SOCIAL AWARENESS | Self-Hate: The Silent but Deadly Epidemic

There was a time in our culture when a Woman with a natural hairstyle was considered a Queen, a time when we could compliment each other on things we admired, a time when we listened to music to enjoy and not critique. But in the year 2011, for our people, those times are long gone. A Woman with a natural is a "nappy-head", if we like something on someone, instead of complimenting, we find some way to hate, and everything we listen to could have been a little better. If you find yourself spending more time than not criticizing your people, you may suffer from self-hate.

If you are an active Twitter user (like myself), you'll often see #teamlightskin and #teamdarkskin. If you see that, click on it and read all of the ignorant things that follow. I'm all for uplifting and being proud of who you are, but to degrade another group of people, your people, is the epitome of ignorance, and self-hate. We were all #teamnigger at one point. #teamporchmonkey was what the KKK saw in all of us, dark or light. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for all black people, not #teamlightskin. When the water fountains said "Whites Only", there wasn't a sub-text that said "and light-skinned niggers".

Self-Hate causes us to criticize other people according to our own insecurities. Things we hate about ourselves will be the same things we use to bring down someone else. Self-Hate leads to internet bashing, real life bashing, and just all around bitterness. It's something more of us suffer from, than not, and a majority of us are in denial about it. I know, I used to be one of them.

Being someone who used to use Twitter as a place of amusement, I've seen it all. Twitter is a place where people unleash their truest feelings and sometimes own insecurities in forms of the most malicious, disrespectful and degrading matters. If you are plus-size, have darker skin, or unattractive by shallow standards, your best bet would be to stay clear of people who try to make "careers" out of Internet Roasting.

Twitpics, Mediatakeout.com and numerous other sites pass around pictures of innocent and sometimes unknowing people whom a shallow audience would feel is unattractive. I've watched people pick apart some of the most innocent people simply because by shallow society standards, they weren't attractive. So what does this do to our people? It segregates us. It destroys us. And it will eventually eliminate us.

If you are a person who suffers from Self-Hate, most likely you're the person putting lots of time and energy into degrading your people for laughs, but as all these people are laughing with you, remember, one day soon, they'll all be laughing at you.

The point I am trying to make is, if we don't eventually love ourselves as we are, we will die trying to please/become someone/something else. God made us how we are for a reason, and I pray one day we all see how naturally beautiful we are. Self-Hate is another sign that with each generation, we're losing Faith in God, and when he comes back, it could be cookies for us. Think about it...

"Sometimes we talk so much about someone else's reflection, that our mirror gets fogged up and we can't see our own."- Danielyrix