BLACK WOMEN ARE BEAUTIFUL

BLACK WOMEN ARE BEAUTIFUL by Celine Leduc

Why Are Black Women Rated Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women, But Black Men Are Rated Better Looking Than Other Men? By Satoshi Kanazawa a doctor in psychology his article was published in Psychology Today. I READ THE ARTICLE and wondered who he interviewed and what his sources were and test subjects. I also want to know the type of questions he asked and his test audience because it seems that he was talking to members of some racist club.

Psychologist will say I am White yet a Black women consider me to be light skinned. As a child I was told that the Devil was Black, and that Black equated ugly and less intelligent. Tintin the famous and infamous comic strip from Belgium showed in Tintin au Congo Black Africans as flesh eaters or cannibals that had big lips and distorted features, they were half dressed, drawn ugly and asymmetrical. Well it was the perception or imagination of Herger and his imagination was very far from the truth. His perspective was warped and he did not acknowledge the fact that his ancestors had gone into the Congo and had raped women, enslaved women, at times disfiguring them, and much worst. Then in his devilish way he portrays them ugly, the ugliness came out of his own prejudice and his fear of looking in a mirror out of fear of seeing the devil.

In reading this article I remembered that I was told do not go in the Black community you are not safe, you will not be treated properly. They will look down on you. Black Women are cruel and mean and look at them they are fat and ugly. The very same people told me as a child to stop being black and loose weight. Truth be told it was a Black woman who was the first made me feel beautiful and taught me ab out fashion, she taught me how to dress up and use colors she gave me self confidence. Another Black women gave me a sense of self-worth by saying as a 10 year old child was right when I disagreed with my father because I was not allowed to play with her son, because he (a Black child) would cause me problems. My father caused me to be minus a friend yet his mom, gave me the biggest hug, that too me is beauty for she saw good in me and she acknowledge it regardless my skin tone, and how hurt she felt. Her son was in danger for he could have been hurt and beaten by racist people. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and it is objective and subjective.

In a very objective way I can look at a women and her inner beauty that shines in her eyes, I can see the love that comes out of her smile, I can see the darkness of her skin as an added feature that is beautiful for her skin has many colors, it shimmers from gold to dark brown in the sun. I can see beautiful white teeth and I can see hair that is nice and thick. I can see that we are similar as we are women of different skin tone and complexion. Beauty comes out of the soul and radiates in the face, so please look deeper and find the inner and outer beauty of the women that stand in front of you. The inner beauty is the intelligence of the person that sparkles in her eyes.

IFLAC newsletter

Dear Bernie,

I hope it is all right with you that I am bringing our important exchange on the urgent need of a "Culture of Peace," to the IFLAC Newsletter and audience, as I know it would interest our memdbers and readers.

I admire your wisdom, depth and sincerity, in your analysis below, and your deep faith in research, science and sociology, to promote a better world beyond war. However, with the years and recent violent global developments, especially in the Middle East, I have become more and more convinced, that the intellectual approach is not enough in our attempt to reach the masses and the leaders of the world, that are after all, the ones who decide our fate.

The masses, and it seems, even the politicians, do not read serious sociological books anymore! We need to convince them of the urgent need of a powerful global peace culture, through a vehicle of the masses, which is unquestionably today - Television by Satellite. I have written an article about the urgent need of a WSPC: THE WORLD TV SATELLITE FOR A HARMONIOUS PEACE CULTURE, in my Homepage: www.iflac.com/ada

and you are warmly invited to read it and comment on it. In this article I speak about the great role of women, who are more than half the world, in the creation of this so urgently needed WSPC, but of course the W stands also for all the citizens of the"World", and not only for "women."

I warmly invite you to join IFLAC, and to send your response to the whole of our IFLAC list. Several members have commented on how honest, interesting and constructive your work, experience, and points of view are.

What we need to do now, is to all join hands and strengths together in harmony, and work effectively in unison, toward the changing of our prevalent dangerous "Violent Global Culture" to a " Global Harmonious Peace Culture."

LIERATURE AND POETRY

In addition to scientific and sociological research, at IFLAC: The International Forum for the Literature and Culture of Peace, we try to bring about the so needed "harmonious culture of peace", through what you have hinted at as being the "inner being" - by the writing and promotion of peace literature and peace poetry.

You are invited to visit my Homepage, and 25 published books at www.amazon.com that includes as well, the IFLAC PEACE CULTURE ANTHOLOGY, that attempt to promote peace values and the harmonious culture of peace. Many of these books have been translated into several languages, and they have received international prizes, and are used as Textbooks in schools, colleges, universities and various other institutions. My two recent books on this subject are: YOU AND I CAN CHANGE THE WORLD, and WOMEN CREATING A WORLD BEYOND WAR AND VIOLENCE.

