If white supremacy is the pink elephant that goes unseen in too many rooms, colorism is its hippopotamus cousin—just as big, funky, and likely to be talked around rather than contained and removed from the premises.
Colorism, according to the Oxford Dictionaries, is “prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group.”
On the surface, that’s technically correct. What’s missing are both the background context of institutional, systemic racism and White Supremacy that causes colorism, and the nuances of how it shows up in our lives.
If you’re not White, chances are your life is impacted somehow by this dynamic. If you’re any part of a Multiracial family, it’s on your need-to-know ASAP list, especially if you haven’t experienced it directly or don’t quite understand how it works.
http://multiracialmedia.com/racism-meet-colorism-yara-alexandra-conversations-need-now/
While the technical correction above is correct, it isn't correct enough.
The last part of the Oxford Dictionary definition is wrong about colorism being executed "typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group."
The interracial version of Colorism has been executed first and most often by white people, always.
In the days of slavery, if the master rapist of the house didn't sell his own children, born of his black female property, he kept his lighter skinned progeny working indoors. The "house slaves" and "field hands" were always separated by color, and that separation was originally done by white people.
Sometimes, the light-skinned slave was some other white person's child. But that person, as a child or an adult, looked close to white (human) to the white racist slave owner. Therefore, light-skinned people worked closer and inside the main house during slavery.
Colorism has been executed first and most often by white people, always.
To this day in the good ole USA, the observed value of a human being is still based on proximity to whiteness. And the people doing the valuing in places like Hollywood, and in an ordinary workplace near you, are most often white.
At one of my first real jobs outside of retail, I watched a woman every bit as black as I am but very pale skinned get pats on the head for being beautiful just before she got promotions --when all she was is light-skinned with white-ish features
-- not smarter,
-- not more industrious
-- not more deserving.
This wasn't her "fault" but she was in a privileged position all the same.
The white woman we both worked for was one of the fairest I'd ever worked for. So maybe this light-skinned woman's start date being prior to mine was the main reason she was ahead of me at work.
However, I watched how white people, especially white men responded to her paleness, commenting on her beauty. If that corporation had stayed in business, she'd have gone far without having do much more than be fairly competent -- same as most white women.
White people's preferences for people that look like them can most easily be seen in Hollywood. In television and movies, the first black characters that were not servants and maids and such, were often light-skinned --especially the black female characters.
Because beauty is still a measurement of a woman's worth and white women are still the standard bearers of beauty in white dominated American society, if not worldwide, men's attitudes have been disproportionally affected by colorism as opposed to other groups.
In Hollywood, white men and black men both, will cast black men who are unambiguously black. But when black women actresses are sought they are looking for black women where the first question anyone asks upon seeing her is "What is she?"
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The photo most often available of Susan Kelechi
BEFORE
they put a braided wig on her head
AND
Cast her in THIS IS US |
For black women interracial and intraracial colorism casting has resulted in numerous television shows and movies where there is truly an "illusion of inclusion" for black girls and black women.
Black male content creators have become notorious for making the pretty teenage daughter, the eldest, dating age daughter, a very pale what-is-she female.
That is, if the pretty pale teenage daughter is seen outside the context of a black family drama or comedy, the first question anyone asks about her identity is "What is she?"
In THE COSBY SHOW that daughter was played by Lisa Bonet, until they added another pale mixed race woman to play Cosby's older, dating age daughter. She was supposedly away at college during the first season, played by Sabrina LeBeauf
In MY WIFE AND KIDS the pale dating age daughter was played by Jennifer Freeman
The eldest daughter in BLACKISH --a show which has done some perpetuating of colorism in the show itself (remember the dark-skinned rough cousins from the hood come over for Halloween) is played by Yara Shahidi.
Repeat female guest stars in BLACKISH include: Anna Devere Smith, Raven Symone, and Zendaya, all of whom are wonderful actresses and human beings as far as I can tell, but the most important feature they have for being hired is that they can pass plastic bag tests, much less a paper bag test.
