Colourism

Coming face to face with your own privilege can be a harsh reality check. Like taking a pill with no water (or a shot with no chaser), it’s uncomfortable to swallow and leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. But as with all medicine, it’s ultimately for your own good.

As a half black woman, born from an immigrant mother and raised in a low-income household, I thought I was winning in the struggle Olympics, a triple threat of oppression if you will. Growing up, being black played a major role in the construction of my self-identity, and with it so too did the struggles that came with growing up black in the coloniser’s homeland. It was therefore a decidedly jarring experience to be faced with this fundamental truth: not all black people experience the same struggle. While I may face racism and prejudice in society, I possess a certain level of privilege that allows me to live my life with an ease not afforded to many other black women.

‘All you dark-skinned hating on light-skinned bitches don’t act like if god gave you a choice you wouldn’t change your colour lool’

-11/04/2013, Stefflon Don (Retweet)

I still remember the moment I realised my privilege; it’s a flashbulb memory now, the event forever burned into my mind. I was on the bus heading home from school when I overheard some girls talking behind me. Heads huddled together, brows furrowed in concentration, they were discussing a matter at the forefront of many a young girls mind: boys.

“You hear about this whole lighty thing? Every boy wants a lightskinned girl now”

“Yeah, lighty’s are winning now…”

I had never heard the term lighty prior to that bus ride, but I knew immediately what it was referring to, as if the knowledge was imbedded into my DNA through years of subconscious awareness. I was only 13 at the time, and to give you a bit of context: I was in the beginning stages of what was to be a long term relationship with acne, still carrying 70% of my baby fat, and had the classic braces/glasses combo to complete my look; imagine Ugly Betty 10 years younger and you had me.

As embarrassing as it is for me to admit now, when I first overheard them talking I was too excited at the possibility of being considered beautiful by boys I didn’t even know that the implications of their conversation never crossed my mind. While I was busy celebrating this news, the girls behind me were openly mourning living in a world that had labelled them as unattractive because of the shade of their skin.

‘Dark skin b***** shaving their head expecting to look like Amber Rose, when really they end up looking like Michael Jordan.’ Looooooooool.’

-06/04/2012, Maya Jama (Retweet)

To be pretty is to be privileged

We live in a world obsessed with the physical appearance, an obsession that has led to a beauty industry worth £27 billion in the UK alone. Whether we realise it or not, our looks matter in more ways than we often consider. It is a form of currency in modern day society, and I’m not just talking about getting a free drink for you and your friends at the bar. There’s a psychology behind the benefits of being physically attractive; you’re seen as kinder, more intelligent, and more trustworthy within society.

When you combine our obsession with appearances with the westernised global standard of beauty (fair skin, straight hair, light eyes etc), you begin to see how having dark skin and afro-centric features can be a disadvantage. Black women do not fit western beauty standards, because that would be incongruent with the western agenda. Spearheaded by a racist rhetoric, mainstream beauty has been standardised as the antithesis to the black woman. To add insult to injury, we associate blackness with masculinity and whiteness with fragility. When that intersects the expectations and standards for men and women, given a woman is supposed to be quiet and fragile and in need of help, the association with skin then becomes more apparent. Black women, and especially dark-skinned black women, are not only seen as less attractive, but more masculine, and therefore more aggressive and less desirable because of their perceived masculinity. This prejudice has infiltrated our education system, our work force, and our social mobility. It has a direct effect on the music and film industry; the fetishisation of black women; ‘blackfishing’ and the appropriation of dark skin features.

What is my privilege?

Borne from my white father, it’s my lighter skin and racially ambiguous features. The looseness of my curl pattern, the yellow hue of my skin tone, and the elevation of my nose bridge. When a mixed black woman like myself inherits features that stray from the stereotypical black visage, she experiences a privilege over her darker skinfolk, as it enables her to avoid many of the issues previously laid out. She is seen not only as more physically attractive, and therefore benefits from pretty privilege, but also as a softer, kinder, less aggressive black woman within society. She becomes the digestible version of her darker skinned counterpart to the white folk. Parallel to the privilege white people experience due to racism, people with lighter skin earn more money, complete more years of schooling, live in better neighbourhoods, and marry higher-status people than darker-skinned people of the same race or ethnicity. This social structure all operates in a framework called Colourism.

