An Open Letter to Kodak Black: From Black Women
Kodak Black is taken a lot of heat and criticism online because of comments he made during one his Instagram live feeds Saturday (June 24th). Even though this happened during the weekend the conversation has poured onto this week.
During his Instagram live feed the Project Baby answered a question about dating KeKe Palmer, an award winning black actress. In response Kodak said Palmer wasn't really his style.
“Keke Palmer, she straight, I’d bag her, but I don’t really like black girls like that, sorta kinda."
This comment alone had social media in a frenzy. He said, singer/song writer Taylor Swift or J Lo would be more of his style.
As if, Kodak Black wasn't in enough heat already Monday (June 26) he decided to clarify that he does like black women, but only a specific kind. This specific kind of woman he described was a "redbone" and "yellow bone".
In the black community meaning a fair or light-skinned African American woman, who may be mixed with another race other than African descent.
These comments had the rapper receiving backlash on social media. The world of "Black Twitter" shamed Kodak Black for his comments.
The backlash,spread over to multiple social media platforms, and other popular hip hop radio stations and television shows,discussed Kodak's words.
Yesterday, Kodak Black temporarily deleted his social media accounts. However, deleting these accounts ddi not hault the discussions online.
Many of these discussions, focusing on why or why not darker skinned black women should care, focusing on the issue colorism in the black community, and also focusing on the conversations on hip hop rappers demeaning black women.
The controversy, is deeper than Kodak Black saying "he doesn't really like black women" the comments he made about liking specifically only "red bones" or yellow bones" raises the issues of colorism in the African American community.
The diction the 20 year old rapper used to express his preferences, does not draw a clear line of if his preferences are rooted out of self hatred from years of black oppression or him simply just saying what he is attracted too.
Some fans are saying they will not be supporting his music anymore. Others speculate to whether or not Kodak saying his dating preferences should be receiving this much attention.
In response to all of the controversy, Kodak Black has not made any further comments about dating black woman. He deleted his twitter and Instagram account yesterday, but today reactivated his Twitter account.
It may take a while for Kodak to recover form his mistakes. But for black women every where I can say we don't care, what he prefers, we do care about being respected as a black women.
