‘Stop acting light-skinned’ and other stupid colorism comments
Why black folks need to knock it off with skin color jokes
“Stop acting light-skinned.”
“She acts like that ’cause she’s light-skinned.”
“He has dark-skinned tendencies.”
“You better stay out the sun before you get too black.”
These kinds of comments make me cringe. It’s not quite ignorance because we know the weight it carries; it’s more like obliviousness or a defense mechanism. For African-Americans specifically, it is next to impossible to avoid acknowledging how colorism affects us.
Lighter-complexioned people may be:
more likely to be hired for employment
“scientifically” and socially chosen as “more beautiful”
less likely to be accused of “immoral” or “evil” acts
less likely to be arrested
Even darker-skinned white people (i.e. lowest percentiles of skin reflectance) “have a probability of arrest more similar to the lightest-skinned black men than to the lightest-skinned white men … ambiguous range of skin color would afford the highest probability of white individuals being misclassified as [an] outgroup.”* In other words, that tan that non-black people are getting (or biracial folks) may be working against them, according to the criminal justice system. And police who racially profile are left confused about what to do with you.
Assata Shakur, Rosa Parks and Angela Davis pounded the pavement and spoke up for all black folks — not just their “team.” And Harriet Tubman was trying to save everybody she physically could.
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Additionally, unless your school history books are full of delusional tales that downplay the significance of slavery during the Civil War, ignore Jim Crow laws and breeze past segregation, then you’re fully aware of the torture and separation that pitted “house slaves” (usually lighter, most likely to be the product of slave owners raping their slaves) against “field slaves” (usually darker).
So when I think about the kind of heavy history pitting dark-skinned black people and light-skinned black people against each other, the last thing I want to do is participate in putting us in boxes based solely on our melanin count. American history has done enough to divide us. We don’t need to do it, too.