The phrase "black don't crack" has floated around our community for decades, but is it true? Shannon and Lisa put this saying to the test with scientific receipts and discuss whether or not it puts some added pressure on us as black women to look goodt as we age.

Black Don't Crack

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Black Don't Crack

shannon.

Lisa: And I'm Lisa, and you're listening to Blacktivities, A Celebration of all things black, black

culture, black history, black

perspectives, and black panache.

Shannon: Celebrating our blackness doesn't mean exclusion.

Lisa: Everybody's invited, but you gotta come in and have a seat. So let the blacktivities begin.

Shannon: Welcome to Blacktivities. I'm your host Shannon, here with my co-host Mona Lisa. Hey y'all. Now my mom just turned 65, so she is officially a senior citizen. But Grandma Cordia don't look like y'all grandma.

Lisa: No. No she don't baby.

Shannon: Today we are talking about aging while black and that phrase that we use often black don't crack.

Lisa: Yes. Make sure you go and do that. So, The Oscars was a couple days ago, right? Mm-hmm. and online and social media people were in an uproar with claims that Angela Bassett was snubbed once again for her role in Wakanda forever.

She was okay. Now, I don't wanna take anything from Jamie Lee Curtis. I'm a Jamie Lee Curtis. , um, Jamie Lee Curtis did win over Angela Bassett again for best supporting actress in, what's the movie called? Everywhere. Everything, all the Time or something like that. Something like that. Yeah. Now I'm the side note.

And she did. Yes. Especially that purple dress.

Shannon: Yes. That was beautiful.

Lisa: Mm-hmm. . And you see her twins, they was kinda like dressed like her. Her husband Vance or Lance didn't say that. Okay. So L'Oreal from um, the Head Crack morning show said that Angela looked better than younger actresses. And others that attended the.

Her skin, I have to say was flawless body was perfect. And the fact that she is talented makes it even better. Oh yeah, she look good. Yes. Yes. So before we jump a little bit more into that, and I want you to, you know, give me your thoughts on that. Let's, uh, let's give them a little SAC's Facts.

Did you know that Asian people actually produce a different type of melanin? No. Theirs is called pheomelanin,

Lisa: P h Wait, wait, wait. E O. Wait, wait, wait. So we got Melanin U, eumelanin. How did I say that? You melanin. U u melanin. I know. I'm not saying it correctly. And then we got Theo, say the last one. pheomelanin.

Shannon: Okay. Yes. Now it's not just melanin that makes us age. It's also the type of collagen that our skin produces, and that's not the same collagen that people inject into their face. Um, but it has denser and more numerous fibers that don't break down as quickly and make our skin less prone to sun damage.

So we've got double the protection from the sun. On top of that, we typically have a higher oil content, which acts as a natural skin hydration system. And the outer layers of our skin have more fat content that sits on top of our facial bones, that maintain their support for longer, which means less wrinkles for

Lisa: us.

Yes, baby, you hit it, but before

Lisa: I have a huge one on my arm. Yes. However, I

Shannon: think it might be safe to say that it is a little harder to crack that black, and that's SAC's Facts.

Lisa: You know who made it. Wow. I just learned some things today, guys. I just thought that we just had just the melon and then that's it. Boom. It don't get no better than that. Haha. You ain't got it. Boom. But just found out, I mean, there's different types. So I need to tone it down just a little bit. , I need to tone it down.

Shannon: about it? Yeah, she looks great. Like, I feel like she's only gotten better look-wise, right?

Since she came on the scene. She glowed up

Lisa: since Tina baby. I, yeah. I can't do nothing with her now. He can't do nothing with her. Now let me, you know that, lemme tell you. Do you do that little move like, you know, you do that little move where your shoulders go up and down like she was doing when she was Tina.

When I get excited, that's what I do with my little, my little move. You gotta shake a little tail feather. Yeah. I don't do that. That's how I used to dance when I got. I got income tax.

Shannon: gotta do, mine

Lisa: did. Hey, I did. I wasn't happy, but I ain't going, I ain't gonna pull us, I ain't gonna get us off topic. But y'all go make sure y'all get y'all taxes then.

Shannon: So Lisa. Does that phrase black don't crack?

Does it put some extra pressure on you as a black woman who is aging to

Lisa: look good? To be honest with you, me personally answering this question, I will say no. Okay. Because you have to think of the way that we look now. I mean, even if we have some little, like, what's the word I'm looking for? Something that's off about us, the world will find some type of way to make it a trend or to make it part of the A style or you, you'll see a TikTok or something about it.