I warmly congratulate you again, in my name and in the name of IFLAC, on your extensive sociological peace research and "Imagination." I keenly hope that more serious sociologists like you, students, teachers and people from all walks of life, including political leaders, would join our mutual peace efforts soon.

CONCLUSION

The creation of a better, more just, and more harmonious planet beyond war, terrorism and violence, should be the "Primary National Goal" of all the States and citizens of the world - before our beautiful blue planet is destroyed by a horrendous nuclear mushroom flame....

Prof. Ada Aharoni

IFLAC Founder - President

Berniephi@aol.com wrote:

Dear Ada,

I've just read your biography, and I much admire your outstanding work toward achieving peace in our world, a world that I believe we both see as deeply threatened in many ways, with those threats accelerating. And I much appreciate your looking at my website, and especially your critical remarks about the limitations of that website and sociology in general in failing to work on solutions and not just working on understanding problems.

By the way, have you ever met Chanoch Jacobsen, a sociology professor at the Technion? I suspect that he is no longer with us, as I haven't heard from him in several years. He contributed a chapter in the 2001 volume, Toward a Sociological Imagination: Bridging Specialized Fields (cited on my website). His emphasis was on the computer simulation of complex problems, somewhat premature, but the flow diagrams that are a prelude for such simulations are not premature.

Your criticism is very well-taken, for I have only just begun to move in a political direction, and there is very little of that emphasis throughout the social sciences, unfortunately. But "The Evolutionary Manifesto" on my website does indeed point in that direction, even if it is not very clear as to what it is suggesting, and even if it doesn't go very far. The 2nd recommendation (the 1st of deep democracy is, I'm sure, a direction that we share), that of the scientific method in everyday life, is in fact a powerful direction once it is spelled out. And I'm presently working on that in my half-completed manuscript, "Armageddon or Evolution? The Scientific Method in Everyday Life."

To explain a bit--and I will follow your lead with my own criticism of efforts to achieve peace--I refer you to the countercultural movement in the 1960s, mainly in the U.S. among college students, but in Europe and elsewhere as well (especially France) to an extent. The emphasis was certainly on democracy and peace (especially ending the war in Vietnam). But the students and others, who tried very very hard to change the world by developing changes in culture, followed a self-limiting path: they failed to understand the necessity of their own intellectual development as a basis for understanding problems in the world and themselves. One can hardly blame them, since social scientists and philosophers and those in the humanities had failed to integrate their knowledge, so that the students had very little to build on. Unfortunately, in my view much the same situation with regard to understanding human behavior and human problems prevails today. Specifically, I see direct efforts to achieve peace as succeeding in dampening some fires, but that is by no means enough to counter escalating fires throughout the world. And once again, I blame social scientists far more than any other group for this situation, since they haven't provided the framework of understanding needed for political leaders and others to use it to help them solve world problems.

What is to be done? My own orienation is very optimistic about the infinite human potential, especially with the aid of language and the scientific method, but realistic about the very limited time available to confront threatening and urgent problems. I can only give hints about my recommendations in a letter, hints that I'm trying to spell out in the book I'm writing (which builds on recent published books). Those books on my website point to our stratified or bureaucratic metaphysical stance or worldview--including yours and mine--which gets in the way of that individual evolution. More specifically--following figure 1-1in Beyond Sociology's Tower of Babel --our worldview has yielded an escalating gap between aspirations and their fulfillment (both materially and non-materially). That gap between what we want and are able to get is powered by escalating desires or cultural values and limited ability to fulfill them, powered by patterns of social stratification and bureaucracy. And as a result, we are able to obtain only very limited reinforcements or positive sanctions from ourselves and others--relative to the numerous situations where we fail in our own eyes to fulfill our goals. Figure i-2 in my Armageddon manuscript carries this argument further: this in turn not only affects our epistemology--we are unable to follow scientific ideals because they conflict with our worldview--but it also adds fuel to the fire of our problems.

Yet following figure i-2, all of this can be reversed: learning to use the scientific method in everyday life can yield the narrowing of that aspirations-fulfillment gap in the short run, more frequent reinforcements for the individual, and the raising of both aspirations and their fulfillment in the long run. Yet this takes deep understanding of the forces involved. And it involves absolutely fundamental changes in the behavior of the individual. We should, then, all work toward our own individual evolution as a basis for developing the understanding, the emotional force and the actions that solutions to world problems require.

These few abstract words can do little justice to the detailed arguments in my books--I know that I'm not being clear. Let me try again in another way--perhaps in several ways. Erich Fromm's Man for Himself suggests that we must somehow learn to love ourselves before we can learn to love others. Carrying this idea much further, our failure to love ourselves derives from our stratified worldview which points us outward rather than, interactively, both inward an outward. Throughout early human history people had to learn to confront problems in their physical environments in order to survive, yielding an outward orientation, rather than the invisible world that language enables us to enter. I see this as continuing into the modern era, making it verty difficult for us to learn how to reinforce ourselves and develop our understanding, ability to express our emotions, and act effectively.

