In 2023 Black People Are Still Debating Over Skin Tone - Colorism Will It Ever End?

Sunday, 25 June 2023

By: TB Obwoge

On TikTok there is a new trend going on with a sound that says something along the lines that, "I'm Black it's very expensive being Black....!" This male voice goes onto list things about being Black. The screenshot from TikTok shows that this trend that I searched from 2 different TikTok accounts is only used by dark skin Black people.

Wondering why not one light skin person could be found from two different accounts while scrolling for 30 minutes or more. Apparently TikTok has filtered out all the lighter skinned Black people from appearing in this trend. When I searched another way, I was able to find about 5 accounts where the Black person was lighter in skin color.

But why does skin tone matter when all the people are actually considered Black by society? Well Black Americans think it's because of privilege.

There is this thing in the Black American community that is called 'light-skin Privilege.' Used to divide Black people from loving each other, since Hollywood and some white people prefer lighter skinned Black people. Blacks who are light skin are tagged with having privilege.

This means that because of the lighter skin they're chosen to act in roles in Hollywood movies, or television shows. They're chosen to be accepted. More often their chosen by people who want to partner with them for relationships as well.

However please note the majority of instances of 'Light Skin Privilege' are mostly seen within the entertainment industry. While most light skin people clearly appear to be Black people and can't 'pass' for white & wouldn't want to either.

This author isn't denying that there is such a thing of lighter skin people being chosen over darker skinned people.

Passing means being a Black person with skin so light that people think that you're a white person. Most of these people are very light Blacks or mixed race in the case of Meghan Markle.

Dear Black Men, Your “Preferences” Are Racist

Your so-called “preferences” indicate colourist, texturist and featurist bias.

I have noticed that Black men often use the word “preference” as a code for their culmination of colourist,featurist and texturist preferences. 99% of the time when I hear a Black man say that they prefer a certain ethnic group, or a certain type of person within one race, for instance, lighter-skinned Black women, they bring down members of another race to justify their preference.

It is important that we call this out because, in my view, this is an ever-growing issue within our community that needs to be addressed

Source: Petri on Medium

In this same article above this Black-British African 'others' light skin people. She assumes all light skin people have, 'good hair' (straight hair), non-African features and all have thin nose with European features. She does this in most of her writing about being a dark skin Black woman.

Funny as a light skin Black American I remember my hair being so nappy that one day my mother grabbed the scissors and chopped my hair off. She punched me in the head and back several times as well. I cried when she took me to a barber shop and they shaved my hair off my head.

I looked like a boy and since I was a 'Tom Boy' (girl who liked footballs and preferred pants) I was bullied severally. After the hair started growing back my mother then made me get a jerri curl. A disgusting chemical hair style that required more work than just having natural hair.

Then there are Black men that say things like this older friend of my father said to me. He said that he didn't find Black women that weren't mixed race attractive.

I'm not mixed race and most lighter skin Black people aren't mixed race either.

Even Africans living in Africa seem to think that in order to be not only African but Black a person has to be darker in skin tone. West Africans who've apparently never seen East Africans from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Somaliland, Sudan and a host of Southern African countries.

This is why so many claim Elon Musk isn't an African as well, even though to be African one only has to be born and raised in Africa. Musk lived in South Africa well into his teens. This narrative makes one think a white Zambian or Zimbabwean isn't really African either. Even after generations of their families living in these countries. Sounds much like the racism of the US.

Never the less it appears that colorism in Africa & America are here to stay, which is why Africans and Blacks from America won't ever come together as one community. Also the inability of African countries to teach about slavery so citizens stop making insulting comments about Black Americans. Many show they think only America practiced slavery.

Thank you for reading 🙏🏽 Please consider buying a coffee for Lacey's House efforts in Gender Equality & Children's Rights.

©️TB Obwoge 2023 All Rights Reserved