The Millennial Perspective...On Colourism and Beauty

The Millennial Perspective…On Colourism and Beauty

Feb 18, 2019 News

When I was in primary school, there was a girl who I heard some Indo-Guyanese boys call the ugliest girl in school. She didn’t have many friends, and she’d get teased a lot, about how dark her skin was. At the time, I called it racism, but I wasn’t quite sure that was the correct term. I started to explore the concept that, maybe, racism was not as one-dimensional as the difference between black and white. Race is a social construct determined by ancestry, hair type, colour of eyes and skin, stature and other physical attributes. Racism occurs when there is a system of disadvantage based on those racial differences. Colourism, however, occurs when the discrimination is based on complexion. Though it intersects with racism, it’s not the same.

Kemol King

I grew up around a lot of darker Indo-Guyanese people who were discriminated against just for being dark; heard stories of mothers telling their sons not to court darker girls, and vice versa. For some reason, some people think that their skin is dirty or impure just because it is dark. These communities continue to replicate a long history of segregation from their ancestral home in South Asia, where studies have found that social structure, defined by the caste system, correlates with skin pigmentation.
In Afro-Guyanese communities, colourism is rampant as well. There are Black Guyanese who are rightfully passionate about anti-black racism, but turn around and belittle others for being darker. It’s common for them to favour someone with a little “colour”. A descriptor that I’ve heard way too much to describe very dark Black people is “black and ugly”, as if blackness and ugliness are interchangeable or synonymous. There is even a culture built around putting “red” women on a pedestal.
When a Black person rises to fame or to “the top of their game”, it is often heralded as the destruction of a structural barrier against Black people. However, the people who don’t value the need for intersectionality in activism and advocacy often ignore the fact that light-skinned Black people breaking a structural barrier doesn’t necessarily make it easier for all Black people. Darker Black Celebrities like Viola Davis have often spoken about their experiences being exponentially more difficult than their lighter counterparts. Davis had said, in an interview, “If you are darker than a paper bag, then you are not sexy, you are not a woman’. She was, at the time, talking about society’s perception of dark Black people.
She said that dark-brown actresses are usually typecast as demeaning characters in society. Even in Bollywood, we see that the casting of dark-skinned South Asians in major roles is rare. They are usually cast as the helpers or servants. This is not just unfair to those specific actors. The consequences of such profiling are widespread and have an effect on darker people everywhere because the audiences of such entertainment are conditioned to see dark-skinned people as lesser; less deserving and less capable, even if they don’t realize it.
There is a terrible cognitive dissonance in Guyanese communities, where people are against racism (rightfully so) but perpetuate colourism. It goes to show how frighteningly much we have been conditioned to believe that European complexions and physical features are the epitome of beauty.
People who are light-skinned are privileged because our skin tones allow us to be perceived differently. There’s nothing wrong with being lighter, but there is something wrong with assuming that that gives you a badge of superiority. I have noticed the privilege that I’ve been afforded at so many points in my life, just for being light-skinned, and I acknowledge it.
Beauty, at least in the Western world, is a social construct based on centuries of programming by colonizers, who have dictated that you are better for being lighter, with more chiseled facial features or straighter hair. It may be difficult to acknowledge that the beauty or privilege that you have been perceived to have is just a social construct, but it is. To work through these colourist norms, people should identify and acknowledge the history of toxic, limited beauty standards, and commit to working through it.
(Kemol King)

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