Shannon: I mean, to a certain extent we do because we wouldn't get, you know, the butt shots and the BBLs and

Lisa: stuff. But we had it naturally though. It's just some, some women, they just go to the extreme now. I understand. That's other point. Yeah, I can understand. Like, okay, she ain't got no at all. Okay.

Shannon: Mine's a mine and she wanna enhance it.

I feel like mine is. Started dwindling as I've aged

Lisa: it, it happens, it happens sometime. That little, that little stomach front get the doing too much.

Shannon: It ain't sitting like

Ha. Have you noticed, um, I don't know if you follow her. I, I highly doubt you do Black Chyna. I don't follow her, but I know like, okay, so I just recently start, well, I followed her yesterday Cause of the news, because of Shade Room . Yeah. Shout out the shade room. Well, they posted that she know she was going through to where she was doing the whole breast augmentation.

Like she was making her boobs smaller and she's taken away from her. and then somebody in the comments was like, yeah, but you need to do something about their face. And she was like, oh, I'm working on that too. Meaning like her lip fillers and all of that. Like she finna get that shit removed.

Shannon: Yeah, cuz she's really a pretty girl.

She like, to me, made herself look worse with all the surgeries and stuff. She started looking like a, she was pretty

Shannon: I thought you were gonna say everybody start looking like Michael

Lisa: Jackson. Oh, that too. Cause baby his nose at the end, lemme tell you. Don't talk about Michael Jackson. But baby that nose at the end, it like it were peeling too. Like the skin was peeling off of it. Bless it. That man. Bless his heart. Let me stop.

Shannon: But another point too is, Other cultures of women try to alter their, um, bodies and facial features to look like ours.

Lisa: Of course, of course. And that's why I was gonna go at a angle of that's why we, we are not worried about us is because we're, we're always going to be the latest trend. , like we have it there.

Mm-hmm. So no matter what we do, We are, we're gonna be trending.

Shannon: But I do admit

aging is a thing in itself. Like I mm-hmm. , I look at pictures of me when I was younger mm-hmm. , and the way I looked and the way my body looked. And I'm like, dang. Like how did I get.

Lisa: Well see. It's different for me cuz I, when I was younger, I was like the super pudgy kid. I was always quiet and then I done gained some of it back.

Mm-hmm. right now. But it's on us though guys. . Yeah, we can do

Shannon: this. Yeah, it's on us. We just gotta work a little harder cause um, it don't fall off like it used to. No, it it show damn. I don't know. Just like looking, even just the way my face looks. Mm-hmm. looks different to me and I'm

Lisa: just like, but it's gonna be that.

Like that. Cause we're hard on ourself. No, we're hard on ourself too. That's shame. We're hard on ourself. You sit, y'all don't listen to, don't listen to Shannon. She's sitting up here talking like she drank a michel lobe every night. , like she be running the streets. I might. Girl, bye. Anyway, her, her skin is clear.

Shannon: stuff doesn't have anything to do with black. Don't crack. I think it's a more of like a aging thing that I'm having to come to terms with. And then, you know, after you have kids, your body don't look the same.

No, it don't. So I think it's more of that kind of

Lisa: stuff. Yeah, I, okay. I guess I can agree with you on there. There's been times where I don't put on like a dress or something and I'm like, hold on, this dress ain't dressing like it was dressing, you know, a couple years ago. Mm-hmm. and then, you know, you gotta slide it on back to the closet

Shannon: I can see how some people would take it that way.

Mm-hmm. , I think I look at it more like it's just a gift of being black. Mm-hmm. , I mean, one of the. .

Lisa: Mm-hmm. . So how would you react if there was, okay, so would you say, and tell me if this is like, Hey Lisa, you need to calm down cause that's not the same . Let me know. So would this be equivalent to, let's say, okay, you got, let's say a Caucasian.

Gentleman talking about his boats and yachts and you know what he's did to work hard for it. And you know, he's sitting there like, you know, distinguished with his, you know, duck head shorts on. You know, I gotta paint a picture, his duck head shorts and his button down and you know, but the button down his sleeve is like rolled up

Shannon: his Hawaiian uh shirt.

Lisa: how you know No, I drive like old

Shannon: beat up trucks. You know what? The ones with the real money, I can't. I

Lisa: can't, man. Okay. I have to agree because there are some people that I do know that got long paper, but when you look at them, you wouldn't, you wouldn't be able to.

But go back to my story though. You can't take this from me. So in my story, , let's say, you know, his name is Brad and he's just talking about, you know, his yachts and what they did over the weekend compared to Miss, you know, Tanika. They just had her third grandbaby and she over there, you know, with her hair, she just combed her hair out of a wrap and her skin's just glistening.

