Why Colorism Hurts

"If I turned the lights off, I wouldn't be able to see you"

"Your skin is dirty"

"Have you tried *insert bleaching cream*?"

Colourism: prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group.

"Typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group"

That's what's really upsetting about this - after everything people of colour have been through we're creating more hate within our communities. Even though, after slavery, we swore we'd never let it happen again.

It's infuriating when white are colourist too, for obvious reasons and because it's like we're being told;"you can be black and beautiful but only if you're a certain type of black".

This "certain type of black is referring to those whose skin is no darker than honey, often have coloured or light brown eyes and type 3 hair. Dark skinned black people with type 4 hair aren't part of this "black & beautiful" thing.

This also happens a lot in Asian communities too. Skincare in Korea is targetted towards skin lightening. This is also a very real thing in South Asia, particularly with girls.

I remember walking through a cosmetics store while on holiday, "lighter, brighter, happier!" read a sign with a before an after of a woman after using a bleaching cream. These Ads were absolutely everywhere. If you haven't noticed, colourism is in the media a lot. When companies want a little "diversity" in their Ads, they look for multiracial or light-skinned black people. Although they're amazing actresses - people tend to forget that Zendaya and Amandla aren't the only black women to ever exist. In the Greatest Showman, Zendaya was the only black woman who was part of the main cast. In October the movie of the amazing book, The Hate U Give is coming out.

The character of Starr in the book, is clearly a dark-skinned girl with 4c hair. Amandla doesn't exactly fit this description. Both the casting director and the author got a lot of backlash on Twitter about this issue. Amandla has previously denied a role in Black Panther for the reason of colourism. It isn't just in movies, look in every advert you see on TV and I guarantee you, they'll be a biracial woman with curls being "the diverse one" for the company.

Melanin: a dark brown to black pigment occurring in the hair, skin, and iris of the eye in people and animals. It is responsible for the tanning of skin exposed to sunlight. All of this is over a chemical in our bodies and whether we have more or less than it. Because of all of this, there's a young girl somewhere staying out of the sun so she doesn't get any darker, maybe because her mother told her to or maybe because her best friend made a passing comment and didn't realise how much it would hurt. This type of pain stays with someone for a long time and it's horrible.