Gilbert Arenas seems to think there should be some stipulations on which dark-skinned women are considered beautiful, and people aren’t here for it.
The former NBA player responded to a post by Pan-Africanist Rashidi Kweli who shared a meme encouraging Black women and girls with darker skin to love their beauty.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BS3UJS8g-8Q/
The message was widely praised by commenters but things took a turn when Arenas wondered how dark is too dark to be considered beautiful. He listed actresses Keisha Knight-Pulliam, Gabrielle Union, Taral Hicks and tennis champion Serena Williams as the darkest women he could think of as beauties.
Arenas added Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o is “cute when the lights are off” reacted to Kenyan model Ajuma Nasenyana with, “Sorry but ewww.”
Many commenters immediately went after the ex-point guard.
Some wondered if Arenas felt the same way about his family, especially his three daughters.
One tried to explain what Arenas meant by his comment.
Somewhere in between, Kweli hit back with an example of the several beautiful dark-skinned women.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BS3nKPWl-Nj/?taken-by=problkthought
Arenas took to Instagram hours later to try to clear up his statements, explaining he thought the meme said that mixed women and girls are not “considered Black and beautiful.”
“I erased [what I said] to say sorry, but not say sorry because you can’t truly blame me for reading it wrong (I went to public school) so I read it how I thought it was written,” Arenas wrote. “I f—– this up so I deserved the hatred that comes….I was trying to defend all shades of Black but that’s what the post was also doing.”
Arenas maintained that Nyong’o “ain’t cute to me” like “I’m not cute to 95 percent of you.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BS364GXgck1/?taken-by=no.chill.gil
