Still, blacks come by their color consciousness honestly. The income gap between light-skinned blacks and dark-skinned blacks is the same as the income gap between whites and blacks; more light-skinned blacks hold white-collar, professional jobs than darker-skinned ones. Pre-movement, black organizations played a role, using the "paper bag test" or combing applicants' hair to screen out the Negroid. In 2001 a black ad agency hired to launch a campaign for a black college was found to have rejected student-actors with natural hair styles and dark skin. And yet while "if you black, get back" is an indictment of self-hatred and colorism, it simultaneously acknowledges that the light-skinned fare better. Perhaps it's self-hating to "offset" dark skin with a luxurious weave, but it may also be merely calculating.
One of the most intelligent, unselfconscious black TV sitcoms (Girlfriends) posited a situation wherein the ensemble's darkest woman rejected a very black, though in every way superior, suitor so that her children would not be Negroid. Vehemently, she explained that her own darkness had cost her friends, love, employment, and respect throughout her life, and she made no bones about having done everything in her power to offset it, including a weave, Her friends, two of them visibly biracial and one with a very long weave, accepted her justification, dropped their protests, and sympathized. (p. 141) - Dickerson, Debra J. The End of Blackness. New York: Anchor Books, 2004
