Who Told DaniLeigh We Wanted Her Colourism Anthem Yellow Bone?
Like, “I’m not Black, I’m Dominican” needed a new song and a new colorism slogan. Chile…
Yellow Bone: (African-American Vernacular) noun; the lightest mix of light-skinned people of mixed ethnicity that is mostly Black.
*Not to be confused with a light-skinned person that spray tans, gets Botox, has a Black boyfriend, and pretends to be Black for esthetic purposes*
What is it with this sudden rise of light-skinned or light-skinned passing women flocking into Black culture, swearing that we, Black folks who are too busy shining, care about their Pantene Pro-V privilege? From Mulatto’s video degrading her Black ‘friend’ to her face to DaniLeigh’s newest song. Why are they screaming for attention? Are the lights ok?
Today, DaniLeigh took it upon herself to post a video on Instagram with the main verse of a song called Yellow Bone. It wasn’t just the fact that she took the time to call a stylist and an MUA over to the house in the midst of a pandemic. It wasn’t the fact that this song had me once again looking for her talent that failed to appear. It was the backtracking, the gaslighting, and the victim scenario DaniLeigh tried to create for herself after she realized that many of her fans didn't value her pink areolas and vulva as much as she did.
Soon enough, before DaniLeigh could even take the video down, fans online began to gather receipts and photos. One fan on Twitter remembered her 23 And Me DNA results that confirmed DaniLeigh was of mostly Latinx and White origin. Within minutes someone else remember a tweet after George Floyd’s murder where DaniLeigh implied that she was indeed not Black but stood with the Black Lives Matter. Another fan on Instagram pulled up a picture of DaniLeigh’s even lighter-skinned parents to prove that she was in fact not Black and therefore not even the yellow bone she claimed to be.
I’m not going to sit here and debate whether or not DaniLeigh is a Black Dominican based on the pigmentation of her parents. Black comes in all shades including its newest color that the girls on TikTok are trying to claim, Blackfishing. We have plenty of people like Nicole Ritchie that can pass for white but actually have Black parents. So I’m not stepping into that. I’ll just say the amount of dark spray tan DaniLeigh now puts on for her pictures is giving Rachel Dolezal and Kardashian vibes.
The constant darkening of the skin, but not too dark. The dancing and vernacular that grows with more Black culture by the Instagram post. I’ll never understand why these light-skinned girls degrade any and everything that has to do with dark-skinned Black women all while copying our entire essence. The videos of DaniLeigh trying to twerk with the ass and hips of a Spanish slave-owning ancestor is just sad. I have to believe this song would not even exist had her current boyfriend’s baby mama Mimi not begun to shine in her own right as an up-and-coming artist with actual talent. But when you have a man that affirms you when he never did that for his darker-skinned baby mama in the past, I get where the confusion may lay.
Let’s just look at the current relationship that DaniLeigh is in. We have Da Baby, a rapper who did what every other insecure Black man does when he gets his first hint of fame and dumps the Black girl for an ethnically ambiguous or white one. Here is Da Baby liking the original Yellow Bone post and encouraging this song Yellow Bone on social media as if DaniLeigh isn’t jabbing at the dark-skinned mother of his children. When his children hear this song, will it degrade the amount of respect they have for their dark-skinned mother? Will his dark-skinned children try to look like DaniLeigh because their father deems that more beautiful? When Da Baby’s children see their father promoting it and encouraging it, what will happen to the dark-skinned women that they encounter in their own lives? Will they be upheld and adored or treated as less than based on the melanin in their skin?
“Yellow bone is what he want
Yellow bone that’s what he want
Prada me and Saint Laurent
Yellow bone that’s what he want.”
Ma’am, where is the talent? Where is the range? Can we rap more than four words? And is it what he wants? Or is it just what he's been conditioned to strive for because we live in a society that treats lighter as better? I wish I could sit here in complete ignorance and tell you that I don’t know why she said those things or released that song. But we know why she did it. The closer to white you are, the more likely you are to get jobs. The closer to white you are, the more likely you are to be seen as a light-skinned woman of virtue instead of a tan hide baby mama.
I’m going to stop DaniLeigh’s debate or comparison to Beyonce’s Brown Skin Girls song or India Arie’s Brown Skin song. They didn’t need to even THINK about other women of different races or complexions, let alone degrade them. The song talked of nothing else but the beauty they found in themselves. That’s how you know their songs came from a place of self-love. Which is not what this song was.
Someone needs to tell her before I hurt her feelings. Naw… I’ll do it. Being light-skinned or a lighter-skinned minority with 3A curly hair is not a personality trait. Contrary to what colonizers told you it does not make you pretty or anything to be envious of. If anything the need to constantly state how lighter you are than another in order to stand out shows the lack of worth and depth you have.
It’s not only that we don’t want it, honey we don’t even care. So please, stop filling my feed because I’m actually trying to get to the dark-skinned girls you constantly over-shadow that actually have talent.
