Colorism At Its Peak

Recently I saw a post on Twitter that mentioned how light skin people and some mixed people benefits from colorism and I was like.....?..they are absolutely right though and I will be explaining what colorism is, for those who may not know about it or those who refuse to acknowledge that it actually exist in our community.

kindly check out my awesome sponsors

So, what is colorism? well. colorism is generally defined as prejudice based on skin tone. more specifically though, it's a form of discrimination that favor or always tend to consider the lighter skin tones and all around more eurocentric facial features, to darker skin tones and more afrocentric facial features.

what's crazy about this though and honestly outraging is that despite that many darker skinned people experience colorism, the word colorism doesn't officially exist and why is it so?... I actually don't know or maybe those that have experienced colorism can't speak out or maybe we want to eradicate racism before colorism, since it was racism that give rise to colorism.

ALICE WALKER was credited with first to use this word. She used it in her book in 1983 book “in search of our mother's garden" ..... but sadly our communities continue denying its existence, but make no mistake, colorism has root and is a product of racism because if racism doesn't actually exist, not only would one's value not be based on the color of their skin but this discussion surrounding skin tones would simply not be if there wasn't racism.

Despite it's impact on communities, it's barely discussed, it's not to be confused with the “ism" which is racism because where racism is carried out by people of one race against those of another but colorism can also happen among members of the same ethnic group or racial group and a result, darker skinned people can experience both racism and colorism and what's sad about this is that it's conditioned into us early in the days when racism started ....

Recently conducted research in some children of different races, they've always pointed towards lighter skinned cartoon characters or individual when asked to identify which of them are really smart or pretty and one thing is common to them all, they've always associated negative characteristics to those with darker skin tones.

In CHIKA OKORO'S TEDX Standford talk, she speaks out on colorism and it's presence in the entertainment industry and If you haven't listened to her before, now is the time to do so since she described everything very clearly without leaving anything out, and it was at that point that I gained a deeper knowledge of colorism.

Thanks for reading 💚💚💚💚... I would try my best to give a better insights on colorism in the next article.