Shannon: I don't, I wouldn't take that as bragging.

I think it's just confidence. .

Lisa: Okay. Well, I have to say sometimes when us having that confidence and we are embracing what we have been given, it is taken the wrong way. Because anytime we do express confidence, well just the, I don't wanna say aggression, but just showing that we're stern on it, we're look like we are just doing too much.

Lisa: I don't, that was my thoughts because we walk around, we say we queens all the time.

Like how often do you see a Caucasian woman or a Hispanic woman was like, I am a queen, a Hispanic queen. Like, it's very rare. I don't think I've ever, I'm a, I'm a white queen. I'm pretty sure that was possibly said, you know, years ago, but I'm just saying. We don't hear that from other ethnicities. So for us, I think it's taken the wrong way because we have to use these affirmations for ourself, right?

It ain't got nothing to do with you. Right. Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah. So, and it's more about the history and how typically we were not painted as brilliant or we were not exactly painted us kings and queens and you know, we were painted as quite the opposite. So, um, to me it's more of like, putting down the stereotypes that historically existed.

Lisa: Mm-hmm. . Oh yeah. I like that. We need to put that on the shirt. Hey. Okay. ideas. Yeah. . So he put that on the shirt. What,

Shannon: what do you think actually makes black crack

girl, lemme tell y'all something. Black people leave that meth for, for the other folks and I, I hope y'all, y'all stop it. But do crackhead still? I feel like they

Shannon: do. I feel like we just don't see 'em where we live.

Lisa: Oh, maybe we need to post that. Do people still smoke crack

What do people do now if they don't smoke crack? It's meth. It's meth. Meth is, yeah, meth. And then how do they say they p Perks? Oh girl. If I hear somebody say that one time, what's that one song? Pop 10 Pop. The per 30 sip said. Baby. I ain't gonna judge them cuz baby, when I get in here, I pop my vitamins in my little seizure medicine.

I been here out to the wind. Mm. I ain't gonna judge them. But, um, the uh, forest us and black cracking is how we take care of ourself.

Lisa: girl?

No, that ain't how we say it. Say it how we said it. That's how I say it. Oh, well. I said girl, that girl hell, she look like shit. , fuck she got going on and you got the paper. What's going on? You ok. Girl, I ain't had time to get my hair done and my baby dad. And, and then here comes an outpour of the stress.

I do not know.

Shannon: Mm mm.

Lisa: Why are you in trouble? No, no, no, no, no. I can't, I can't do it. Mm-hmm. I can't be smelling like that, but I'm just, I'm just curious because what I, what I'm doing is I'm sitting here and I'm thinking about the different ways of our culture, what we're keen to do, and there is a lot of people that do smoke marijuana to ease, you know, their pain, um, or whatever they got going on just to relax.

I ain't gonna say pain, just to relax. Far as another physical thing, the way that we eat. Mm-hmm. . Okay. Um, considering our cultures, we are taught to eat heavy. Um, which, and the sodium, which could bring on the high blood pressure that just affects people randomly now. And we like, dang, I thought I was doing pretty good and all of a sudden, boom.

Because I think stress was like dead on. Yeah.

Shannon: I think stress is the number one.

Lisa: Yeah. Stress is dead on.

Shannon: All right, well, are you ready for a little

Lisa: black activity? Let's go. Let's get it. What we doing?

Lisa: Let's get, I have to take a little sip of my, um, I'm just having a look. This is a, a dessert. It's a banana pudding cream moonshine.

Oh. With, so with sonic ice in it. I mean, I

Shannon: thought I was doing something with my little

Lisa: glass of wine, but yeah. Moonshine, I can't beat that one out. It's pretty good. Shout out to Old Smokey Moon. Sean. Hit us up

Okay. I'm trying to get my glasses. I'm ready. I'm ready, y'all. Y'all should see her over here fighting with these damn glasses on, baby. She telling her age. Braids, ,

Shannon: and headphones. Don't worry. Okay. Okay. We just gonna do it like this. I can't get 'em on.

Lisa: Okay. All right.

Shannon: Okay. Our first person is the beautiful

Lisa: Iman.

Shannon: Boom. Mm. That's a little warm,

Lisa: but 76. Other way. 74 going down, 75, 70. Down 70. Down 70, 71 down.

Dancer for Brown. That bitch ain't that young. No, I'm just playing . I was like, I didn't, I didn't heard that one. I was just playing. I was just playing. Ok. I'm ready for the day. So let. What

Shannon: about uh, baby face? Pharrell?

