian especially). That put you and anyone vaguely like you at the far end of the scale compared to someone who has lighter skin, and especially with lighter skin and looser hair. Sadly, colonialism meant that these values were either adopted by colonised countries, or in some places in the world, they built on complentary ideas about caste and skin colour that those socities already had.