Why I Stopped Talking to Light Skin People About Colorism
BY: NAIMA “QUEEN” MUHAMMAD
Why I Stopped Talking to Light Skin People About Colorism.
Part 1 of our colorism series
Photo Source: Nappy.com
Colorism isn’t a topic I shy away from, it has been pretty easy for me to identify, uncover, and dismantle when it appears anywhere around me. I am grateful my childhood was never engulfed in it, which has contributed to the confidence I have when I reject the harmful system that is colorism in Black spaces. My immediate family is many shades of Blackness, and it wasn’t something we were taught to weaponize against each other. Hierarchies of value, treatment, or lovability weren’t given to my siblings and me based on our shade. It wasn’t until puberty, and when my desirability became a thing for me that I was introduced to it, and that’s when I began to see the harm Black people were inflicting intra-communally by upholding colorism.
I began to be more vocal about that harm when I was a teenager, and haven’t really stopped. The topic of colorism I thought then, wasn’t a harmful thing to bring awareness to. Especially since dismantling it could only improve things within communities I interacted with. It has mostly been safe and hasn’t felt like any heavy lifting has been necessary for these conversations. Yet, throughout the years I have noticed that the only time colorism conversations have become unwarranted labor for me is when it was with a light skin person. Many times I have been hurt, appalled and disgusted by my light skin friends (and not friends) when chatting about colorism. It has caused me so much trauma and harm that I just had to stop having them. I couldn’t believe it, people who had so much sense, knowledge, and depth when we talked about all the other oppressive systems are somehow indignant about colorism. For my mental health, self-love, and need to conserve my energy, I stopped having conversations with light skin folks about colorism, cause simply, your girl is tired.
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The path that leads to no longer discussing colorism to light skin folks has been many years coming, but lets first do some context housekeeping so you (the reader) and I are on the same page of what colorism is, who exactly I am talking to in this piece and all the ways people have got me fucked up throughout the years. Author and activist Alice Walker who is most credited for defining the word colorism defines it as “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color.” in an essay that appeared in her 1983 book, In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens. The term has come a long way since then and is now included in Webster’s dictionary defined as - prejudice or discrimination especially within a racial or ethnic group favoring people with lighter skin over those with darker skin. (Alice Walker’s definition does the job, but some folks only believe things are real when a white institution states it).
One of my ongoing issues with discussing colorism with a light skin person is their lack of understanding of Anti-Blackness, privilege, and power structures, and the ways these ideas must exist to result in the actual oppression of a person. Simply put, not all pain is oppression, and we have to all be real with ourselves about that. There’s always a very weird need for light skin Black people to insert their own hurtful experiences as Black people and name that reverse colorism. It’s a very empty, and basic understanding of what the actual conversation of colorism is about. Somehow it’s lost that colorism is something very independent of their trauma due to the Anti-Blackness and racism we all experience.
Anti-Blackness is a very specific kind of racism against Black people. So many of us understand that Blackness is one of the most feared and hated constructs created by white supremacy. Yet, it’s somehow forgotten that Black people can also be perpetrators of oppression. In particular, having internalized anti-Black ideas that allow us to consciously, and subconsciously treat each other badly. It has been through these many hurtful conversations about colorism that I have had with other Black people who are light skin, that it is made clear there isn’t a basic understanding that colorism lives abundantly in anti-Blackness, and that they too can be guilty of maintaining this hurtful system whether they have chosen to or not. With such a huge piece missing, how will they ever understand colorism?
Colorism allows preferential treatment of lighter skin people, and if you’re light skin you benefit from it whether you consciously participate in it on not. Privilege, which is the unearned and mostly unacknowledged societal advantage that a restricted group of people has over another group, or person (dictionary.com) is usually skipped over when addressing colorism’s impact in our communities. Light skin Black people need to understand that addressing colorism isn’t a conversation about whether you are Black or not Black, it’s a discussion about society believing you are the PREFERED Black person and the benefits you receive from being the preference. The power structure colorism gives the preferred Black person, and in the case of colorism, lighter skin people have the power and authority to continue this system or stop it. Time and time again, the choice is not to stop it, and that’s where my indifference is birth.
