To Ms Asha Curry,

How naive of you to think you are the first to endure, or feel the pain of growing up as a black girl as you so eloquently wrote about in your book. I’d like to inform you, and all those whom think they are the first little black girl who is now a black woman, who came from other black women; that you are not the first. We descendents of beautiful dark skinned women, whom struggled with this issue well before you ever decided to take pen to paper and write about it.

Dark skinned women, black women, and women of color in general have been going through this well before you wrote about it. In many of our tales the story is the same. Your story sounds like mine, and Tameka’s story sounds like that of other “dark” skinned or “black” woman. It’s obvious to a fool that no matter who tells the story, it’s the same. So to take Tamek’s experiences and make them about you is foolish. It would be laughable; if it were no so sad that your heart sank into your stomach. “Your hard work”; are you kidding me??? What hard work did you put into it? I remember vividly the stories that my dark skinned mother, and dark skinned grandmother told me about their journeys growing up darker than some, and being ridiculed and disrespected because of it; and that same mother doing her best to affirm in me that I was special because I was so dark, and of that darkness came some thing so beautiful… ME! So be clear; it is not just “your work and your voice”, it is the work of many, and the voices of those before us, and of those who will come after us and feel the same think.

If your tears were rolling down your face as you read Tameka’s article; line after line after line, than maybe that was all the pain releasing itself, and in that moment you released and rejoiced in the fact that you were not alone. That someone else understood your pain. So, believe it! Acknowledge that this particular topic is not about you. It is about us. It is about all the little the little brown baby girls who will grow up with skin complexions from every spectrum of the color meter, and who will ultimately become the dark skin women whom will like You, I, and Tameka feel the pain of trying to justify why she is worthy of acceptance, respect, stature, and love because of the darkness in her skin. Who will look to others for to affirm what is beautiful about us; when in fact our beauty has nothing to do with the color of our skin. Instead of claiming this as your own, recognize what it is… It is the journey of that of us. So whether notoriety came yesterday, today, and/or tomorrow it does not matter. The story you told when you wrote about it was yours to tell. The story that Tameka wrote about in the Huffington Post was hers to tell. It is about her, and what she is going through at this time in her life, as are the stories that I to my little “Dark Skinned” babies about the journey that my life has taken because of the beautiful dark skin that I am in are mine to tell. We all have stories, we each own them, and they are OURS to tell.

So in conclusion, I don’t think the praise was for Tameka and Tameka alone. It was for the journey of all of us. And at the time she wrote about there were some of us feeling the pain, and going through the same thing. This is an ongoing issue, and it will always have new writers to contribute to its topic. Be happy in knowing that at in one point in your life when, and the moment when you decided to write about, someone, somewhere needed to hear it. And now we are at that place again.

@mswhite1108: Very eloquent, but sweetie, you missed the whole point.

The point of the whole story was, this broad (Tameka) didn’t write the piece. It wasn’t about the subject matter, it’s about the blatant liar she is, and how low she’ll stoop to have people listen to her.