Coming at my basic ideas in still another way, social science has emphasized concepts that deal with structures--or persisting behavior--as yielding the major forces that shape human behavior (such as cultural values, social stratification, bureaucracy, rituals, self image cultural norms, institutions). And those structures can in turn be linked together in systematic ways as I've tried to do in my books (e.g., the cultural value of equality coupled with patterns of social stratification yields an aspirations/fulfillment gap, anomie, alienation, and fosters a wide range of social and personal problems). Yet our everyday concepts emphasize the momentary situation rather than structures. As a result, no matter how much we attempt to change our own behavior or that of others, we fail to alter structures and our efforts at change are self-limiting. Yet an evolutionary worldview coupled with a scientific method used in everyday life which follows scientific ideals can reverse this situation, narrowing that gap and making progress on social problems.

More specifically, I think that we all should learn to work in two ways: attempting to solve fundamental human problems like war, and indirectly, learning to change our own orientation from a stratified to an evolutionary worldview.

I'd appreciate your comments, as I know I've communicated my thoughts only slightly.

Best wishes,
Bernie

Dear Bernie,

I hope it is all right with you that I am bringing our important exchange on the urgent need of a "Culture of Peace," to the IFLAC Newsletter and audience, as I know it would interest our memdbers and readers.

I admire your wisdom, depth and sincerity, in your analysis below, and your deep faith in research, science and sociology, to promote a better world beyond war. However, with the years and recent violent global developments, especially in the Middle East, I have become more and more convinced, that the intellectual approach is not enough in our attempt to reach the masses and the leaders of the world, that are after all, the ones who decide our fate.

The masses, and it seems, even the politicians, do not read serious sociological books anymore! We need to convince them of the urgent need of a powerful global peace culture, through a vehicle of the masses, which is unquestionably today - Television by Satellite. I have written an article about the urgent need of a WSPC: THE WORLD TV SATELLITE FOR A HARMONIOUS PEACE CULTURE, in my Homepage: www.iflac.com/ada

and you are warmly invited to read it and comment on it. In this article I speak about the great role of women, who are more than half the world, in the creation of this so urgently needed WSPC, but of course the W stands also for all the citizens of the"World", and not only for "women."

I warmly invite you to join IFLAC, and to send your response to the whole of our IFLAC list. Several members have commented on how honest, interesting and constructive your work, experience, and points of view are.

What we need to do now, is to all join hands and strengths together in harmony, and work effectively in unison, toward the changing of our prevalent dangerous "Violent Global Culture" to a " Global Harmonious Peace Culture."

LIERATURE AND POETRY

In addition to scientific and sociological research, at IFLAC: The International Forum for the Literature and Culture of Peace, we try to bring about the so needed "harmonious culture of peace", through what you have hinted at as being the "inner being" - by the writing and promotion of peace literature and peace poetry.

You are invited to visit my Homepage, and 25 published books at www.amazon.com that includes as well, the IFLAC PEACE CULTURE ANTHOLOGY, that attempt to promote peace values and the harmonious culture of peace. Many of these books have been translated into several languages, and they have received international prizes, and are used as Textbooks in schools, colleges, universities and various other institutions. My two recent books on this subject are: YOU AND I CAN CHANGE THE WORLD, and WOMEN CREATING A WORLD BEYOND WAR AND VIOLENCE.

I warmly congratulate you again, in my name and in the name of IFLAC, on your extensive sociological peace research and "Imagination." I keenly hope that more serious sociologists like you, students, teachers and people from all walks of life, including political leaders, would join our mutual peace efforts soon.

CONCLUSION

The creation of a better, more just, and more harmonious planet beyond war, terrorism and violence, should be the "Primary National Goal" of all the States and citizens of the world - before our beautiful blue planet is destroyed by a horrendous nuclear mushroom flame....

Prof. Ada Aharoni

IFLAC Founder - President

Berniephi@aol.com wrote:

Dear Ada,

I've just read your biography, and I much admire your outstanding work toward achieving peace in our world, a world that I believe we both see as deeply threatened in many ways, with those threats accelerating. And I much appreciate your looking at my website, and especially your critical remarks about the limitations of that website and sociology in general in failing to work on solutions and not just working on understanding problems.

By the way, have you ever met Chanoch Jacobsen, a sociology professor at the Technion? I suspect that he is no longer with us, as I haven't heard from him in several years. He contributed a chapter in the 2001 volume, Toward a Sociological Imagination: Bridging Specialized Fields (cited on my website). His emphasis was on the computer simulation of complex problems, somewhat premature, but the flow diagrams that are a prelude for such simulations are not premature.