Colourism

Noun: Prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group.

“Colourism is the daughter of racism”

-Lupita Nyongo

There is no singular history of colourism, it can be found all over the world, evolving in differing ways in different geographic locations. However, while colourism may have been around for generations, it is an issue that comes in waves. Every few years a colourist tweet is uncovered and social media goes up in arms, but that’s always where it stops. It seems that for every new generation of dark-skinned girls entering a society, it has become a part of her coming-of-age story to discover this fact. Issues of colourism has often been overshadowed by racism, which has allowed the prejudice to fester and evolve within society unchallenged, morphing into a more subtle and insidious form of colourism a far cry from the paper bag tests of the past.

Colourism in the modern day

Most of us have likely witnessed, or even played into colourism at some point in our lives, probably without having ever realising that was the case. Your favourite rapper’s lyrics about only dating lightskins; straightening your hair for a job interview; a new foundation release that doesn’t make shades darker than ‘sandy beige’. These are all instances in which having darker skin and afro-centric features is perceived in a negative way.

Some may argue that those aren’t real issues, or that they don’t relate to colourism at all, and they would be wrong. If I had a pound every time someone’s said ‘it’s just a preference!’ in rebuttal, I would have enough money to pay off my students loans, get on the property ladder, move to Hawaii, and sip on mimosas for the rest of my life. I hate to break it to you, but if your dating history is every race or skin colour other than dark-skinned women, it might not be just a preference. Colourism, no matter how minor the instance may seem to some, is the erasure and invalidation of those with darker skin. To add insult to injury, the corporate beauty world (an industry designed on profiting off the insecurities of women) has perpetuated and monopolised on this prejudice. Many cases have been reported of magazines lightening the skin of models in post, one of the most notable cases being the lightening of Lupita Nyongo’s skin on the cover of Vanity Fair. Skin lightening brands have profited off the millions of woman told their entire life that the skin they were born in was not good enough, resulting in a skin bleaching industry predicted to be worth $23 billion dollars by 2020.

‘Ari Lennox and Teyana Taylor’s ability to have dangerously high sex appeal while simultaneously looking like rottweilers will always amaze me’

-01/01/2020, @WinEverUwantIT

You may have realised by now that I have primarily focused on colourism relating to women, and that’s because colourism has a greater negative impact on women than it does men. Throughout history, a woman’s physical appearance has played an important role in her value within society; there is a privilege given to women (more than that which is given to men) who fit into mainstream western beauty standards. Consequently, in a society where a woman’s appearance can either greatly benefit or hinder her, and in which mainstream beauty standards are geared towards European features, black women are automatically at a disadvantage.

As a biracial woman, it is the responsibility of me and other light skinned women to call out colourism when we see it. It can be uncomfortable to do so, but it is a burden that should not be put onto the shoulders of dark skinned black women. This doesn’t just mean calling out colourism when you see it happen, but also listening to black women when they express their frustrations; it means not discrediting their struggles simply because you haven’t experienced it because, as I said in the beginning of this article: not every black person experiences the same struggle.

I leave you with this quote, which expresses my sentiment perfectly:

‘To anyone who is mixed race, or who is a lighter-skinned bipoc.

Racism damages you but colourism benefits you.

Your privilege does not cancel out the pain that racism has caused you.

BUT

Recognise your privilege. Do not deny that you have it. Research colourism the way you research racism. Give space for those affected by colourism to speak and recognise when it is not your turn. Stand up for each other. Stick together. Colourism turns our communities against each other and if someone in yours tells you you are being colourist-

LISTEN. EVALUATE. LEARN. CHANGE’

-Maya Richardson, @mayarichardsun