Mathew Knowles, father of American Singer Beyonce, a.k.a Queen B, says her light skin has helped her to become more famous.
Knowles has been speaking about how racism is still an issue in the music industry, and why he believes his daughter’s music career has been raised by her being a light skinned black woman.
Knowles who managed Queen B’s career up until 2011, was discussing how colourism affects aspiring artists trying to break into the mainstream.
He argued that it’s ‘no accident’ that most black women played on the radio have ‘lighter skin in common’.
Speaking to Ebony magazine on his experiences of racism in the industry, he said: ‘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?
The reporter replied: ‘They’re all lighter skinned.’
‘Do you think that’s an accident?’ Knowles asked. When the journalist exclaimed: ‘Of course not’ Knowles quipped: ‘So you get it!’
Knowles is promoting his book Racism: From the Eyes of a Child, which discusses race relations from his perspective growing up in the deep South, and his account of some of the most violently racist moments in recent US history.
He also admitted that he thought former wife and Beyonce’s mother, Tina Knowles, was white when he first met her, because ‘the shade of your Blackness was considered important’ when he was growing up.
‘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,’ he continued.
‘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.
He explained: ‘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.’
Knowles previously managed Destiny’s Child and Solange Knowles.
Beyoncé welcomed twin Rumi and Sir Carter last summer with husband Jay-Z.
The pair already share six-year-old daughter Blue Ivy.