Coloring Black
By Jyothis James
[Shantrelle P. Lewis, “Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style,” 2017]
What is it like to fashion and adorn a body that is considered a “problem?” Black skin sits at the bottom of the phenotypic and aesthetic hierarchy white people have ordained as sacred. Additionally, sartorial colonization imposed European dress through legislation, acculturation, or through insecurities generated from the destruction of cultures. In such conditions, the alternative to indigenous practices was to instead cling to the colonizer's culture and thereby his costume. For instance, in Toward the African Revolution, Franz Fanon writes: “Having judged, condemned, abandoned his cultural forms, his language, his food habits, his sexual behavior, his way of sitting down, of resting, of laughing, of enjoying himself, the oppressed flings himself upon the imposed culture with the desperation of a drowning man” (39).
It was not merely the colonized culture that was dismissed and belittled but the colonized body as well. W.E.B. Du Bois, Fanon, and George Yancy each describe the phenomenological denigration of the black body and the black person under the white gaze. Through the lens of whiteness and its multifaceted set of racists practices in the West, Black African bodies were considered physically inferior and beastly in nature. This “evaluation” critically coincided with justifying enslaving Africans and colonizing the Global South. Yet, what is often missed is that such biological reductionism also had an aesthetic element that deemed black-skinned bodies both ontologically and aesthetically inferior. The denigration of dark/black-skinned bodies has also appeared independently in India, the Middle East, and other places. The dismissal of the sartorial practices of black-skinned people along with racist arguments regarding the “inferiority” of darker phenotypes has led to a crisis of self-fashioning.
Now, the history of clothing has shown that people know what colors work well with their skin tone. Yet, in the West, especially in menswear, the color palette favors dark, muted colors complementing lighter skin. But what happens when we select the colors that have embellished black skin for millennia before their sordid introduction to western wardrobe? What happens if we center black skin as the template on which colors resound? When black skin sits as the axiom of an aesthetic formulation, black must necessarily both be and become beautiful.
[Domenichino, “The Rebuke of Adam and Eve,” 1626]
“And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed together fig leaves and made coverings for themselves.” Genesis 3:7
“The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.’” Genesis 3:21
Bodily adornment has been central to the notion of dignity globally. Not all cultures have used textiles in self-styling. They may have instead opted for jewelry, body painting, scarring, tattooing, or hairstyling, but all cultures acquire their own distinct modes of ornamentation. In the West, especially with the spread of Christianity, clothing became central in identifying heathens from unbelievers, the civilized from the uncivilized, and the white man from the black body. Clothing indicated both epistemic insight and divine knowledge. The sons of Adam were clothed in the likeness of God. Therefore, being clothed, aside from permissive times for nudity, became central to dignity. This Christian formulation was also exported. For instance, the Spanish imposed their dress in New Spain for the Indigenous peoples who accepted Christianity, and since then, western styling has been central to the civilizational process.
“Now Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. But when he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and uncovered himself inside his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside.
Then Shem and Japheth took a garment and placed it across their shoulders, and walking backward, they covered their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned away so that they did not see their father’s nakedness.
When Noah awoke from his drunkenness and learned what his youngest son had done to him, he said, ‘Cursed be Canaan! A servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.’” Genesis 9: 20-24.
[Bernardino Luini, “Ham Mocking Noah,” 16th Century]
And they stripped naked the Sons of Ham
“When we ready to leave de Kroo boat and go in de ship, de Many-costs snatch our country cloth off us. We try save our clothes, we ain’ used to be without no clothes on. But dey snatch all off us. Dey say, ‘You get plenty clothes where you goin’.’ Oh Lor’, I so shame! We come in de ‘Merica soil naked and de people say we naked savage. Dey say we doan wear no clothes. Dey doan know de Many-costs snatch our clothes 'way from us.” — Cudjo Lewis in Barracoon by Zora Neal Hurston (42).
Disrobing enslaved Africans and shaving their hair was foundational to dehumanization. Anthropological accounts and fantastic tales of dark-skinned races depicted shameless bare-breasted women from the Malabar coast to the gyrating black bodies in the heart of darkness. Everywhere the black body was denuded. It was also iconic to strip naked the bodies swinging from poplar trees in the Jim Crow South. But if dark bodies were to be clothed, they must wear the refuse and tatters bestowed on them by merciful whites. Today, these donation piles sit in clothing drives and dump heaps from Haiti, Congo, India, and Papua New Guinea, destroying the local clothing economy and creating environmental waste. Black bodies aspiring for self-fashioning, excellence, and expressive style are deemed uppity, desperate, excessive, and even trashy.
“Tain’t de poorness, it’s de color and de features. Who want any lil ole black baby layin’ up in the baby buggy lookin’ lak uh fly in buttermilk? Who wants to be mixed up wid uh rusty black man and uh black woman goin’ down de street in all dem loud colors, and whoopin’ and hollerin’ and laughin’ over nothin’?” — Mrs. Turner in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston (171).
Black Skin as an Aesthetic Foundation
Nonetheless, the white frame and aesthetic hierarchy of phenotypes have not always reigned supreme. Before colonization, black skin was valued as beautiful and adorned fittingly. For instance, Antonio de Teruel in “On the Inhabitants of the Congo” (1663-64), quoted by Sylvia Wynter in “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument,” states that, “The indigenous peoples of the Congo are all black in color, some more so, some less so. Many are to be seen who are the color of chestnut and some tend to be more olive-colored. But the one who is of the deepest black in color is held by them to be the most beautiful” (301-2). In essence, we have evidence that black skin can be aesthetically prized among a black-skinned people and does not need to be a reaction to the aesthetics of white hegemony.
