Monday 13 June 2011

The foolishness that is Satoshi Kanazawa!

With the constant barrage of negativity in the media about black women, I decided to dedicate this post to encourage my beautiful African sisters and women of colour out there, that you are beautiful and worthy just as you are, and you have been fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of the Creator Himself!
So most recently, Psychology Today  published an article by Satoshi Kanazawa, (a psychologist at the London School of Economics), titled "Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women." Yeah!!! Can you believe that?!?! What kind of person would choose to write such an article and think they could get away with it? Did they really expect anyone to take them seriously? What could they possibly have to say, and how and why were they even going to attempt to justify it?! And, why would a reputable magazine publish such a racially biased article? These are all the questions that flooded my mind, and I needed to have to have them answered, so I began reading...

So in the article, Satoshi Kanazawa, selected a group of people and asked them to rate which women they considered most and least attractive. Now we don't know if it was women or men; how many people; what race(s); or what age range took the poll, but lets just say that we can assume what type of people were polled, because the conclusion was that black women were the least phyically attractive in comparison their white, Asian and Native american counterparts.

Now this next part is a quote from the article by Satoshi himself, and set it me off!!!

"The only thing I can think of that might potentially explain the lower average level of physical attractiveness among black women is testosterone. Africans on average have higher levels of testosterone than other races, and testosterone, being an androgen (male hormone), affects the physical attractiveness of men and women differently. Men with higher levels of testosterone have more masculine features and are therefore more physically attractive. In contrast, women with higher levels of testosterone also have more masculine features and are therefore less physically attractive. The race differences in the level of testosterone can therefore potentially explain why black women are less physically attractive than women of other races, while (net of intelligence) black men are more physically attractive than men of other races."

WHAT?!?! The nerve of this guy!! This is how he is going to justify the results?!?!  Is he serious?? This had to be written by an ignorant, uneducated person because how can someone take a poll where people are rating people, and are coming with their own biases, thoughts, ideas, and perceptions and expect us to think its objective?! And then on top of that, it is clear that Satoshi incorparted his own views and perceptions of black women into the mix! C'mon man! You gotta come better than that, because this will certainly not fly with my black sisters out there!!

Frankly, i'm so over certain people in society that can't accept the fact that there is beauty in all races, and they feel the need to constantly compare one to the other! Like seriously who gave him the right to tell me or anyone else what is deemed physically attractive? 

Now the only positive thing to come out of the article was this, and I'm quoting again,

"It is very interesting to note that, even though black women are objectively less physically attractive than other women, black women (and men) subjectively consider themselves to be far more physically attractive than others. "

Thats right!! 'You can't tell me nothing!! When a black woman know she look good, you better believe she is going to rock all that self confidence! You can't stand in her way, and there is nothing you can say to bring her down! And this goes to show how resilent we as black women are! Society is always,
and will continue to tell us that we are not good enough as we are, yet we continue to push through and rise above all the negativity. They say black ain't beautiful, but it sure is popular!! Because, it is certainly no coincident that women of other races are now paying ridiculous amounts of money to have surgeries to obtain the physical features that God has naturally blessed us with!!

So how did this end?? The article was removed from the Pychology Today webiste; ColorOfChange.org, the largest African-American online political organization asked its members to bombard the publication with complaints via phone, email and social media networks regarding the article, and after receiving over 75,000 complaints, Kanazawa is no longer contributing to the publication; The legisaltive body of University of London Union Senate, representing over 120,000 students, voted unanomously for Kanazawa to be dismissed with the students stating that they were concerned with his academic influence; and Editor-in-Chief of Psychology Today issued a formal apology stating this:

"Last week, a blog post about race and appearance by Satoshi Kanazawa was published–and promptly removed–from this site. We deeply apologize for the pain and offense that this post caused. Psychology Today’s mission is to inform the public, not to provide a platform for inflammatory and offensive material. Psychology Today does not tolerate racism or prejudice of any sort. The post was not approved by Psychology Today, but we take full responsibility for its publication on our site. We have taken measures to ensure that such an incident does not occur again. Again, we are deeply sorry for the hurt that this post caused.”

Yea, yea, yea... we've heard these apologies before...today its Psychology Today, tomorrow its another publication...it never ends!! The truth of the matter is this ariticle should have never seen the light of day!! The editor(s) at the magazine knew that the article was racially biased and that black people would find it offensive yet they still published it! Why? Because they assumed we weren't reading these sorts of publications, that we weren't gonna make any noise about it, and we were going to be okay with being disrespected in such a manner!! SMDH!! But they definately got it twisted!!

So to my all my sisters out there, hold your heads up high, be confident and rock you, because although we are apparently not what societies perception of beauty is, WE know that we have a good thing going on! And secretly 'they' know too, but don't want to admit it and make it known... We will continue to love who we are and embrace all the uniquesness God gave us when He crafted us!!










Satoshi who? He must not have seen my friends before he wrote that article...lol



 

4 comments:

  1. Great post Love. Thank you for speaking out. Beauty comes in all colours, shapes and sizes. We are beautiful. Not 'beautiful for a black girl' but beautiful full stop. And nobody should ever tell us or make us feel otherwise. Shame on Psychology today. You'd think as a platform for all things psychology they'd consider the effect the publication might have BEFORE allowing it on their site. Pfft.

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  2. That said I guess controversy sells. And that might have been their ulterior motive. Any publicity is good publicity, right?

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  3. Thanks Abi!! Controversy does sell, and it is rather unfortunate that our society is now set up in a way that negative things get more shine than the positive things...but we will continue to push positivity!!

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  4. Awesome post. Cant believe that in this day and age someone was allowed to publish this. This post is encouraging .Keep the posts coming x

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