Colorism: Internalized Racism
consequences of justifying colorism and its devastating effects
Beauty is defined as the quality of being pleasing to the senses or to the mind and not merely about physical appearances. But nowadays a lot of black men unaware of the troubling effects of internalized racism, fail to acknowledge the problematic nature of basing likability entirely on skin tone.
We contagiously sought out to reject black women with darker complexions and instead turn our attention to lighter skinned women who are considered more attractive, desirable and sometimes the embodiment of beauty according to the standards of colorism.
Having its roots deeply embedded in the now archaic yet subliminal and inhumane transatlantic slave trade, triggered by the fallacious fantasy of white supremacy and later on European colonialism, this imprudent and toxic form of discrimination still corrodes the fundamental framework of our societies. This is especially visible in Africa and African American communities where it has paved way for the dark skin and light skin stereotypes.
Its effects are so devastating to an extent where self-worth and esteems are significantly lowered among dark skinned black women who are made to feel unattractive or sometimes insignificant. Likewise, self-esteems are destroyed among their light skinned counterparts who end up beating themselves down and carrying the guilt on their shoulders somehow thinking it’s their fault this form of inequality exists. They try to downplay their self-image in order to accommodate their dark skinned friends not knowing that this imposed standard of beauty goes back centuries.
Furthermore, skin color stratification has led to the large scale rise and sustainability of a multi-billion dollar skin bleaching industry. Both dark skinned and light skinned black women sort out to excessively use pills, creams and to some extent surgery in order to lighten their skins and become “prettier” forgetting the harmful nature of some of the chemicals used in most of these products and their extremely negative health effects.
Risks and side effects span from not only destroying the skin by thinning which could be potentially dangerous when exposed to harmful ultra violet rays from the sun, but also a high chance of premature aging, skin cancer and mercury poisoning among others.
As you can see colorism has dire effects on a lot of beautiful black women across the color spectrum whether dark or light skinned and the consequences of tolerating this inexcusable form of prejudice is a continuous degradation and erosion of our characters and values as black people. In disallowing this monolithic standard of beauty and in order to mend bridges within ourselves we have to understand that beauty is very dynamic and should be a reflection of who we are inside for it to coincide with the outside.
Similarly as there are over 2000 beautiful tribes in Africa each with its own distinct culture, tradition and tongue which sometimes have closely shared phonetic correspondences, none is superior or inferior to the other. This also holds water when it comes to skin tone which varies massively in the land of contrast where you can find people with jet black, to chocolate and caramel skin tones.
Therefore, it is important that all black people especially black men join in the effort to discontinue and completely eradicate colorism from the face of the earth by educating ourselves on the negative effects of basing mate likability and selection on skin tone, but rather consider all black women beautiful and equal.
In conclusion, as is a lily, tulip and a rose individually beautiful in their own rights, none is more beautiful than the other or special; reasons being they each play a unique role in the beautification of Mother Nature and our planet as does different shades of black skin tones.
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