Skin Color: You Are Only As Dark As the People Around You

As child growing up in America during the 80s, what many dark-skin black people will call the “Light-Skin” or “Al B Sure” era, it was not easy growing up as a dark skin kid. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for “light-skin” kids in a more darker hue community as they have been attacked for having intra-cultural “beauty arrogance”. I’m sure that some of the emotionally painful remnants of such abandoned practices like the brown paper bag test or the pencil test still linger. It’s actually quite interesting considering the “Black and Proud” era was only several decades away. It seems like the 70′s became an era of identity regression. It wasn’t until the 90s, what I will now call the “Big Daddy Kane” or “Wesley Snipe” era, that darker skin brothers were back on center stage. What also helped is my father being the handsome and dark skinned man that he was. I’ve long abandoned those adolescent insecurities, but there are always reminders around me that dark skin is still seen as a badge of disgrace or less pleasant.

Many times I want to ignore the present identity crisis that’s either internalized or imposed. I was reminded by this after watching the media avalanche of Fair and Lovely commercials that inundate the TV screens in this part of the world. Just spend a couple minutes on the Fair and Lovely commercials page to get a sense of the overt “skin color” propaganda that light skin makes you prettier, wealthier, more famous, and makes your life full of blissful prestige.

After being in the Middle East for 4 months, I was reminded that “darker skin” is still a sensitive issue. Whether it’s women using make-up that is several “obvious” shades lighter, that the skin takes on a texture that is similar to Vitiligo or men/women getting their Fair and Lovely on at the local supermarket.

I was then reminded again of this silent but deadly identity crisis by Bradin French’s new Documentary called Dark Girls.

Dark Girls: Preview from Bradinn French on Vimeo.

So for those who still suffer from this identity confusion my comical and absurd suggestion is to live in a country where you will be considered the most “fair skin”, because clearly depending on what country you are in, different shades of skin color are considered “the prize” of the cultural pack.

This cultural epidemic has global reach. I’ve seen the likes of this from America, to African cultural circles, to the Middle Eastern/Arab cultural circles, to Indian/Pakistani cultural circles and many others. Please don’t take this as an indictment against “light-skinned” women and men. This isn’t. This is an indictment against those cultural, social and community “institutions” that have normalized beauty bias while reinforcing the idea that different shades of skin color are superior or inferior in beauty. Many times the self-hatred and skin color degradation is intra-cultural.

If anyone is still in denial (regardless of what side of the color line you sit on), just check out Study: White and black children biased toward lighter skin, or The impact of light skin on prison time for black female offenders, or Perception of Race and Skin Color in Pakistan or Skin Bleaching a Growing Concern in Jamaica or Skin Whitening Big Business in Asia or Color Complex in South Asian Diaspora or The Politics and Morality of a Skin Tone Ordering. Or you can read Hochilds’ The Skin Color Paradox and the American Racial Order Social Forces from December 2007 or maybe the documentary Black in Latin America.

Still in denial?

You might also like this:

1. Open Letter: The Color Line Inside the Masjid Below is a letter that I would like to send...
2. Black Nannies, Brown Nannies: All Types of Color Nannies! “I hope they’re paying you a little more than minimum...