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Thursday, December 4, 2008

The Cool-Colored People

December 4, 2008

The other morning I had the Today program on as kind of white noise to my life and I looked up and there was the most gloriously beautiful woman I'd seen in years, singing an odd song called "If I Were a Boy," in front of crowds standing outside in the cold, bouncing to the rhythm, and mouthing all the lyrics with her. I watched the whole performance, intrigued with the song and the singer, and learned at the end it was the famed Beyoncé. I need not tell you at this point that whatever the opposite of hip is, that's what I am.

Seeing this elegant icon sent me back to my high school days in Alabama. We had a girl in the class who had moved to town from Chicago and she was telling us about a book she'd just read stating the premise that by the year 2000 there would be so much intermarriage in this world that there would be no separate races. Everybody would be a beautiful beige color and they would share the most attractive physical characteristics of all races. She said she couldn't wait to see that day.

Needless to say it didn't happen exactly the way her book predicted. Don't forget the time and place she was reading it; we had never even seen an interracial couple. But watching and listening to Beyoncé, I was struck with how close we are coming to the day when the melding will take place. It didn't happen in Y2K, but look around you at the beautiful people who are beginning to surround us, the cool people who are a mixture of colors and ethnicities. Their stars are rising, and they are already among us. From actors like Terence Howard and Halle Berry to the president elect, the number of cool people in the spotlight--people who happen to be of mixed racial background--is notable and growing, and will probably change the world in less than a generation. The day hasn't quite come, but it is drawing closer. Look around you.

8 comments:

Benedict S. said...

We need a name for the movement. Try "Free Eugenics."

Anonymous said...

Eugene Who?

Anonymous said...

Nice little blogpost, honey. Makes me wish I was a cool color.

Anonymous said...

Inevitible. A product of millionaire sports hero and rapsters becoming the new teen idols, try black, you will never go back, sex as recreation and political correctness glamorizing homosexuality and black skin in the media and print advertising.
I like orientials. They are so fem and don't blur the male and female roles as much.

There is a major power struggle between males and females. Females will reach parity and beyond as we become a matriarcal society. No spell check but you get my drift.

Maybe your blog is moving from objective viewing and careful commentary to stirring up the troops? Let's all send in our favorite photos?

Steve said...

Makes me remember the time back when…
I was working at the Grand Hotel in LA in the early eighties and was behind the front desk one night when a man and women approached the desk needing something. The man was a black guy who I remember being as extraordinarily polite in the probably 15 second exchange. The woman was so extraordinarily beautiful that I didn’t even look at her directly, reason being because I didn’t want to stare, have my jaw drop and all that. No kidding, I wouldn’t even look at her. Later on that night, I found out that it was Vanessa Williams who was intimidating me.

Mary Lois said...

Wow! What a story, Steve! Proves my point entirely.

ZenDenizen said...

What a lovely observation. I liked Dreamsgirls so much, I'm looking forward to seeing Beyonce playing Etta James in Cadillac Records.

Benedict S. said...

I wish the melding of minds proceeded so absolutely beauty-ward as the melding of genes. (And that's Gene Poole.)