Desirability Will Not Free Me
By: Naima “Queen “ Muhammad
Desirability Will Not Free Me
Part 2 of Our Colorism Series
Photo Credit: Canva.com
I been gone for a minute but im back at it. I want to delve deeper into colorism and how it harms the Black community wholistically and further oppresses darker skin Black people. In my 1st installment for this series titled, Why I Stopped Talking to Light Skin People About Colorism, I go over the essential components of colorism, light skin people’s complacency in that system. I also share why, in my lived experience, It’s not in my best interest to experience harm from people I am in a community with. My focus has moved more to the wholistic effects and penalties we inflict intercommunal by not ripping apart colorism.
I want to start by making some things clear; I write about us and for us. Never is the white gaze centered in my work, or is this ever a place where I react to whiteness and their thoughts. Here is where I lay out my process of divesting and dissembling the current systems I lie in. Within this particular colorism series, I am addressing the harm we cause each other and how to break free from those structures. I have shared my reasons for divesting from conversations with light skin people about colorism. I hope that at this point, the Ms. Vixen reader now has a complete understanding that the sole beneficiary of colorism is lighter-skinned people. Much of the labor of deconstructing this oppression is that of light-skinned people; it is also essential that internalized colorism is eliminated amongst all Black people. If you can comprehend those concepts, we can move on to things on a larger scale, exactly how I prefer to frame my work.
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Much of the conversation surrounding colorism, particularly with Black women, is the romantic and sexual desirability we receive or may not receive based on how we look. Romantic and sexual desirability has been the lowest need in terms of dismantling colorism in my own life. I understand why the conversation occurs, but it always falls flat because of the perceived subjective nature of the concept. People believe who they desire romantically and sexually is a personal choice they’ve made independently—not realizing society has told them who to prefer AND who to have an aversion to and how it is directly linked to white supremacy and anti-Blackness. Deconstruction of colorism through sexual and romantc desirability is flawed. Although light skin gives you unearned access, it does not completely shield you from harm, so how will changing my desirability factor do so also? Liberation is a life free of damage, and superficial things like sexual and romantic desirability won’t give me that. To go further, it doesn’t provide lighter skin people that either. Does it reduce their harm? Of course, it does, but in the spirit of “we ain’t free till we all free,” if the goal is complete liberation free from an oppressive system, that isn’t enough for me, and it also shouldn’t be for everyone else.
When discussions of colorism get stuck at sexual and romantic desirability, it does a considerable disservice to dark skin people and doesn’t address the limitations in access colorism withholds. When I say I do not care if a person wants to fuck me based on white supremacist programmed notions of beauty, I mean that shit. The many victims of state-sanctioned violence by the police in the USA are usually not light skin Black people. (Im aware that shade is subjective, but most of these people are not light), when Black trans and gender-nonconforming deaths are acknowledged (which is too far and few between), these folks are also mostly dark-skinned, which can not be ignored. We die in higher numbers than our light skin peers, so being “picked” and desired by someone is the least of my worries. Wages and income are higher for lighter skin Black Americans. Also, relative to darker-skinned Black Americans, lighter-skinned Black Americans have been shown to enjoy better mental and physical health, experience fewer negative encounters with the criminal justice system, and are punished less harshly in schools. This is all according to the Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy. These are some examples, but many more exist. Although some of these examples result from Black people’s interactions with the state, I couldn’t ignore how hugely these interactions lead to interacting with each other communally. We do not live in a vacuum, and all the vile things anti-blackness create seeps into how we treat each other. Dark-skinned folks are villainized, and we leave the labor on them to prove their humanity to reduce harm and oppression they haven’t even created. I say we because I want us to be honest; all Black people perpetrate colorism, even darker people who don’t benefit from it. Although the origin of this can be very nuanced for all of us, and the contributions to the system aren’t equal, we all play a part in it. Again, the heavy lifting of dismantling colorism amongst Black people is on light skin people, but we all got some work to do internally.