To keep it a buck, light skin Black people are the sole beneficiary of colorism, they are the only “winners” in this dynamic, and until they can finally be honest about that, dark skin people will be wasting their time
Usually, when engaging in colorism discussions with a light skin Black person, they bring up being bullied by dark skin folks as kids, make an argument for reverse colorism, think colorism is all about invalidating their Black experience or say the conversation is divisive and we should focus on more important things. All of these responses reap of them being an oppressor, their privilege being tugged at, and shows a huge lack of understanding of their privilege, to begin with. It tells me they are comfortable with the power structure colorism affords them and they have no interest in changing any of this shit. Why should they? To keep it a buck, light skin Black people are the sole beneficiary of colorism, they are the only “winners” in this dynamic and until they can finally be honest about that, dark skin people will be wasting their time. In the past, it was at these moments where I’d usually ask a light skin Black person, “please, tell me how dark skin people benefit from colorism when they are not the people who receive preferential treatment? “ I’ve yet to get a substantial answer to that question, just silence, stutters, or rage. Very rarely an acknowledgment of their privilege takes place. So, im left sitting there empty after explaining my oppression to an individual who has already decided the system works perfectly fine the way it is. Why would I continue this cycle of heartbreak from the Black people I’m supposed to be in community with?
The lack of awareness leads to the failure of the bullying argument as well. What’s actually taking place is most dark skin children have figured out the privilege light skin people have before other light skin children have, and they’re reacting to that. That is a painful experience, but that is not oppression or reverse colorism. I vaguely remember some years back hearing a light skin person equate being teased and called ice cream, as another dark skin woman in the conversation expressed she was called a burnt skillet as a child. I don’t know what parallel universe she thought she was in, but she really believed the same kind of harm was happening in the stories they shared. Those stories aren’t even close to the same thing because of power structures, and let’s be serious, being called ice cream, something most people enjoy and attached to happiness isn’t harmful. Yet, somehow the light skin woman thought it was. It’s through interactions like this I have learned that it is commonplace to be completely ignorant to your privilege as a light skin person and fully aware of your oppression as a Black person simultaneously. This is the experience I think light skin folks have, very aware of your oppression as a Black person but completely unaware of your privilege, both things can be true and they usually are.
To go further, what is actually experienced when being bullied due to your lighter hue is retaliation due to your privilege, that’s not oppression! Oppressed people don’t get breaks, it’s a continuous cycle, and having a few moments of discomfort due to your shade is a privilege dark skin folks do not have. Similar to Black people being continuously reminded of our Blackness, even when we don’t want to think about race we have to. This same occurrence extends to being a dark skin person. Similar to how we all aren’t afforded days off from Anti-Black racism, dark skin people get no days off or refuge from colorism. These situations never are equivalent because of the structure of power, one person has privilege in the space (light skin people) and the other doesn’t (dark skin people). So much nuance is lost when I have had these conversations in the past because of the insufferable need to be seen as a victim of something.
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Colorism happens globally because maintaining Anti Blackness has its benefits. It is important to understand that the basis in colorism being a by-product of white supremacy and anti-Blackness, it’s NOT simply a result of enslavement because it exists worldwide and NOT just to Black people who are descendants of chattel enslavement. All the false Willie Lynch ideas as the birth of colorism and that it was created to keep us separated is bullshit. Light skin people have used colorism and anti-Blackness as means for survival and they don’t want to let that go. This is one of the biggest ways light skin people have played all in my face, watching their scramble to hold on to this ounce of power really makes me sick to my stomach and I refuse to look at it anymore.
Conflating colorism with racism is where yall fail me THE MOST. That’s usually where the “colorism is divisive” retorts enter the chat. Racism is NOT colorism but they are definitely cousins of the same family. They both use the bases of anti-Blackness to prop themselves up firmly. How many times have you been told Black oppression isn’t real by non-Black folks and it filled you with rage? That rage has been my experience 90% of the time when talking to light skin people with whom I share a community.
I have personally experienced people thinking I'm too harsh, it always assumed my thoughts are laced with a bad attitude because a dark skin Black person is attached to it. My emotions and actions are always interpreted as anger, my directness always perceived as dismissiveness, and my pain is not real because I am dark skin and strong. I have literally been in rooms with other light skin people doing the same work, but they’re somehow, passionate, direct, and can be trusted when we have literally said the same thing. This has been done to me many times by other Black people, yet colorism isn’t real? Colorism is only divisive to the people who don’t want to give up their power in a system that actually oppresses people in your community. Light skin people should be honest about not wanting to give up the power their privilege provides them. Admit that being the preference is the center of your identity.
One day I decided to preserve my personal peace and this lead to the decision to divest from speaking to light skin people about my oppression as a dark skin person. I know for sure it is the result of 30 + years of gaslighting, oppression and abuse, that I realized, many Black people, and in this case, light skin Black people just care about their individual salvation and don’t actually care about the freedoms of all iterations of Blackness and its people. The main reason light skin people don’t care to understand colorism is, why question a system you reap all the benefits from? So, do I live my life continuing to be disappointed by people in my community, or do I make the decision to let some of you’ll go? At this moment, I have to let ya’ll go.
Read Part 2 of our colorism series Desirability Will Not Free Me
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