Colorism: The Grass is not Always Lighter on the Other Side
Wow after all these years of fighting for our human equal rights and freedom as Martin
Luther King Jr., expresses in one of his speeches “judge me on the content of my character and
not on the color of my skin. However in a society among all different types of ethnicities, most
people would think and agree that all of the African American disputes are over due to King’s
struggles and sacrifices. Yet and still we are facing equal right issues everyday within our own
black communities. I just Google the definition of colorism and did not even know there was
such a term for the actions of many ethnicities especially African Americans, but; it means a
practice of discrimination based on skin color by which those with lighter skin are treated more
favorably than those with darker skin. And well in the black community, colorism was the
subject matter based on the brown paper bag test. As an illustration shown on Ted Talks,
according to a young black speaker Leaha Mathis, “the ones that were lighter than the ordinary
brown paper lunch bag gained VIP access into different groups like fraternities, sororities and
other territorial groups of the black upper class life, while the darker blacks were denied access.”
There was also a famous black producer and director that shed some light on the subject in the
Spike Lee film “School Daze” which due to colorism suggests the very stereotypes that are
dividing our black communities also reminds us that the grass is not always lighter on the other
side.
Growing up as I recall, I despise being a light-skinned black girl due to almost every
friendly encounters with my black race along with some family members repeatedly saying and
having the perception that “I thought I was special and all that because my skin color was light,
bright, and damn near white.” Which was one of the many negative connotations that I thought
was diminishing my own definition of being light-skinned in a black man’s world. Sure, I was
light-skinned but I never had a preconceived notion that the color of my skin would separate me
from my black culture and where I came from in a mixed skin world. Just to show how colors are
mixed within our community, my mom has a very light complexion but has a darker sister
because they had different fathers one was light brown and the other was dark brown. My dad is
also on the lighter side but has a darker sibling along with most of his father’s side of the family
because his dad was dark. But I have tried to manage my maturity levels in order to embrace my
skin ultimately because I had to live with the way I was born regardless of who liked, disliked, or
even made fun of it. However, I had a close childhood friend since I was eleven years old who I
well-liked for her brown-skinned and even considered that to be the most beautiful skin tone to
me but in the black community that was and still is consistently hard to disengage the different
challenges between the light-skinned women insecurities and dark-skinned women