Moreover, darker skin was not left alone but was furthered adorned by the wealth of textiles whose vibrant colors range across the tropical belt. The quality of fabric in India was so desirable that the British, fearing competition, destroyed Indian textile mills, and made Indians dependent on inferior cloth and imports from England. The control of clothing was so important that the Indian Independence movement centered on the reclamation of wearing native clothes and weaving styles as part of decolonization. Additionally, we can see the ingenuity of textile production and styling present in clothing among the darker races worldwide. Weddings and celebrations are punctuated with streaming saturated sarees from Kanchipuram, glorious gele perched like crowns in West Africa, and florid huipil in Mexico. Nonetheless, these clothes are reserved for festivities and deemed inappropriate for the serious, intellectual, and professional work and business environments.
Woman wrapped in a saturated pink saree (Photo Credit).
Yoruba bride and mother in rich colors (Photo Credit).
Instead, Savile Row and generally English fashion still determine the standard of Western, and therefore professional, menswear. Beau Brummel, a British dandy, emphasized meticulously tailored but understated clothing in the early 19th century. This shifted European menswear from baroque and vibrant costumes to darker greys, blues, blacks, browns, and beiges. Yet, as noted previously, these colors compliment lighter skin in general and not just Europeans. Similar palettes develop among other light-skinned populations in Central and East Asia. In Praise of Shadows, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki writes: “The white races are fair-haired, but our hair is dark; so nature taught us the laws of darkness, which we instinctively used to turn a yellow skin white. I have spoken of the practice of blackening the teeth, but was not the shaving of the eyebrows also a device to make the white face stand out?” (33).
This diminished color palette extended to the rest of Europe and, by extension, its colonies becoming the standard of color fashion. Being in the public sphere, men had an imperative towards respectability and professionalism. Therefore, even where womenswear has kept with ethnic fashions, ethnic menswear has been stunted, deferring instead to this global standard. Politicians in the Global South may don ethnic wear to signal a connection to the ordinary people or as an anticolonial stance. Yet, the dominant prestige costume is still a suit and tie.
Colors formality scale from Gentleman’s Gazette.
When Life Gives Lemons, make Lemonade
“They have stars in their hair. Not real stars, of course. The new arrivals have had their heads shaved, leaving patches of hair shaped like stars and half‐moons. Just as you begin to wonder how the ship's crew settled on this way of torturing their captives or entertaining themselves, you receive a second surprise. Not far from where you are standing, a man who seems to be the ship's captain is speaking with a man who seems to have some financial interest in the ship's cargo. The capitalist asks the captain why he cut the niggers' hair like that, and the captain disclaims all responsibility. 'They did it themselves,’ he says, 'the one to the other, by the help of a broken bottle and without soap.'” — Paul Taylor, Black is Beautiful, citing a study called The Birth of African American Culture (1).
Though Afrocentrists and anticolonial movements worldwide have turned to emphatically ethnic clothing as an aesthetic stance against "civilizing" clothing, Black dandies worldwide have challenged this narrative while keeping the white man's clothes. Even when faced with limited means, a concerted effort and investment are made towards self-presentation, styling, and art. The Sapeurs from the Congo are exemplars of this mode of distinctively Black fashioning. Though many sapeurs work ordinary jobs, they use their networks with family and friends in France or Belgium to import bespoke shoes, tailored suits, and accessories from Paris or Milan to compose their outfits. Through their disregard for the muted colors and imperative of the subdued European palette, they challenge the aesthetic norms and priorities of Europe while donning European costumes. These saturated and vibrant colors compliment the rich melanin of black skin. Darker skin is not just a darker or tinted hue of brown. Melanin-rich skin glimmers and shines. This is why the adage of jewel tones and brighter colors for dark/black-skinned people applies and is still present in ethnic wear globally. However, matching colors onto dark/black skin is not a one-size-fits-all, as melanin varies across the body and can be drastically different even within the same family.
Sapeurs strutting their style. “White people invented the clothes, but we make an art of it.” — Papa Wemba
We know by the depictions of our predecessors and the ethnic fashions that thrive globally that dark/black-skinned people have embraced color that accentuated their skin. With the importation of western menswear, the possibility of showing the beauty of blackness was diminished. Anticolonialists sought a return to ethnic wear, but this did not diminish the domination of Eurocentric palettes. Black dandies nonetheless challenge the hegemony and respectability conveyed in color palettes defined for white masculinity by centering black skin as the grounds for their sartorial choices. In doing so with colors, they have developed palettes that can only accentuate black skin because black skin sits axiomatically at the foundation of a chromatic aesthetic. These complementary colors cannot be taken or appropriated as it demands black skin to shine genuinely. In other words, the phrase “Black is Beautiful” cannot just be spoken into existence, it must explicitly and fabulously be worn. And only some of us, get to wear it.
References
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 2008.
Fanon, Frantz. Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays. New York: Grove Press, 1988.
Hurston, Zora N. Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”. New York: HarperCollins, 2018.
Hurston, Zora N. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
Lewis, Shantrelle P. Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style. New York: Aperture Direct, 2017.
Tamagni, Daniele, and Paul Goodwin. Gentlemen of Bacongo. London: Trolley, 2009.
Tanizaki, Jun’ichirō. In Praise of Shadows. Sedgwick, ME: Leete's Island Books, 1977.
Taylor, Paul C. Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2016.
Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument.” CR: The New Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (2003): 257-337.
Yancy, George. Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race in America. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.
Zaidi, Tariq. Sapeurs: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Congo. Heidelberg: Kehrer Verlag, 2020.
Jyothis James is a PhD Student in philosophy at Texas A&M University, College Station, TX. His research interests are centered on anti-colonial epistemology. He works in Critical Race Theory (CRT), aesthetics of dark/black skin, and Black and Global South male studies, Malayalee diaspora and migrations and Syriac theology.