00:00Love yourself. Wake up in the morning and be like, hey, girl, you're amazing, you're great.
00:05You have to be confident in yourself every day.
00:07Colorism is defined as the prejudice or discrimination against an individual due to the color or shade of their skin,
00:13typically amongst the same racial group.
00:15While colorism can affect a multitude of racial and ethnic groups, in the black community specifically,
00:21it dates back to our times of slavery in the United States,
00:24when oftentimes the color of your skin determined the position you were given.
00:27This division caused friction. The effects of colorism have transcended into our current society and mainstream media.
00:34My name is Chanel Thompson. My name is Carrie Hawks. Hi, I'm Ayesha. Hi, my name is Alicia.
00:39Hi, my name is Tamika J. Hi, my name is Whitney Reynolds.
00:42Hi, I'm Shanika, and colorism has always been the elephant in the room.
00:46My personal experience with colorism dates back when I was pretty young,
00:52but I recall being in middle school and like girls telling me that I had to pick a side.
00:59So because I was like light-skinned and I have one white parent and one black parent,
01:05it was always like, oh, you have to choose like what side you want to be on.
01:10Like you can't be a part of both.
01:12Um, and so at the time I remember like thinking it was crazy and at like 12 years old,
01:19of course, I don't really know like, oh, this is, this is colorism that's happening.
01:23And when I finally went to sixth grade, I went to private school.
01:26So the school was predominantly white and it was only three black girls in the school.
01:31So my first experience there, and it wasn't even from a white person.
01:35It was from another black male and he was just like, hey, you look like a tar baby.
01:40Me in sixth grade, I'm like, well, tar baby, what does that mean?
01:44I didn't really understand what that meant.
01:47So I went home to my mom and I'm just like, mom, um, you know, this boy at school said
01:51I look like a tar baby.
01:52I was like, what does that mean?
01:54So my mom, you know, she sat me down and explained,
01:56tar is when you're paving the street, you have a fresh coat of tar.
01:59So basically that's what he was comparing my skin tone to was the tar on the street.
02:04That was, that was a hard place for me to be.
02:07I remember once I was waiting in line for an art event in Brooklyn,
02:10like waiting right next to my friend.
02:12And then I took my turn and then it was time for my friend to take her turn.
02:16And the woman was like, oh, I literally didn't see you.
02:18And she's darker complexer than me.
02:20And I'm like, we were here the whole time.
02:22Like, it just feels like sometimes I feel like I'm getting preferential treatment
02:25or like getting attention from people because of my skin color, being a lighter skin person.
02:30And it's, it's gross.
02:31People kind of just always point it out to me.
02:35And then I've had like a weird thing that, where people will always try to either like
02:40assign me darker than I am.
02:42Like they'll, you know, pick up like a browner shade of foundation.
02:45And I'm like, you know, girl, that doesn't match.
02:47I recently just had a coworker say to me, you know, Chanel, you're very pretty for a dancing girl.
02:52And I was like, see, it's stuff like this that just cause a controversy.
02:56Then the media trickles down to real life.
02:58Like I witnessed it, like one of my best friends, she's light-skinned, she's mixed.
03:02And she's very, very, very opinionated.
03:05And I feel like a lot of times, a lot of things that she says, if I was to say
03:08it,
03:08I feel like it would be looked at like, ooh, like you need to calm down.
03:13But when she says it, it's like, you know, she's an opinionated woman.
03:15Like she can express herself and I, and you know, it's just, it's, it's kind of, it's unfair.
03:19Hollywood television and music industries haven't done the best job of debunking these stereotypes
03:25or creating diverse and inclusive opportunities for all skin tones.
03:29I think I've seen like across, like I spent some time in Asia and also some time in Latin America.
03:34And it seems like across a lot of different cultures and nationalities and ethnic groups,
03:38lighter-skinned people tend to get more preferential treatment or high-paying jobs
03:42or assume that they're smarter when like everyone is unique to each individual.
03:47So I feel like even beyond the black community, like you have people using skin bleaching creams
03:52or trying not to get tan and it's all this, like the closer to white, the closer to privilege,
03:58the closer to like class.
03:59The perception is that light-skinned women are always better than dark-skinned women
04:04and there's always been like a debate between the two.
04:07Ugh.
04:08Light-skins are pretty.
04:10Light-skinned is better than dark-skinned.
04:12Light-skinned is more beautiful than dark-skinned.
04:14Success was associated with light-skinned.
04:17Zendaya said it herself recently.
04:18She was like, I am the acceptable black girl and that's a problem.
04:23And it is a problem.
04:24Everyone that I saw on television that looked like me was always the friend.
04:28They were the comic relief.
04:29They were the bully.
04:30They were never the protagonist.
04:32They were never the star of the show, the star of the movie.
04:34But with the negative, we must look at the positive and I will say, look at Black Panther.
04:39Look at, look at, we know that we cannot.
04:41Insecure.
04:42Absolutely.
04:42Yeah.
04:42I think it's amazing.
04:44I think we're still getting used to it too because even like you'll see Lapita,
04:48everyone's like, now they're like, she's beautiful, she's beautiful.
04:50But when she first came on the scene, I think people didn't know what to think.
04:54They were like, ah, she's beautiful but she's dark and this confuses me.
04:59While it's helpful to study the history of colorism and the roots that have formed such
05:03a negative space within our community, it's time to look forward and see what we and society
05:08as a whole can do to fix this problem.
05:11Definitely talk about it, which we're doing right now.
05:13Yeah, I think talking about it and also like for people that make films or make media,
05:17celebrating the beauty of the diversity of African diaspora people.
05:21So fixing it, I think it starts with the person first.
05:25First, you have to love yourself.
05:28So once I love myself, I can spread that to others and people in the community.
05:33I think if you don't love yourself and then you put that hate out there of other women,
05:38that's where the problem comes in.
05:40So we have to fix ourselves before we can fix the community as a whole.
05:44And another thing, there are like so many different movements, like Melanin popping,
05:47My Black is Beautiful.
05:49So support this movement that are like, you know, bringing, like raising awareness.
05:55I don't think it's totally up to us because we, I mean, we control a certain amount of media,
05:59a certain amount of clout, a certain amount of power.
06:01I think it's going to need all people and especially like Asian people, Latinx people,
06:06like across every different racial group and white people too.
06:10But like, I think it's a conversation that we need to be having more.
06:14Conversations surrounding colorism are necessary.
06:16We must come together as one solid force to dispel these ugly stereotypes
06:20and remove the negativity from our community.