Keep in mind, that even though the "Rainbow" character is supposed to be biracial, the actress that plays her IS biracial and her mother is Diana Ross -- not a woman as pale as Anna Devere Smith.
 |
Rainbow's Fake Mom Anna Devere Smith
Tracee Ellis Ross' Real Mom: Diana Ross |
ON A SIDE NOTE: I think it's perfectly shameful for a black show like BLACKISH to not acknowledge through its casting choices that mixed race people come in a variety of shades. It is shameful that a show with aspirations as low down as the ROSEANNE reboot had a dark-skinned little actress playing a mixed race child....because, just like in real life, it works out that way sometimes.
Like Lisa Bonet got her own show A DIFFERENT WORLD, Yara Shahidi also got a spin off show, GROWN-ISH, once her character graduated high school.
Because we, the black audience, didn't call out the colorism hard and loud in BLACKISH, content creator Kenya Barris went on to put Yara Shahidi in GROWNISH and subsequently multiplied the problem of colorism based casting.
Look at that image: Once again the black men are unambiguously black while the center stage black girl fits into the WHAT-IS-SHE category -- a question that would always be asked until the young woman in question is starring in a "black show."
Some black women, mostly feminists I would guess, have been trying to drag colorism out in the open these days. I am too. But it's difficult. Black people are so ashamed of colorism issues that they try to do the same thing that liberal whites do with racism
- pretend it's not happening
- pretend it'll go away if you just stop talking about it
- pretend racism or colorism are just concepts that don't have real impact (White Folks' "There's only one race the human race" = "Oh MY GAWD! We're ALL black")
In the 1990s when A DIFFERENT WORLD came to television, Lisa Bonet's college spin off of THE COSBY SHOW, black people refused to talk about colorism at all. And some of us have paid dearly for that.
The original cast of actors that played the center stage college students on A DIFFERENT WORLD, were all supposed to be black except one white girl played by Marisa Tomei -- who went on to make movies after the first season. The four other actresses in A DIFFERENT WORLD, with the exception of Charnele Brown who didn't have very many lines or a boyfriend each week, were all pale, mixed race. Lisa Bonet, Jasmine Guy, and Cree Summer would all fit into the category of WHAT IS SHE on any other show except a supposedly "black show."
 |
Charnele Brown, the only black college
student on a black campus in
A DIFFERENT WORLD |
In fact, you could say Charnele Brown was the only black girl student at a black college as far as A DIFFERENT WORLD goes.
So, I know Bill Cosby's A DIFFERENT WORLD perpetuated colorism in the black community. And I know that our inability to acknowledge the obvious colorism involved in the casting has hurt black girls every where too.
But what I can't figure out is whether or not Bill Cosby's A DIFFERENT WORLD was telling us the truth.
On A DIFFERENT WORLD, the black boys really weren't checking for Charnele Brown's character. Neither was the audience; she rarely had many lines. And in real life college, for a lot of medium and dark brown girls, we found black males weren't checking for us either.
Black males have a nasty reputation, on black campuses and off, for looking light-skinned, 3C hair chicks like Lisa Bonet, Jennifer Freeman, Yara Shahidi, and Tisha Campbell
so how can we be surprised that some of these black boys grow up to be black men who cast light-skinned black women that looked like the light-skinned black girls they were mostly chasing in college?
Even when black men cast light-skinned black women who have strongly black features, they have the light woman play the character that is good and funny and upright, while the dark-skinned woman gets treated a n-word.
And I am hoping that this is why MARTIN doesn't get much airplay anymore.
When I was a child, I thought like a child.
So, I was happy watching most of these shows. I rarely winced or wished I was light-skinned like Lisa Bonet -- even though I could see how much more desirable she was to black males on the show and in real life. So many black males near me drooled over her.
Yet I did NOT pray for her skin tone, same as I didn't want white skin.
