Taye Diggs pried open a can of worms when he said that he still had self-esteem issues well into adulthood because of his dark skin. In a piece I wrote for MyBrownBaby.com, Taye said it wasn’t until he read a magazine article calling Tyson Beckford “beautiful” did he begin to think differently about himself.
“When I saw Tyson Beckford hailed as this beautiful man by all people, that caused a shift in my being. I remember literally waking up and walking the streets the next day and, because I had a bald head as well, feeling a little bit more proud,” said Diggs in our interview.
As I read through various posts and reactions to this story that I originally wrote to help Taye publicize his new book, Chocolate Me!, they seemed to have a similar spin: There was widespread surprise that a dark-skinned brother, especially a heartthrob like Taye, could ever have self-esteem issues related to skin color—as if the same dominant culture that has feasted on the psyches of black women for 300 years hasn’t also been doing its destructive dance through the brains of black men over the same time period. While black men may not buy skin bleaching creams like dark women are still doing around the world, or we may not pop blue contact lenses in our eyes, we still demonstrate many manifestations of our scars, if you look closely enough.
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(Photo: @TayeDiggs)
