If I Had Interviewed Quincy Jones, I Would’ve Asked Him About His Views On Colorism And…
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Well, basically I would’ve just pushed him on the topic of colorism — and hopefully expanded into how he thinks his actions contributed to the miserable treatment that is still afforded Black women — who are dark-skinned and void of any of the prized features that men like him value.
The only “Catwoman” that matters — Eartha Kitt — famously summed up her experience when it came to dating the eligible Black bachelors of her era:
The men I wanted to be with, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, dated predominately white women. I’m talking about the 50s. When Harry Belafonte picks me out of his bed in Philadelphia and said: ‘I don’t want you to take me seriously because no Black woman can do anything for me’. I could not help him to progress into where he was going to go. “A black woman would hold a black man back’, that’s what he told me. If I wanted to marry a black man there wasn’t one because the white girls had them.”
Quincy Jones is currently trending at the age of almost eighty-five — and naturally the first thing that comes to mind is the worst case scenario — until you peep that not only did he curse out The Beatles — but he proudly reminisces about that one time he and Ivanka Trump hung out — twelve years ago.
I used to date Ivanka, you know. Yes sir. Twelve years ago. Tommy Hilfiger, who was working with my daughter Kidada, said, “Ivanka wants to have dinner with you.” I said “No problem. She’s a fine motherfucker.” She had the most beautiful legs I ever saw in my life. Wrong father, though.
Of course it’s hard to avoid doing the math — even though you know the result will be fucked up — regardless. Jones was seventy-two when he indulged in the “most beautiful legs” attached to “a fine motherfucker” who was about twenty-four at the time. The forty-eight-year age gap is quite disturbing on every level and it summons the query of why Jones felt the need to divulge something that scandalous during a climate that is too sensitive to host such damning revelations.
It’s quite possible that the forty-eight-year-old version of himself would have been careful “not to go there” but judging from the varied reception to his latest exposé — it seems that he’s…