I like my skin. I always have. But I finally figured out that I wanted to be treated as precious. I realize now that my confused desires to be white and later light while not wanting my actual skin color to change --somehow-- were about how I was being treated. I didn't want to change myself. I wanted others to change toward me. I wanted black boys to change and like me as I am.
In fact, I was being treated badly by black boys and black girls alike.
Girls gravitate toward other girls that are being treated as if they are "pretty" too. Pretty is what being popular is all about for girls, from grade school all the way up through college.
I am a feminist. And I don't like it. But it's the truth.
Most black children, male or female, tend to gravitate toward or be extremely jealous of light-skinned girls in grade school.
Light black girls are told they aren't really black, especially if they are actually biracial, and routinely told, "You think you're better than us!" by other legitimately jealous black girls. Even black parents can treat a light-skinned girl like she's a step above. But the jealousy and ostracizing can decrease OR become less important when a light-skinned girl gets to be dating age.
That's when the black boys come calling on light-girls hot and heavy --whether they are actually "pretty" or not.
And black men, as a group, are not ashamed of this. Most are willfully unaware of how they perpetuate colorism in black female circles.
If black men were aware of their perpetuation of colorism among black women, Jay Z wouldn't have been able to put out a song about how he's rich enough to "get all the light-skinned honeys" then marry Beyonce without anybody commenting on this.
If black men were aware of their perpetuation of colorism among black women, they'd have noticed that the only women that appear to have been worth listening to, worth leadership roles during THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT and THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT were very pale black women.
If black men were aware of their perpetuation of colorism among black women, black men would have noticed Bill Cosby chooses women to marry, women to cast, and women to rape based on their being white and also their proximity to whiteness.
The only thing I've found more amazing than black people failing to notice how colorism has pervaded every single thing choice that Bill Cosby has made when it comes to women -- his choice of wife, his choice of young female stars, his choice of rape victims-- is how black people failed to notice that Michael Jackson was severely mentally ill as a result of his bombardment by white supremacy in the music industry.
If we don't talk openly enough about colorism to notice it when it is obvious, how can we prepare and protect black children, especially black girls, from the secondary white supremacy called "colorism?"
I and thousands of other black girls that watched Cosby's shows probably shouldn't have gone off to college thinking Lisa Bonet, Jasmine Guy, or even Cree Summer were truly representative of us as black girls.
And I sort of WAS aware that Lisa Bonet wasn't like me in any way. I was sort of very aware. But I squashed the knowledge, pushed it away in the name of "not being divisive." I wanted to feel like black people, especially black women are united, that we-are-all-one
My living on military bases, led to me missing the team-dark-skin versus team-light-skin thing in school. There were too few of us black girls to split up among color lines. When colorism issues came up --and it did come up-- we squashed individual beefs so fast we barely knew the subject had come up later the same afternoon.
Maybe if I had gone to school where #team-light-skin and #team-dark-skin was a big thing, maybe I wouldn't have been quite so shocked by colorism from black boys on campus in my college years. Maybe I'd have been better off not so ignorant. I might not have been so hurt.
If the black community was more open to talking about colorism in general, I probably would have gone off to college worried, but at least MORE aware that I was going to be ignored, much like Charnele Brown's character on A DIFFERENT WORLD was in her fictional world.
However, I can say college brought a little maturity to my peers. At least I was no longer attacked and given the n-word treatment by black boys, much like Tichina Arnold's character in MARTIN. That kind of treatment was ongoing from grade school through junior high but it stopped in high school.
But by then, I thought I was ugly because I was treated as if I was ugly by black people and white people alike, starting when I was approximately six years old.
It's hard to believe I couldn't see past that for years.
I had a couple of severely awkward years between 12 and 14, but I can't believe how blessed I mostly happened to be in the looks department. My mother is a pretty woman, and though I am darker skinned, and I look a lot like her.
