Being “Colorblind” is no longer an option

I was seven years old when I became fully aware of my skin color and what it meant. I sat in the front of the bus, still not fully understanding the ways of the world (and here I am, 20 years old and still not much closer to understanding the world). The bus driver’s son, who couldn’t have been any older than I was, was playing around, when the bus driver told him to sit down, and pointed to the empty seat beside me.

“No, he said stubbornly. “I don’t want to sit next to the brown girl.”

When I was 19, I was told by another man that I would be gorgeous if I were a shade lighter.

….wut?

I wasn’t even sure if I had heard him correctly. But I did. And the worst part is that he said it as if it were a compliment. As if I should be thankful for his words telling me that I was so close to being beautiful — if only I had been born with lighter skin. He said it with a shade of ignorance that I hadn’t encountered before. It was as if my beauty was being compared to some standard that I wasn’t aware of — or maybe I had been aware, I just tried to avoid it. To him, society had told him that whiter meant better. When I asked why, he rattled off a list of stereotypes of why he’d never date someone with darker skin. His reasons were based on the most arbitrary things. He went on to tell me that I was one of the nicest black women he’s ever met, but I digress — why he felt the need to distinguish my kindness based on my skin color is beyond me and is a topic for another post.

But what I realized in that moment is that these biases are all around us. That the culture and society that we live in subtly, and sometimes openly, pushes us to this place of associating darker skin with the lesser and lighter with the better.

From controversy surrounding Beyonce’s L’Oreal ad to Dove’s “normal to dark skin” label on its summer glow lotion and VisibleCare ad controversy, we are constantly surrounding by darker skin as being this “Other” — something different that somehow becomes bad.

Since childhood, we’re constantly bombarded with society’s view that lighter is better. When I was a child, I wanted the white barbies, I thought they were pretty and had nice hair and there were so many white dolls in frilly dresses. Barbie had the perfect boyfriend (okay, Ken was slightly creepy looking), perfect careers…she could be anything and she was successful. That’s the Barbie that was marketed to us.

It manifests itself in so many different ways. Is it a race issue or is it a color issue?

Colorism bias is something that is deeply engrained in our society — and it extends all over the world. But that shouldn’t stop us from speaking out about it.

Something that I’ve realized is that we have to be bold in speaking about our experiences. It ends up being so subconscious in our minds that many people don’t really realize how much of a problem it is. We get comfortable. But we have to start being comfortable with the uncomfortable topic of race and color. Changing a whole society perceptions and bias’s towards color isn’t something that can be done overnight, but even just having conversations on an individual level can make a difference. Because over time, those individual conversations build up.

Challenging the colorism bias begins by starting a conversation and having that dialogue and sharing experiences to realize that we’re not alone in this. These are not isolated experiences. We need to bring up these issues — it brings out people’s true thoughts and it forces you to confront this topic rather than be coloblind to it.