Entertainment and media are other instances where I think we get stuck when attempting to dismantle colorism. Representation isn’t going to save dark skin people from oppression; it simply doesn’t do enough work to tear it apart and is a colorism bandaid. All critiques about colorism in entertainment are essential for a basic understanding of that system but never do enough to emphasize the harm that happens when dark skin Black people aren’t visible. An example of this is what recently went down on the HBO show Lovecraft Country. A woman named Kelli Ffrench-Parker, detailed how she was cast as a young version of Ms. Osberta (Carol Sutton), a character in the show for a wedding photograph that appeared in the show's seventh episode. Ffrench-Parker, light-skinned, shared the transformation she underwent, which included wearing significantly darker makeup than her actual shade. Yes, this light skin woman was in blackface for a check. Most people who have seen the transformation have been critical and accuse the show of allowing blackface and perpetuating colorism, which I agree with. Still, as the story unfolds, the focus stills centers on a light skin person and not the harm caused to dark skin people. Ffrenceh-Parker shares the story on her TikTok for comedic value and later states she didn’t want to say anything because she feared being blacklisted. She decided to continue harming dark skin people for her financial gain. Lightskin people do this continuously, and the reframing of this story to be about Kelli’s safety (many folks fear her being blacklisted) in a faulty colorist industry is disgusting. Everyone involved in that violence is a part of the machine, and Kelli shouldn’t be spared from public scrutiny either, yet she has been.
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This incident could have gone unnoticed if Amber J. Phillips, a dark skin woman, hadn’t posted the extreme harm committed on Lovecraft Country in a video on her Instagram. It took the labor of a dark skin person to insert the context that damage to dark skin people happened in that TikTok video. Before that Kelli, just saw kicks and giggles. (I deliberately have not added links to Kelli’s TikTok video cause she deserves no more visibility for harming dark skin people on my watch.) Then, when it became a viral story, media outlets reach out to her as the whistleblower, when in fact, her role was that of a perpetrator and not one of being an accomplice in dismantling harm. Kelli Ffrench-Parker had no idea the amount of damage and oppression she caused because her light skin privilege didn’t allow it and because colorism never harms her. This hurt dark skin people, and it took Amber J. Philipps to do the labor (while being hurt in the process because she is dark skin), yet, TMZ reaches out to Kelli for an interview. She is the person who committed harm, but they bring her on to discuss colorism, and she decides to come on and discuss colorism and Blackface . . . .a person who CLEARLY doesn’t have the range to educate anyone on colorism gets centered in the story. When does it ever make sense for the perpetrator of violence to be centered in dismantling it? Please, point me to the corner of the earth where that makes any sense, cause if you think that place exists, I know a Saudi Arabian prince who needs to use your checking account to deposit a few million dollars cause their bank account is frozen, and they need your help to get their money. It was the work of Amber J. Phillips that brought this to light, and Amber, who identified the harm and oppression that took place within Kelli’s TikTok video. Amber has all the range to present what is needed to dismantle this to a national audience, but she isn’t given the platform to do that cause she’s dark skin. Neither TMZ nor Kelli cared about doing real work. They care about the clicks and visibility the story brought their way.
Colorism penalizes darker skin people in brutal ways, so mybad for not caring about the representation in the movies or being the wife or girlfriend of a hip-hop mogul; that superficial shit isn’t going to free me. Once I realized representation is intrinsically tied to desirability and appeasing the white gaze, I abandoned that as a tool in my bag for liberation. I began to redirect my eye to who Black people choose in our “liberation spaces.” If colorism isn’t dismantled there, then we’re permanently doomed. I don’t care anymore about the desirability politics placed on color in flimsy things like entertainment. I care about the organizing, activism, and academic spaces, where colorism is just chilling unchecked. I’m supposed to feel safe with all of you negotiating my freedom when I continuously see you perpetuate colorism?
We cannot ignore that much of Black activism in that USA has historically been a light-skin space. People like Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, W. E.B Debous, Angela Davis, and the list goes on, picked by their peers to represent and lead us to liberation. As I stated earlier, these choices aren’t made in a vacuum. That’s who most feel more comfortable listening to; it’s also who most believe. It’s who people decide to interview, write the books, and be the spokesperson of our existence. How does liberation exist for the people who are not being heard? This is why sexual and romantic desirability means nothing to me and not where I choose to make the focal point while I dismantle colorism. The lack of dark skin people in liberation spaces is the most violent place I think colorism exists. It’s where colorism is so flagrant it allowed an entryway for white people like Racheal Dolezal to enter our rooms and be privy to shit that has nothing to do with them and cause further harm. Lightskin folks continuously using dark skin folks as mules to move closer to freedom only allotted for them, and never reaching back to bring dark skin people to the forefront after they learned all their politics from us. Do you want to gatekeep Blackness? That work can’t happen without Black people eliminating colorism first.
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