Colorism: Black Complexion In America

Colorism is a form of discrimination or prejudice against individuals with darker or lighter skin tones of the same race. Throughout society, many Blacks have been discriminated against his/her skin color even if his/her is darker complex. Many people have heard the phrase. 

“If you are not lighter than this brown paper bag. You can not become a member nor be accepted. Your pretty/handsome for a dark or light skin person.”  Many blacks have been called names by their own people because of their skin tone. It has gotten to the point that people will bleach their faces to be accepted by others.  In the media, blacks like Lil Kim, Sammy Sosa, Nicki Minaj, and others have bleached their face either because they did not like their skin tone or industry. To be honest, it is not just in the industry people face colorism. People everywhere are facing colorism throughout society.  From the beginning of slavery up to the present, Colorism has been a big deal in America. Americans had found a way to keep blacks divided by separating the darks from lights. They started by keeping light skin blacks as house slaves and dark skin blacks as field slaves. There is a book called “ How To Make A Slave.” by Willie Lynch talks about colorism and how to keep blacks divided from each other.  People never heard of the book and should read it. In the book, he talks about colorism, and he stated How the master needs to turn the dark skin slave against the light skin slave and vice versa. The book talks about blacks should be turned against each other because of the color of his/her skin. In society, blacks are doing what society wants us to do. Black even talks about how his/her school, family members, friends, and public places use to be bullied and could not do certain activities because of their skin tone.  This is an example: In the movie Antwan Fisher, When Antwan was a little boy, his foster mother, “ Ms.Tate,” used to abuse and mistreat Antwan because he was of a darker complexion. Ms. Tate uses to take the other foster kids that were lighter completed to church and other places and leave Antwan at the house with Ms.Tate’s daughter, who sexually abused Antwan Fisher. Their many stories made a child scrub their faces to make their skin lighter.

 People could not even get jobs and build a career with their degree, especially if they wanted to become famous. In the ’90s, in the music and acting industry turning lighter and dark complexion people against each other was a big thing and still is until this day. Black could never understand that we are doing what society wants us to do, discriminate, and break each other down by our skin color. Black does not see that Black complexion is beautiful, and people do not need to be a lighter skin tone to be beautiful. I am not finished with this blog, but it will be continued.