Hey everyone! I'm back with a new post that I have been working on for a while. Please give it a read and comment under the post.
If there is one thing that I have learned about myself since I started and graduated from university, it’s that I was a colourist - I actively and ashamedly participated in pushing the narrative of colourism, and it was only when I began to educate myself through academic reading, did I learn just how deep the discussion of colourism went. Growing up, I was not exposed to a lot of black children who were different shades of black apart from the medium and light skin tones from my siblings and my cousins. I grew up with the idea that my skin tone was probably the darkest skin tone there was, and I used that idea to substantiate some of the bullying I had faced in school because of my skin colour and my hairstyle (I had dreadlocks when I was younger). Little did I know, that as I grew up, I would be exposed to not just a variety of black skin tones, but also the discrimination that black people experienced in their every day life.
Here’s a brief of colourism based on what I’ve learned. Colourism deals with the physical appearance - skin tone, hair texture and body type - that is accepted by the Western world, which pushes the narrative that lighter black skin tones are seen as more attractive, intelligent and closer to the white skin tone, and that darker skin tones are seen as less attractive and unintelligent. This is a narrative that society has seen in the media and pushed in society for many centuries, and it didn’t help many people who fought against colourism to see the activists being those of the appropriately desired skin tone being in front of the cameras, trying to dismantle the toxic concept.
While many try to deny or downplay the issue, colourism provides a lot of advantages for those who are a lighter skin tone, and this occurs in quite a number of other racial societies - like the Indian, Latin and Asian communities. This is an important distinction because race is a social concept, which is not majorly tied to biology but rather to the history of the oppression and colonialisation of non-white groups. It’s no secret that lighter-skinned people of colour enjoy the privileges offered to them, that may not be attainable to their darker-skinned counterparts, and while there has been a select group of dark skinned celebrities who have become successful, the challenges that they have faced are much more than that of their lighter-skinned brothers and sisters.
I know that colourism is a very emotional and social issue that almost every person deals with across the world, but its seeds of discrimination lies within the black race, and how black people have been torn down to hate not only themselves, but other black people who don’t share the same skin tone as them. The popular media has played an immense role in how black people were to be viewed. I had to admit that the black people I looked up to in the media were the likes of Queen Latifah, Raven-Symoné and Kelly Rowland, because they were closest celebrities and influences that matched my physical appearance. I was a dark-skinned, fat girl, who did not see people like me in the media, so I had assumed that my type was not desirable and that I had to change it.
I immediately began to feel bad that I became envious of my friends who were lighter than me, and thus deemed more attractive than me. I learned later in my life that I was internalising this self-hatred of my own skin tone, because it was not the same skin tone as my parents, and I sometimes assumed that God had made a mistake in how I was created. It may sound silly to some people, but this was the mentality that I had as an adolescent, and I am still learning to dismantle this mentality in my head at the age of twenty-two.
The recent change in how the media views darker-skinned people, especially black people, has been progressive to say the least, and although the narrative of colourism still exists in major media, those who have tried to, or have successfully shifted the Western world’s narrative of beauty have brought out the inspiration and hope that darker-skinned black people are actually attractive and intelligent, all of which have also been pushed by the concept of self-love, self-acceptance and body positivity.
Major influencers like Lupita Nyong’o, Sterling K. Brown, Danielle Brooks, Adut Akech, Duckie Thot, Philomena Kwao, Anok Yai and Lance Gross have broken boundaries in their lines of work, telling the world both online and in real life, that being dark skinned is beautiful - a narrative which was pushed in the beauty world by the likes of Grace Jones, Naomi Campbell and Alek Wek. I was quite excited at the prospect of seeing Lupita Nyong’o being the face of Calvin Klein’s fragrance with her proudly displaying her natural hair and bright smile, while Danielle Brooks was named one of the world’s most beautiful people, and model Duckie Thot was named as one of the faces of Rihanna’s beauty line, Fenty Beauty.
All of these breakthroughs gave me hope that the current and future generations would begin to see that other black skin tones were just as beautiful as their light-skinned counterparts, and while the discussion is nowhere near finding solutions - the ice has been broken and continues to crack as the discussion continues and spreads across societies.
I want to be a part of a generation that acknowledges the issues we face with colourism, but are also open to finding ways to overcome and dismantle the toxic concept.
I realised that the less I contributed to mocking or insulting people of colour, and started to appreciate their features and their natural beauty, I began to heal myself and open my mind to learning more about the privileges and difficulties faced by the black community. We have to be the ones who change the narrative behind the various tones of the black skin - it starts with us, and although we are far from destroying the narrative completely, the steps forward that we have taken are great, and I have a firm belief that we can change our mindsets and begin to not our black counterparts, but most importantly, we can love ourselves.
What are some of your experiences of colourism? Please leave a comment below.
Love, light and blessings xx.
References
Hunter, M. (2007). The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status, and Inequality. Sociology Compass (1).Mills College, California. Pgs 237-240
Fears, L.M. (1998). Western Journal of Black Studies: Colorism of black women in news editorial photos. Pullman (1). Pgs 30-36
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