All About Laughs
Mathew Knowles is spilling the tea on his life and how many aspects of his growing up affected his later decisions. The father to one of the world’s biggest superstars has penned a book, “Racism: From the Eyes of a Child”, where he is speaking on his experiences growing up in the deep south while experiencing overt racism, and in it, he also touches on his ex-wife Tina, as well as his reasons for why he chose to marry her.
Knowles had an exclusive interview with Ebony where he discussed his book, in which he heavily touches on the effects of colorism in his life, which was birthed in his own household. “When I was growing up, my mother used to say, ‘Don’t ever bring no nappy-head Black girl to my house,’” said Knowles, former manager to Beyonce. “In the deep South in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, the shade of your Blackness was considered important. So I, unfortunately, grew up hearing that message.”
It is then that he opens up about “eroticized rage,” a topic to which he devotes a chapter to. “I talk about going to therapy and sharing–one day I had a breakthrough–that I used to date mainly White women or very high-complexion Black women that looked White,” stated Knowles. “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.”
Mathew and Tina exchanged wedding vows back in 1980 in Galveston, Texas. They were married for 31 years before Tina filed for divorce in 2009. TMZ cites the reason for her filing as “discord or conflict of personalities” which hindered them from “reasonable expectation of reconciliation.”
Knowles then continued, “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. There are a lot of Black men of my era that are not aware of this thing.”
Further in the interview, he discussed colorism within the music industry, as well as his experience with it while attending an HBCU. “I was in the last class where they’d take out a brown paper bag, and if you were darker than the bag, you could not get into Fisk,” Knowles said.