Lisa: Oh, Pharrell looks now you notice

Shannon: the same. Exactly

Lisa: the same, right? Don't wanna sound fool myself.

Rude. Um, he ain't that old. Uh, he ain't as old. Oh. Like, I still wanna say he's in our, well, nah, he's passed our circle 45. That's warm. Okay, so let's go up 47, up some more. He can't be in his fifties yet. 49. He's 49. 49. All right. Okay. Yep.

Lisa: Fox. Okay. Becky with the good hair.

Let's do. 60. Mm. You gotta come down some. All right. 55, just a little bit more. 53? Mm-hmm. 53. Ok. Yep. Go ahead, Mr. Fox. Stunt on these holes.

Shannon: now. Harry Belafonte?

Lisa: Nah, this nigga. Oh, okay. So this. Okay, so we gonna do, he ain't a hundred yet. Let's do like 91 or 92 or something like that, up a little bit. 96? Yes, that's it.

56.

Shannon: Yep. That's it. Seriously? Mm-hmm. ,

It ain't gonna be income tax money either. All saved. Boom. Now what? Sugar daddy? I ain't, I don't have the energy . I can't even do it because after a while, sugar Daddy gonna want some sugar and I just, I, I'm stingy with it.

Shannon: Um, okay. What.

Lisa: Ooh. This is no ordinary, ordinary love. All she, ordinary love. She gotta be like 53.

Mm. You cold go up. She older than that. Mm-hmm.

Shannon: 62

Lisa: 67.

Hell no. That you passed that 65, 66. 64. 64. Okay. All right. I was gonna say she couldn't be that much older, but, okay. 64.

Shannon: I don't see that. No, I don't either. All right. What about um, Morgan

Lisa: Freeman? That's not fair because this nigga looked like he was 90 when he was like, . When you seen that picture. Him when he was little.

Hey, Hey. That picture he was little. He looked like he was, he knocking the hell outta 40 when he was like 10 years old. That's not fair. I'm calling, I'm I'm gonna pass on this one cause that's not fair. If you guys started old

Shannon: in the

85, okay. Yeah. Is that ain't fair cuz that dude, no, I don't understand that one. You know how God throw us like a little, you know, like look a little sprinkle or something different.

I wanna know what he doing to, for his crack that look like that. He's black for crack. . Much love though. Shout out. Shot, shake Redemption.

Shannon: What about, um, Samuel L. Jackson? Does anybody else say Samuel Jackson? Samuel?

Lisa: We do from Chat. Chat town. You know you're from chat. Yeah, I know. Oh, SAMU. He don't claim him though, like Usher did.

Shannon: are very warm.

Lisa: 74. 74. Wow. Okay, Sam. He look good. Lemme tell you something. You know when you got money, money. When your skin flawless like that, you don't see his skin on them. Capital One commercials.

Shannon: Hey, money is something that makes sure black don't crack.

All right. Our last one is Queen Latifa.

Lisa: Who you calling us? She gotta be like 50, 52. Ooh,

Shannon: you got it right on the

Lisa: head. Really? Yep. I was guessing. Yes. 50. Okay. Yep. That's my girl. That's another person that has very beautiful skin. Mm-hmm. very beautiful. All right. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right, folks. Lisa's pieces.

so, This poem was, uh, written by a poet by the name of Page, and it's called Rose Painted. Um, this poem was inspired by the movie, the Help, and the main idea of the poem is how people look at people's skin color and judge them all right. If I were a rose painted black, would you cast me aside like a black and burnt rice?

I like that one. Yeah, that's nice. I like that one. Mm-hmm. . All right, so. I just wanna tell y'all, we gonna jump into the little final thoughts With all the disappointment, disadvantages, and deliberate missed deals, us as African Americans experience, we must capture and retain any greatness we come across.

It's okay to have the best and most importantly, have the best mentality. And internally and physically, we take care of ourself As we work on this, let our black don't crack be our privilege, our own privilege. Ain't nothing like having. Our black confidence. Mm-hmm. . So next week will be discussing desegregation and was it a mistake for our community,

Shannon: as we always say, thank you for tuning in to this episode.

We hope that you will stick around for future episodes, and if you haven't checked any of our other episodes out, we hope that you'll go and do that. So there's three things that you can do to be involved with what we have going on. Uh, the first thing is that if you like what you heard, then please share it.

Shannon: if you're on IG you can follow us. We are at Black Activities

Lisa: Pod. Yes. Follow, follow, follow, follow inbox.