Drake is the light-skinned god, and Kanye is the dark-skinned devil. For those who subscribe to and perpetuate colorism, this statement rings true.
Colorism is prejudice against individuals with darker skin tones, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group. Its roots in the U.S. began with slavery — when those with light skin could serve in the “Big House” and those with natural defenses against the sun, also known as dark-skinned folks, were only good enough to work in the fields.
This system established the concept of white supremacy in the minds of slaves at an early age. If slaves were closer in complexion to whites, then their lives were much better than those who had a natural hue closer to ebony.
What is so maddening about colorism is that while the slaves have long left the plantation, the plantation mentality still prevails. This partly due to the media constantly putting light-skinned people in front of television cameras to fill their black quotas.
According to researchers at Brigham Young University, “When fashion catalogues began to include minority women, they selected biracial or light-skinned black women, particularly with blonde or light brown hair.”
Placing light-skinned people on a pedestal creates a rift inside the black community. Primarily, it causes blacks who are not light-skinned to constantly question whether their skin tone is worthless or makes them bad people.
There was a time when I didn’t value my skin tone, and when I was assigned to do a self-portrait in fourth grade, I colored myself with a peach crayon. I remember being embarrassed of having to even use the brown crayon, and I outright refused to do so. My parents, once they saw the self-portrait, had a long conversation with me and made it clear that my skin tone was something to be celebrated.
Dark-skinned black women are also hurt by colorism because they are always represented one step below light-skinned women. This is because society and many black men only view “redbones,” or light-skinned women, as the model of perfection.
There was a time when I only idealized white or light-skinned women, as I thought they were my only way for getting the world to seeing me as something other than a dark-skinned black man. There are many other black men I know who also submitted to this way of thinking, which speaks to the larger issue of black people not viewing their own as valuable.
There are some in the light-skinned community who enjoy their status and exploit their privilege. They create exclusivity in predominately black institutions and put leaders like Ben Jealous, the former head of the NAACP, who is a light-skinned man, in front of every camera they can find. Some historically black Greek and community organizations weed out or outright deny dark-skinned folks their rightful seats at the table in their groups.
This problem is especially prevalent in south Louisiana, where Creoles from the backroads of Opelousas to the high-society clubs of New Orleans are famous for using the brown-paper-bag test to decide whether somebody is ‘too black’ for them. These problems extend out of south Louisiana and persist to some degree in my generation as a whole.
Progress is being made, however. Natural, relaxed hair and weaves on black women are now seen as beautiful. Black men are more open to sharing their life with ebony queens, and to some extent, the black faces in mass media do not all have sandy-wood complexions.
These changes are necessary as every black child, regardless of whether they are black as night or light as day, matters.
Garrett Hines is a 21-year-old
political science senior from Monroe, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter @garrettH_TDR.