Colourism, widely recognized as discrimination towards people with darker skin, affects people within different ethnic groups. Colourism is regarded as a form of internalized racism directly linked to colonization and slavery, where people of lighter hues within an ethnic group are given better opportunities compared to people with dark skin.
It doesn’t mean lighter skin people don’t face prejudice, it just means within a society with a history of colonialism and racism lighter skin was beneficial to gain better opportunities. It is important to note that Colourism is also a by-product of holding a high social position as in the case of Asian countries were people of lighter skin were associated with wealthiness and spending their lives comfortably indoors whereas those with a darker skin were associated with poverty as they spent their lives engaging in hard labour under the sun. The infamous caste system in India still holds true to this notion.
The effects of colourism are still seen today especially in the entertainment industry. How often do you come across Darker skinned people at the forefront of magazines, advertisements, movies, music videos and so on. How is that the 2016 movie Nina a biopic about the well renowned artist and civil rights activist Nina Simone starring Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone. Although she is a light skin women she was afforded the opportunity to play the role of a dark skin women.
It doesn’t help that her skin was darkened and a prosthetic nose was added for her to look like a darker skinned black women. This pushes the idea that certain roles are only reserved for lighter skinned women. A similar situation can be seen in the movie The Hate U Give which stars Amandla Steinburg also a light skin women playing the role of women who was described as dark skin in the books.
Often Media Representation of darker skinned people can often lead to ridicule which reinforce negative stereotypes such as darker skinned black men are often depicted as gangsters. Colourism also affects the discourse surrounding beauty. Comments such ‘You’re so beautiful for a dark skin girl’ or ‘You’re so dark how will we see at night’ and even ‘She’s beautiful because she is a yellow bone’. One might begin to understand why so many dark skin people take drastic measures to change themselves to fit the beauty standard set by society.
Fanon, writes in his book Black skins, white masks, ‘, That within the colonial context, the desire to be white is due to the white subject having power, that being economically, politically and socially whereas the black subject having nothing. Therefore a close proximity to whiteness can be seen as gaining such power and navigating through society much easily. Often, especially for women, this desire takes the form of using cosmetics or other treatments to change the appearance of one’s skin to make it look lighter.
The production and marketing of products that offer the prospect of lighter, brighter, whiter skin has become a huge money-making global industry. From unilever’s Fair and Lovely sold in India promising women fairer skin to Ponds which is widely sold in South Africa promising women brighter radiance and removing dark spots. These marketing tools further promote the idea that in order to be beautiful you need to have brighter radiant skin.
Essentially the discourse surrounding skin has created the idea that ‘light is right’ and is damaging towards those who have no control over how much melanin their born with. Therefore it is important to challenge the ideas that dark skin means you may not be as successful in life by being mindful of the biases we may have and the dialogues created around beauty as well as supporting media representation of different forms of beauty can help our society.
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