Note: If anyone doesn’t know who Rashida Strober is by now, she’s made her claim to fame over the last few days all from this one single Facebook post:

Needless to say all Hell broke loose on various social media platforms. This woman has gotten alot of hate messages including death threats. So I decided to write her a more proper open letter (which I will also be sending to her personally), in attempts to shed some light on where she went completely wrong.

Dear Rashida Strober,

I’m sure you are fully aware of why I’m writing to you. And though a huge part of me the azzhole part wishes to tell you that you need to get your entire life and go—

lock yourself in a room with a tv playing School Daze on repeat, only taking breaks to listen to Kendrick Lamar’s “Complexion” and “The Blacker the Berry”, until you’ve gained some sort of common sense, I can’t do that…because to you that would be insensitive on my behalf.

Because you see, I am a light skinned woman…which means I can safely presume I’m the enemy, based off of what you’ve written in your infamous Facebook post.

And after further research, I came across your “movement” called the Dark Skin Is Beautiful campaign, with your mission statement being: “The first campaign in the world to deal exclusively with uplifting the beauty dark skinned women and girls.”

As a “Dark Skin Advocate” (as you affectionately call yourself), one would ask what exactly you are advocating? Because from the content on your “Dark Skinned TV” Youtube channel and Facebook page I have seen nothing but advocacy of intra-racism:

“If he is truly in line with his consciousness…”???

I’m sorry but I doubt any socially conscious rapper should be taking cue from a self proclaimed “dark skinned mentally abused” black woman who isn’t conscious enough to realize her whole agenda is built upon mentally abusing those that don’t have “enough” melanin.

Instead, you refuse be happy that Kendrick, at the prime of his career, decided to make an honest woman out of the one who held him down for the past NINE YEARS, all because she is light skinned?

Is this the REAL reason you are upset at Kendrick?:

And had your fiance cheated on you with someone who wasn’t as light the girls you call your besties, say….someone of the likes of Kelly Rowland, you’d be good?

What’s so unfortunate, is that what could’ve been a legit movement promoting dark skinned beauty is entirely overshadowed by your hypocritical methods of doing so. You completely uplift an entire group of people by putting down another, perpetuating the very thing YOU say you are against.

And though you will choose to disagree with me, you as a dark skinned woman and I as a lighter one, have more in common than you think.

I can remember as far back as my teen years growing up in California, where the black boys in my high school told me that they would never date a black girl because we “had attitudes” and “acted ghetto”. Yes— ME, the light girl  couldn’t get a black boyfriend from my own school even if I’d tried.

And though I’d love to go into depth on the teasing I’d experienced at a younger age from my black peers and my own struggle with it, doing so would probably have as much of an impact on you as a girl mentioning being teased for being too skinny. Because to you, someone being called “too light” or a “white girl”, or a “fake black person” by her peers couldn’t possibly be as hurtful as the names the kids (that you never fail to mention in the majority of your videos) called you…..could it??? Of course not.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past 30 years about being light-skinned, it is that in the black community, it’s almost befitting for me to be the easy target for intra-racist ridicule. I’m sure you can relate to that. What you cannot relate to is that the very privilege you assume I have, seems to automatically serve as the justification of such mistreatment towards me. Jokes about my skin tone being said in jest by anyone darker  comes with the expectation of me to be emotionally unaffected, to suck it up, and take it all in stride, as there is no room or opportunity to defend myself without coming off as “insensitive” or as thinking “I’m all that”.

The sad reality is that there is still this misconception that black people of a lighter complexion don’t struggle….period. OR that whatever struggle we do have, is invalid because it’s nothing close to what our darker skinned counterparts such as yourself have experienced. And as a result, I’m forced to burrow my hurt and allow you, Rashida, to voice yours in full cathartic glory without side eyes or raised brows.

But in 2015, you nor I can afford to focus (or should even feel comfortable with entertaining the thought) on who in the black community has the greater struggle…when collectively, BLACK America is in trouble.

Black America is in trouble when the woman who has a “movement” chooses to write this:

And black America is even more in trouble when the the black man this same black woman is worried about, is Kendrick Lamar….instead of:

Akai Gurley…Tamir Rice…Ezell Ford…Eric Garner…Walter Scott…or hell, even the very man she is married to.

Because while you sit by, spitting your intra-racist venom, OUR people are getting killed murdered cold blooded. And you best believe, NOT ONE bullet coming from the guns of these cops is discriminating between who’s light skinned and dark skinned.

I don’t know what I find more disturbing… that:

WE are getting MURDERED in broad daylight,

147 Kenyan students are DEAD due to terrorism,

200 precious Nigerian girls STILL REMAIN MISSING,

Our African American history is being DELETED from history books,

Our country’s justice system is SHIT morally corrupt…OR that all the while,

you as a resident of the state where Trayvon’s killer was found innocent, YOU, who received a  Master’s Degree in Political Science and Government of ALL THINGS is choosing to make use of your degree, by sitting from the comfort of your bedroom filming YouTube videos that thrive off contradictions, hate, and animosity, while calling it advocacy.

I’m ashamed for you and your “followers” –And I refuse to let the bitterness you’ve clung to your whole life incapacitate what progression we’ve had.

You see, the real enemy and self hate doesn’t lie within Kendrick Lamar. It lies within yourself. Because while you are continuing on in your quest for the division within our race, I have to wonder if your campaign is truly yours, or that of Willie Lynch— as his indoctrination guaranteed that dividing blacks by skin tone would control them for 300+ years.

Then boom, three hundred and three years later, we have…

You.

A huge round of applause to you, Rashida, for finding a way to champion the agenda of a slavemaster, through your Dark Skin movement. I hope you’re proud.

And Mrs. Strober, if there’s nothing you have taken away from what I’ve written, at least take this:………….I encourage you to EDUCATE YOURSELF. PLEASE. Learn how to advocate from a place of help, not a place of hurt.

I challenge you to lead out of love rather hatred, out of virtue than hypocrisy. And even moreso, I pray that you come to peace with the all negativity you’ve endured. We all have wounds, and we owe it to ourselves to find healing for our deep seeded issues. Neglect this, and you will allow the scars of your childhood to continuously cripple your mindset from ever evolving past it’s current house ni**er vs. field ni**er mentality.

Be blessed.

Sincerely,

The Light-Skinned Girl Who Has to Speak Out When Her “Essence of Melanin” Isn’t Enuf (for you)

To listen to more of Rashida’s painstakingly hypocrisy click below:

Interview