Black Paradox: The Folly Over Skin Colour
By: Marilyn A. Massiah
Black Paradox: The Folly Over Skin Colour explores an absurd and deeply harmful notion of white supremacy based wholly on an irrelevant basis held by the Caucasian race that their pale skin is inherently superior to their counterparts with dark skin. Despite the presence of centuries old advancements in learning and scholarship in every area of endeavor by the African race, this paradox persists among those who had little or no schooling on the subject when this folly was at its maximum. As a result, easy racial mixing which is the natural workings of society, they perceive as a strange or insuperable handicap. This is a story of a young American Peace Corps volunteer on assignment in idyllic Guyana in 1969 when he confronted a younger Sydney Parker with questions about how people of different races and ethnicities can coexist in relative harmony. Sydney only understood the question when she moves to the United States herself and uncovered the chilling reality, not personally, the young man spoke of: A nation gripped in a moral crisis of abject hatred and feticism with pigmentation prejudice through documentaries on the Civil Rights Struggle.
From her unique Caribbean perspective, the author analyzes, scrutinize and exposes America’s detrimental obsession with race, reproducing negative stereotypes, repeating untruths over and over, is a devilish act and one of the greatest scams in the name of white privilege and structural impediments preventing others from advancing.
The Civil Rights Movement, Guyana’s society that bred many productive and well-adjusted expatriates and many examples of Black excellence that undermines the absurdity of white supremacy, Black Paradox serves to remind us that the madness of racism rooted in the folly of skin colour is corrosive to a peaceful society.
About the Author
Marilyn A. Massiah was born in British Guiana, now an independent territory called Guyana where she began and enjoyed a very successful career in print and broadcast journalism. After moving to New York a group she cofounded, Guyana Broadcasters, NA, created the show Home and Abroad which aired on WLIB/Air America, and WBAI 99.5 FM New York while pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies in Communications and Human Service Management. The shows were geared towards a Caribbean demographic yearning for news and information about their homeland and communities. In 2012, she received the Golden Arrowhead Award of Distinction and Humanitarian Service for her work in serving Caribbean interests at Guyana’s 46th Independence Anniversary celebration. In her spare time, she enjoys travelling around the world, listening to and entertaining her family and close friends with her vast collection of standards, contemporary and classical music often while savouring the taste of a good homemade Caribbean meal. She also loves dancing, yoga and Black & White movies.
