Colorism Still Plaguing Black Communities
Around the World
October 13, 2012 | Posted by Nick Chiles
Tagged With: black communities, Black People, colorism, Race, racism
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Is the black community still plagued by colorism—discriminating and
hurting each other based on skin complexion?
That’s the intriguing question explored by author Marita Golden in an
essay published on the Washington Post website. Golden says she still
encounters black people making harmful comments or treating one other
differently because one person may be darker or lighter than the other,
which for her brought back hurtful memories from her childhood when
such colorism was more rampant and destructive.
Golden shared the highlights of a dinner discussion she recently had with
two African-American females who said they still see evidence of colorism
among young people.
“When I was in high school a girl told me I acted like I didn’t know I was
dark-skinned, and wondered where I got my pride and dignity from,” one
of the women told Golden, author of “Don’t Play in the Sun: One Woman’s
Journey Through the Color Complex.”
Golden said the other woman talked about her daughter, who has been
mistaken for every nationality from Greek to Spanish.
“My daughter hears all the time from black boys that they would never
marry a girl darker than she is,” the woman said, adding that her daughter
attends a respected HBCU and has shared with her mother stories of
female classmates physically assaulting one another in the wake of verbal
colorist insults.
Golden has spoken on college campuses across the country and led many
workshops on colorism since the publication of her book.
“Back in the day there were paper bag tests, blue vein societies and the
orthodoxy that AKAs are light, Deltas are brown, Zetas are black,” Golden
writes. “Fast forward to today and on Twitter there is a #teamlightskinned
hashtag and complexion competitions in urban nightclubs, as reported by
the St. Louis American via the St. Louis-Post Dispatch. The color complex
— or, put simply, the belief in the superiority of light skin and Europeanlike hair and facial features — is, among African Americans, a legacy of
slavery. Once practiced and adhered to with nearly unquestioned fidelity,
today, despite its persistence, colorism is increasingly being questioned,
and in some quarters dismantled.”
Golden says she encountered a great deal of colorism herself growing up in
Washington, DC, where she can recall her mother calling her indoors with
the warning, “Come on inside out of that sun — you’re already gonna have
to get a light-skinned husband for the sake of your children.”
“By the time a young male classmate in my fifth-grade class at Harrison
Elementary School brushed my hand away when I reached for his after we
were assigned to be partners to learn how to square dance, I knew
instinctively that he didn’t want to touch me not just because I was a Negro
(as we were called back then), but also because I was the wrong color
Negro,” she writes.
Golden says increasing attention has been directed at the issue in recent
years. In addition to her book, she points to the “must-see” documentary
by actor and producer Bill Duke called “Dark Girls.”
“Black and white scholars around the country and the world are studying
and writing papers and books about the societal consequences of this
largely accepted, even encouraged, form of discrimination,” Golden writes.
“Their findings, such as the results of a study from Villanova University
published in January of 2011 on lighter-skinned black female prison
offenders, are bringing together evidence from psychological, economic,
political and cultural studies that reveal the insidious and long-term
impact of the color complex on an individual’s emotional well-being and
life chances. Research conducted by Verna M. Keith of Arizona State
University and Cedric Henry of the University of Illinois at Chicago
confirms the truth, hidden in plain sight, that in the black community there
is a direct correlation between higher levels of wealth, health, education,
and status and lighter complexion. “
Golden calls colorism one of the most unacknowledged and unaddressed
mental-health issues in communities of color around the world, linked to
the still lingering belief that the closer to European one appears, the better
and more attractive you are.
“We have to take the vital and healing conversation now taking place
around us, out of the hallowed halls of the academy, cyberspace and the
circles of the cultural elite and into our kitchens, bedrooms, churches and
schools,” she concludes. “In my family, when our now-grown children were
young, my husband and I wove discussions of colorism into conversations
about media presentations of African Americans, African American history,
race and life in general, so that our children developed the ability to
comfortably talk about colorism, recognize it and reject it.”