Romantic

EpiCenter at Yerba Buena Center
INFORUM at The Commonwealth Club
Contemporary Extension at SFMOMA
International Hour and the International Diplomacy Council

SINGLES & Doubles...
by Jerusha
Yellow Man Black Woman: The Lies that Bind Us

The dating scene in the Bay Area doesn't offer many opportunities to meet marriage-minded “colored folks.” I often hear black singles complain that there's a dearth of good black men or fine sisters in the house. After seeing “Yellowman,” the 2002 Pulitzer Prize-nominated play currently playing at Berkeley Repertory Theater, I'll treasure our relationships even more so for their inherent fragility and the painful history that's woven through them.

In "Yellowman," playwright Dael Orlandersmith tells the story of the intimate connectedness between a lower class, dark-skinned “gullah girl” Alma and her light-skinned childhood companion, Eugene, from the better side of the tracks. Orlandersmith's poetic prose follows their friendship, set in rural South Carolina, as it blossoms into adult love. See the play and you'll leave the cozy, well-appointed theater stunned by the power of art to hit an emotional bulls eye.


I was one of a half-dozen black people sprinkled in the audience of white, middle-aged and elderly Berkeley homemakers, professorial types, students and retirees. The sold-out performance opened in darkness with a solitary pool of light framing Alma sitting alone, her back to a watercolor landscape screen vista and her feet planted firmly on the metaphorical stage planks of multi-colored hues. She began by describing her mother with words that I remember directed towards me as a child: dark, large and therefore not pretty … sexless. Tears welled up in my eyes at the close-to-the-bone truthfulness of that opening monologue. Orlandersmith's prose was so compelling, and the words spoken by Alma conjured up painful emotions from my past experience as a dark,ugly, fat child unappreciated by the opposite sex and pitied by peers, neighbors and family.

And those emotions stay with me to this day. Every time I walk into a room of eligible singles I see the men eye the “light, bright, damn near white” girls with their "good" hair and slender features. I'm convinced that most African-American children enter adulthood with the mandate “better to marry light than dark.” And for intimate activities every male of every color seems to feel entitled to test the myth of “the darker the berry, the sweeter the juice.”

I try to push the automatic negative tape that repeats “I'm too dark. I'm too large,” to the back of my mind, because I know how irrational it is. God created a race of people of such infinite diversity in size, shape, hair type and skin color. A makeup manufacturer once told me there are more than 300 variations of blackness, which only confirms the paucity of product at the cosmetic counters. As usual, corporations seek to narrow the field of acceptable choices. And America's culture has convinced us Halle Berry and Beyonce are the best of black beauty.

In "Yellowman," Alma's male counterpart, Eugene, describes his father by saying he's a handsome man, but like many dark-skinned men, he doesn't know how handsome he is. Eugene is alternately loved and hated by friends and relatives -- and plain hated by his father -- for his good fortune to be light. He's the offspring of a light-skinned alcoholic mother and hard-working, hard-drinking dark father, both of whom thanked God at his birth because he wasn't dark. The statement generated laughter from the audience during performance I attended. It was one of several unsettling moments when people found humor in the most painful of situations.

In "Yellowman's" program notes, Berkeley Rep Artistic Director Tony Taccone points out that Orlandersmith's play is an attempt to explain that we don't live and love in a vacuum of our psyche. “We often forget that our thoughts, feelings and behavior are directly related to larger societal forces that surround and move through us,” he explains. Nowhere is this more evident than in the mating dance performed between black Americans of different skin tones. In a single glance, we often do what we accuse other races of doing to us: weighing, judging, and rejecting someone because of the color of their skin, the texture of their hair and the broadness of their features. "We're all black and we still find reasons to feel superior in our race,” comments my honey colored friend Grace.

Like the masters on the plantations we engage in preferential breeding of our own making. Can we ever escape other's sense of our self?

A few days after I saw "Yellowman" I met Kurt – a tall, fair-skinned black man with piercing hazel eyes and closely cropped light brown hair flecked with gray -- for coffee. Kurt grew up in a mixed-color family: light-skinned, light-haired mother, and brown-skinned, wavy haired father. “Dad was a very handsome man and he was catching sh—t about being good looking early. In his own way, he tried to prepare me,” Kurt said. He explained that when you're light skinned, other blacks constantly berate you because you're not "dark" enough. And as a good looking man, he's often accused of being a womanizer by people who "don't know me from Adam.”

What do you think, readers? Does skin tone color your romantic choices?

From the Editor (Michael D)...

Watch for "Lineup Night at the Berkeley Rep."  Until then, reduced pricing now available.

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Red, black, blue, white, green, brown, yellow and purple. You'll have your choice...