At what point and at what cost, I wonder, can we be more willing to be honest, especially for light-skinned women like me? Because I can outright say it. I know that my lighter skin is privilege in itself. I know that it has afforded me opportunities—preferential treatment in hiring, more income once employed, and others’ sense of trustworthiness and comfort around me—that may not have been deemed to other women who are brown or dark-skinned. I know I’ve benefitted from the gaze of males who prefer a typical “redbone” with curves like mine, and the ability to turn on the television, watch movies, or read magazines where there is never a shortage of women who look like me. Chiefly, I know that my lighter skin makes people so much more comfortable hearing me talk about things which are controversial and racially charged, especially as an African woman screaming from the mountaintops that more voices and perspectives of the African Diaspora should be included across the board. These are the things that I know, have admitted, and constantly have to check myself on. Despite all those things, despite me knowing and checking my privilege, moment to moment, it’s much bigger than that. Colorism, at its root, is pervasive and damaging because most of us see it as just a surface level issue and don’t see its deeply embedded roots in the psychological fabric of Black folks here in the United States. We have overlooked and perhaps not connected the dots that colorism, at its core, is the ghost of European colonialism, Eurocentrism, and global White supremacy. It is the notion that our skin and our humanity is only measurable, valuable, and worthy in its proximity to Whiteness. #DefendBlackWomanhood
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 22:27:56 +0000
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