Taye Diggs: Tyson Beckford helped me love my dark skin

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From Necole B*tchie: Taye Diggs and all of his sexual chocolateness made our hearts stop as soon as we saw all of that glistening glory in ‘How Stella Got Her Groove Back,’ but Taye says he wasn’t always comfortable in his own skin. It wasn’t until he was an adult that he could overcome and get passed all the insults he had heard growing up because he’s dark-skinned.

Taye has written a children’s book called ‘Chocolate Me!’ where he draws from hurtful personal experiences from when he was younger and teaches kids to be happy just the was they are. As a dad with a 2-year-old interracial son, Taye discusses raising a mixed race child, how race affected him growing up, his parent’s making sure he always had positive black influences and how he feels Denzel and Wesley Snipes created a “shift” in the industry for the dark chocolate brothas. He also recently sat down with MyBrownBaby.com and revealed that it wasn’t until he accidentally came across an article about Tyson Beckford that he was proud to be dark.

On Growing Up With the ‘Light vs Dark’ Stigma

When I got into high school I started to hear, just from the black community, everybody is more attracted to the light skin girls and the light skin dudes with the light eyes. And from within the race the light skin black people and lighter brown people would make fun of the darker people. So then it was a completely different kind of struggle. And then funnily enough it was when dark skinned men, and this was just from my perspective, there seemed to be a shift where all of a sudden we saw Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, Tyson Beckford. I’m still trying to figure out how this came to be. For me, when I saw Tyson Beckford hailed as this beautiful man by all people, that caused a shift in my being. And I remember literally waking up and walking the streets feeling a little bit more proud. And then after the movie “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” when I had my own personal moments of weakness, I just had to remind myself of all the people that really enjoyed that movie and just kind of lean on that.

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