A SUPER Brief Summary of the History of Colorism
Colorism, also known as shadeism, is a form of discrimination based on skin color. Colorist ideologies have been imbedded in American culture for generations, perpetuated during slavery and later on by the modern film and music industry, which have continued to frame a narrative that lighter skin is more beautiful.
To understand the colorism in North America, you must understand the history. This goes back to slavery, when owners often gave preferential treatment to slaves with fairer skin tones. While dark-skinned slaves were relegated to blistering work outdoors in the fields, their lighter-skinned counterparts were allowed closer proximity to whiteness and given roles indoors.
Even deeper still, fair skin slaves were often the offspring of the Slave owner’s non-consensual sexual relationships with African women they held in bondage. Thus, slave owners were giving what they framed as preferential treatment to their own family members. While they rarely recognized their biracial children, slave owners sometimes allowed them some small “privileges” that dark-skinned slaves didn’t enjoy. Creating a skin-tone based caste system on plantations that, in many ways endures to this day.
Outside of the United States, colorism is still based on proximity to whiteness (a social construction) thanks to colonialism. Although within European countries, the idea that fair skin is superior to dark skin can also be derived from a white ruling class typically having lighter complexions than white peasant classes whose tanned skin reflected their need to toil outdoors to survive.
My white-passing grandmother
My father was born over 80 years ago on a small British island in the Caribbean. The eldest of two sons and a child of a near white-passing biracial woman. From reading between the lines of the stories he tells over and over again from his childhood, my grandmother had so much internalized anti-blackness that my father suffered because of her colorism. My father, who was dark like his father, was emotionally abandoned and othered by his mother. He lived with the knowledge that his younger and fairer skinned brother held most of his mother’s esteem and most of her maternal love.
I remember once, when I was not even 5, seeing my grandmother push my darker-skinned younger sister away when she was a toddler. Years later, when I asked as an adult, my mother hinted that grandma tolerated me because at least my skin tone was a more palatable milk chocolate brown but my darker younger sister, she could not stand to be around.
Growing up, there wasn’t much skin color or hair texture-based beauty comments in my home. This was due in large part to my father’s horrible childhood experiences with his colorist white-passing mother. My first memory of being aware of my slightly lighter brown skin and it’s ranking based on some archaic slave plantation system, was on the playground in middle school. I heard some boys discussing who was pretty based on how “light-skinned” they were and one boy said “Samantha’s kind of light and pretty.” I was taken aback by this. But, I did not feel flattered I instead remembered my father’s experiences, and on a subconscious level I had built a wall in my heart and mind against colorism because of his stories and his pain.
Ending Generational Self-Hate and Brokenness
So, as my own act of defiance against ideals that caused so much pain and pitted generations of my ancestors against each other, the one thing I wished for when I had children, was that their skin be a rich and deep black/brown that harkened back to the rich and deep beauty that we are often taught to hold distain for. So, when I look at my daughter’s deep brown skin, I see my answered prayers and the ending of multi-generational brokenness and lies. I am pleased with her brown eyes. Happy to detangle her tight coils. Love the intensity of her black/brown skin, one of many things my foremothers were systematically denied, the ability to love themselves and their children as they are. So no matter if my children and grandchildren and great grandchild are fair, midnight black, milk chocolate brown, they can see themselves as God does: a wonderfully made work of divine art.
What did you say?