‘The Blackening’: When Things Get Spooky, We Ride Together

One of my favorite things to do is go to Black ass movies, with a Black ass audience in the theater. Everyone with separate lives and experiences that all relate to “Blackness” in its various forms. Growing up, I had an interesting relationship with Blackness. I experienced a huge amount of colorism growing up, and it became hard to appreciate my complexion until I reached college. My Blackness was always associated with something negative, something that needed to be diminished in order to be accepted as beautiful. I would appreciate the communal culture, but I rarely saw myself in a position of appreciation throughout various forms of media. When folks question what it means to be Black, there’s a “jokey, but serious” merit-based system that decides your “level” of Blackness. It’s honored by the actions in relation to culture, language, reaction to danger, and many more things that put us in contrast to what the world assumes us to be. In the same place where our merit-based system exists, whiteness has consistently tried to dissect it for their understanding. So when I think about dark skin women depicted in media, we’re usually upheld to a certain view of Blackness upheld by colorism/white supremacy. We’re seen as aggressors (Pam, Martin), needed to be sacrificed in order for people to learn valuable lessons (Candy, Pose), or even the scapegoat (Annalise Keating, How to Get Away with Murder). So when I saw that Lisa’s friends loved her, looked out for her, and even when t…