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Bongiwe Nkomazana

So, we have both dark brown and light brown women using different methods of skin lightening to be that “yellow bone”. I want to emphasise how it is a result of colourism, being prejudiced to a point where you feel like you have to alter the biggest organ of your body into something completely different and it is really not your fault because light skin privilege is real. A dark skin girl’s plight is always feeling inferior to her light skinned counterparts

COLOURISM is not the same as racism. It is the discrimination based on skin colour, also known as “shadeism”.

It is a form of prejudice in which people are treated differently based on the social meanings attached to skin colour. As black women, we can blame other races and our male counterparts for doing us wrong at work, in relationships you name it but shadeism is a demon that we ourselves are fostering.

Colourism was embedded in the black community, I imagine during slavery when light skinned slaves were said to be better or cleaner and were kept closer to the master as either a maid or nanny etc while the dark skinned ones were sent outside to pick cotton.

As much as we did not create colourism, we as a people have sort of encouraged or nurtured it and have used it to create divisions among ourselves. This issue affects a lot of groups of people but as per usual, I will zoom in on how it has affected my fellow black women whom are in the same environment as I am.

I was watching a TV show called Iyanla: Fix my Life and the host had a guest who had sent out a tweet referring to dark skinned girls as something I choose not to repeat and gone on to call herself pretty because she was light-skinned.

Iyanla then traced the root cause back to her guest’s childhood and discovered that her mother had somehow taught her growing up that light skin is better. So you have this black girl evolving into a black woman and becoming the very thing that will bring another black woman down based on her skin tone alongside all the other odds she has to face because she was born black.

The sooner we realise that colourism is nothing more than a separation mechanism the sooner we will stop allowing it to persist in our communities.

The stereotypes that dark skin and light skinned women face are no secret. It is the effects that these stereotypes have on each and every woman that go unsaid. Hands up if you have heard of what I will call the “Ambi” era where the results are our old aunties who were pale and white in their old photos but have no trace of that complexion today?

Right now we are living through the “yellow bone” era which I feel is the same as the “Ambi” era because they perpetuate the same thing. You can see how far back the effects of colourism date.

So, we have both dark brown and light brown women using different methods of skin lightening to be that “yellow bone”. I want to emphasise how it is a result of colourism, being prejudiced to a point where you feel like you have to alter the biggest organ of your body into something completely different and it is really not your fault because light skin privilege is real. A dark skinned girl’s plight is always feeling inferior to her light skinned counterparts.

I have read on how light skinned women also face pre-judgment based on their skin. For example, dark skinned women are seen as more marriage material, more loyal and intelligent while it is almost a fore gone conclusion that if you are a light skinned woman you are a slay queen which is basically a superficial and stuck up individual.

I have heard definitely more than one man point at a light skinned woman they do not know and instantly declare how they can never approach her because she is high maintenance. How do they know that before she even utters a word? They really don’t know that she could be the most down to earth person on the planet because they have been programmed to take her skin tone and attach all the self-absorbed implications that go with it.

As much as it may appear as if dark skin and light skin are at two opposite sides of the spectrum, the issues that colourism presents to both groups is equally upsetting. Chocolate women may say they have always felt unwanted or ugly and what I have realised is that in the dark brown woman’s rejection by the world, it may appear as though the caramel sisters are being accepted by the world yet they are actually being objectified to a point where all people can see and value in them is their skin tone.

Imagine walking into a group of people, say your friends or colleagues from work and the first thing you hear is them welcoming you with remarks like, “Here comes yellow” or “The white one is here”. How is that different from calling dark women “midnight” or “tar baby?” People do the latter more openly because they believe that if they are pointing out that you are light in complexion, surely it is a complement.

But imagine people calling you by your appearance versus your name. Their plight is to then prove that they are more than just a fair complexion, more than just a trophy, more than just a trend.

I did say that colourism does not affect black women only. It also affects men and I have seen hash tags on Twitter like #lightskinmen done in the name of humour but probably propel colourism. It also affects other races like the Coloureds, Hispanics as well the Asians (like the Indian and Chinese), who believe that the fairer your skin is the more beautiful and cleaner you are whereby creating classism which is a topic for another day.

The good thing is that women today are what we call “woke” and they know how beautiful they are in their different shades. The media, which is the biggest influence on planet Earth if you ask me, has begun to show women of different skin tones on the screens. We were talking the other day about how we finally get to look at even the deep, rich brown-skinned girls and see how beautiful they are; be it their eyes are or their lips, instead of just dismissing their beauty because the media does not appreciate it.

The solution will come from us. The moment we start letting go of the self-hate brewed by the different stereotypes of colourism and acknowledging our different battles with it, the easier it will be for us to accept ourselves and then each other.

I always say that if God made us pick our complexions from a catalogue prior to our entrance to the world, we probably would not be the colourful world that we see today. God therefore took it upon Himself to determine everything about you, even your skin shade, before you were conceived, so how dare anyone tell us that it is not good enough?