Matthew Knowles has recently released his first book titled Racism From the Eyes of a Child, which is a firsthand account of experiencing racism as a young, impressionable boy growing up in southern America. The father to both Beyonce and Solange recently sat down with Ebony magazine to discuss his latest venture, while also revealing how the colour of his family's skin has effected their lives.
The interviewer Jessica Bennett asked Knowles why he believes that so many female black entertainers are fair-skinned, to which he responded "I challenge my students at Texas Southern to think about this. When it comes to Black females, who are the people who get their music played on pop radio? Mariah Carey, Rihanna, the female rapper Nicki Minaj, my kids [Beyonce and Solange], and what do they all have in common?"
Bennett pondered that their success is due to the fact that "they're all light-skinned," which Knowles simultaneously agreed with by responding "do you think that's an accident?"
Knowles then admits that the first time he met Tina, his ex-wife and mother of his children, he was "colour-struck," believing that she was actually caucasian. "I actually thought when I met Tina, my former wife, that she was White. Later I found out that she wasn’t, and she was actually very much in-tune with her blackness. I had been conditioned from childhood. With eroticized rage, there was actual rage in me as a black man, and I saw the white female as a way, subconsciously, of getting even or getting back."
Many have taken to Twitter to agree with Knowles' sentiments and their cultural validity.
However, some people saw this as an opportunity to exploit his daughter in order to drive sales for his book: