PatriotWarrior
Honour

Yes, now I see it more clearly. Thanks for the clarification. I of course should have remembered that each thing bears the mark of it's specific environment. While I have never spent any time in the kind of Latin American societies described in the post, I have passed through the magreb and I have spent time with people from those communities. What you say about Black people internalising the contempt and disregard that the paler society has for thier African selves and thier original cultures is very true. So yes, I can see where an African woman would lead her children away from what (to the best of her knowledge), has been nothing other than a curse.

It is a complex thing though because I doubt if there are men who have a deeply held convinction that thier mothers are ugly or contemptible. Perhaps this may be so in cases where the mother was absent during the child's crucial years of socialisation or where the mother was exceedingly abusive. However, I think that in situations where the bond between mother and child is as the norm, then the male child will tend to idealise his mother. He may grow still holding on to the conventional 'wisdom' that places ones that look like her at the bottom of the scale, but there will always something in him that has regard for that culture.

This I think explains why we see even in these cultures where the things of Africa are suppossedely scorned, ones still holding on either to strands of pure African culture (e.g. Candomble in brasil) or some derivative of African cultures (or ways) - Note that, even in societies where the 'fair' ones are held up as paragons of beauty, the prototype from which thier 'charms' are derived is the African woman (i.e all your shakiras, j-los etc. are nothing more than attempts to graft African rhythms of being onto a pale skin).

In short, what I am saying is, we should never under-estimate the influence of African femninity or it's ability to manifest it's own unique forms even in the most comprehensively hostile environments.

Wisdom and Strength