Yet, I couldn't see anything desirable or lovely about myself for the longest time. Now, I look at old pictures and wonder what kind of emotionally damaged mind I must have had to see someone so ugly in the mirror.
By the time I realized I was not particularly hideous, I really didn't know how to flirt very well. The men attracted to me seemed to be those that sensed that I was weak or socially off balance. In other words, I tended to attract narcissists looking for an audience of one. Lucky for me, they tend to be boring so I saw them off pretty quickly.
But other medium to dark black girls haven't been so lucky.
All of this is why I find it kind of amazing that most of the black community seems unaware that colorism's heart lies with black men. I found it perplexing that Bill Duke's DARK GIRLS then LIGHT GIRLS didn't address black men's attitudes toward skin color given how obvious it is in Hollywood.
Same as I think straight hair and weaves on women are only problematic when they are being worn by upwards of 90% of black women because, as a group, we feel nothing else is attractive, professional or adult (as we tended to prior to the natural hair movement) I think interracial relationships are only problematic when upwards of 75% of high profile black men are dating white and light women because they feel nothing else is attractive.
Black male affinity for white beauty aesthetic is the invisible pink hippopotamus in the black community's collective living room. And it's had tremendous impact on all of us. The recent exception to this rule, should have made this rather obvious.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Ryan Coogler married a black woman that is immediately identifiable as black then directed BLACK PANTHER as if he finds black women who look black valuable.
How many dark-skinned black actresses have had their careers enhanced by Spike Lee or lately Jordan Peele?
As many movies and projects that Spike Lee has done, you can count the number of black looking black actresses he's helped on one hand and most of attempts to help those women have only been done in the last 5 years after 20 years of bupkis for any dark woman except his sister.
This matters.
Black boys are learning how to treat black women from more than just their parents. They are learning from their television, movies, and peers -- peers who are also learning about what's valuable in a black woman from television and movies.
BLACK PANTHER should not have been exceptional in it's valuing of dark-skinned women. If the first film directed by a black director, THE HOMESTEADER, was directed in 1919 by Oscar Micheaux --and even THAT story was a black man in love with an almost white girl -- then then 2018 shouldn't have been the first year I saw a black film where it's the light-skinned woman who barely has any lines and gets killed off early.
Our fiction is created by real people who bring their real values to black images. And way too many of the black men who are 90% in charge of black productions are colorstruck.
We have to clean our community and the images we are being bombarded with at the same time. The illusion of inclusion cannot stand. A dark-skinned mixed race woman can play a black woman in anything, in my opinion. But I'm tired of mixed-race looking women --whether they ARE mixed race or not-- standing in for black women 90% of the time instead of something more like 15% of the time.
Some black girls that look black have been treated so badly by black boys so early in life, that they've thrown the baby out with the bath water.
They don't want anything to do with black men at all. (And that's the problem with children dating and having sex at 13 and 14. They get their feelings hurt too deeply, too early then make sweeping, permanent, childish decisions)
Some black girls like me, after years of denying colorism is as prevalent as it is, retreat from romance for years at a time. (Black men not being feminist minded had been the biggest problem for me, honestly)
Other black girls settle for someone who wants a maid or a mommy, just so they aren't alone
Still other black girls avoid men altogether and have babies so they won't be alone.
Some stay with troubled men that are abusive, thinking they can save them
And some black girls commit suicide.
None of these things I've listed are qualified or quantified. The black women who care, a small percentage of dark and light women that care about colorism, only know about these outcomes through anecdotal evidence. It is way past time for a sociological study of colorism that includes 1) when and where black men stopped judging one another through the lens of colorism --if they did; when white people stopped judging black men through the lens of colorism; and how black, mostly male, content creators in Hollywood have been perpetuating colorism.
It's time
BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM
updated 10/10/18
UNACKNOWLEDGED COLORISM MIGHT BE MORE DESTRUCTIVE INSIDE THE BLACK COMMUNITY THAN IT'S KISSING COUSIN UNACKNOWLEDGED RACISM
