Wipe This Black Off My Lips

Hapa Mag - AUGUST 26, 2020

By Meagan Kimberly Smith

Sophomore year of high school, I kissed a boy with way too much clout — or so I thought. He was cute, popular, and played football. Three for three! Oh, and he was white! Ding ding ding jackpot! Most of the boys with “merit” were.

We kissed at a party. It was exciting despite his lack of technique. I guess when you looked like he did, white and dripping in privilege, skill was not essential. I, on the other hand, took the kiss very seriously. I showed him all the goods. (It was just kissing, y'all! Fear not.) After a few minutes of locked lips he said, “WOW,” and I thought to myself, “That’s right, I turned this boy out!” He continued, “I’ve never kissed a Black girl before.” I went on to ask him “…and what did you think?” I sounded like an eager student talking to her pretentious professor. He responded, “Really good! You’re actually a really good kisser and super pretty for a Black girl.” At the time I thought, “Phew, I passed his test! Thank god he still thinks I’m pretty.” I was so relieved that my Blackness didn’t keep me from reaching my full potential, as it so often had in the past. My Blackness was something I was used to leaping over. It’s like my white side opened the doors and quietly snuck my Black side in. My Black side kept her head down and took whatever she could get, including whack compliments from white boys who couldn’t kiss for shit.

That kissituation got me thinking, “Why am I pretty for a Black girl? Were most Black girls ugly? I always found Black women to be gorgeous, but did most white boys think otherwise? And what was it that made me pretty for a Black girl? Was it because I was lighter skinned?”

Bingo.

After that kiss, I began to notice white boys complimented me on my “Black features,” but never my Blackness. They always acted as if I was pretty despite my Blackness. My Black features dipped in light skin made me a fetish to these bored white boys. It made me… drum roll please… exotic. I spoke white enough and looked white enough while my Blackness was a naughty little secret that got them off. In my gut I knew if I was darker they would never openly like me. So at that party, kissing that white boy, I was grateful that the race gods made me a lucky little light-skinned halfie.

I began to understand why my Black mother, the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, had so much self-hate. I now knew what she meant when she would say, “You’re so fortunate to have good hair, good skin, and green eyes.”

These white boys, without even knowing it, saw themselves as being above Black girls. Innocence by ignorance aside, their microaggressions puckered up and landed on my lips. This was a kiss that should have been about two teens being teens but instead was about colorism and fetishization. Before that night, I thought my mother was simply a beautiful woman, but I quickly learned she was only beautiful for a Black woman; a deprivation of equality and elevation my mother and her beauty deserve. Maybe it was my own deep-rooted ignorance or saturation in self-hate that I never even stopped to ask,

“Is he actually cute… or just cute for a white boy?”