Your criticism is very well-taken, for I have only just begun to move in a political direction, and there is very little of that emphasis throughout the social sciences, unfortunately. But "The Evolutionary Manifesto" on my website does indeed point in that direction, even if it is not very clear as to what it is suggesting, and even if it doesn't go very far. The 2nd recommendation (the 1st of deep democracy is, I'm sure, a direction that we share), that of the scientific method in everyday life, is in fact a powerful direction once it is spelled out. And I'm presently working on that in my half-completed manuscript, "Armageddon or Evolution? The Scientific Method in Everyday Life."

To explain a bit--and I will follow your lead with my own criticism of efforts to achieve peace--I refer you to the countercultural movement in the 1960s, mainly in the U.S. among college students, but in Europe and elsewhere as well (especially France) to an extent. The emphasis was certainly on democracy and peace (especially ending the war in Vietnam). But the students and others, who tried very very hard to change the world by developing changes in culture, followed a self-limiting path: they failed to understand the necessity of their own intellectual development as a basis for understanding problems in the world and themselves. One can hardly blame them, since social scientists and philosophers and those in the humanities had failed to integrate their knowledge, so that the students had very little to build on. Unfortunately, in my view much the same situation with regard to understanding human behavior and human problems prevails today. Specifically, I see direct efforts to achieve peace as succeeding in dampening some fires, but that is by no means enough to counter escalating fires throughout the world. And once again, I blame social scientists far more than any other group for this situation, since they haven't provided the framework of understanding needed for political leaders and others to use it to help them solve world problems.

What is to be done? My own orienation is very optimistic about the infinite human potential, especially with the aid of language and the scientific method, but realistic about the very limited time available to confront threatening and urgent problems. I can only give hints about my recommendations in a letter, hints that I'm trying to spell out in the book I'm writing (which builds on recent published books). Those books on my website point to our stratified or bureaucratic metaphysical stance or worldview--including yours and mine--which gets in the way of that individual evolution. More specifically--following figure 1-1in Beyond Sociology's Tower of Babel --our worldview has yielded an escalating gap between aspirations and their fulfillment (both materially and non-materially). That gap between what we want and are able to get is powered by escalating desires or cultural values and limited ability to fulfill them, powered by patterns of social stratification and bureaucracy. And as a result, we are able to obtain only very limited reinforcements or positive sanctions from ourselves and others--relative to the numerous situations where we fail in our own eyes to fulfill our goals. Figure i-2 in my Armageddon manuscript carries this argument further: this in turn not only affects our epistemology--we are unable to follow scientific ideals because they conflict with our worldview--but it also adds fuel to the fire of our problems.

Yet following figure i-2, all of this can be reversed: learning to use the scientific method in everyday life can yield the narrowing of that aspirations-fulfillment gap in the short run, more frequent reinforcements for the individual, and the raising of both aspirations and their fulfillment in the long run. Yet this takes deep understanding of the forces involved. And it involves absolutely fundamental changes in the behavior of the individual. We should, then, all work toward our own individual evolution as a basis for developing the understanding, the emotional force and the actions that solutions to world problems require.

These few abstract words can do little justice to the detailed arguments in my books--I know that I'm not being clear. Let me try again in another way--perhaps in several ways. Erich Fromm's Man for Himself suggests that we must somehow learn to love ourselves before we can learn to love others. Carrying this idea much further, our failure to love ourselves derives from our stratified worldview which points us outward rather than, interactively, both inward an outward. Throughout early human history people had to learn to confront problems in their physical environments in order to survive, yielding an outward orientation, rather than the invisible world that language enables us to enter. I see this as continuing into the modern era, making it verty difficult for us to learn how to reinforce ourselves and develop our understanding, ability to express our emotions, and act effectively.

Coming at my basic ideas in still another way, social science has emphasized concepts that deal with structures--or persisting behavior--as yielding the major forces that shape human behavior (such as cultural values, social stratification, bureaucracy, rituals, self image cultural norms, institutions). And those structures can in turn be linked together in systematic ways as I've tried to do in my books (e.g., the cultural value of equality coupled with patterns of social stratification yields an aspirations/fulfillment gap, anomie, alienation, and fosters a wide range of social and personal problems). Yet our everyday concepts emphasize the momentary situation rather than structures. As a result, no matter how much we attempt to change our own behavior or that of others, we fail to alter structures and our efforts at change are self-limiting. Yet an evolutionary worldview coupled with a scientific method used in everyday life which follows scientific ideals can reverse this situation, narrowing that gap and making progress on social problems.

More specifically, I think that we all should learn to work in two ways: attempting to solve fundamental human problems like war, and indirectly, learning to change our own orientation from a stratified to an evolutionary worldview.

I'd appreciate your comments, as I know I've communicated my thoughts only slightly.

Best wishes,
Bernie