Part of the beauty of people of African descent is
our wide spectrum of skin tone; from “ebony” to “chocolate” to “caramel”. But how
is it that our roots are so similar but we are so disconnected as a people
today. How is it possible that we could ever willingly categorize ourselves
into the basic categories of “light-skinned” and “dark-skinned” automatically
negating the value of all of those tones in-between? Attitudes of skin tone and
the idea that lighter is better have roots in slavery and the hierarchy that existed
amongst those enslaved.
As
a tactic to control and break enslaved Africans of their bond with one another,
slave masters would marry, have children with and give jobs more desirable to those
with a lighter complexion. This assignment of a more positive connotation to
those with lighter skin has connections to the idea of one being a “house slave”
or a “field slave”; someone who is lighter and therefore “more attractive” is
less suited for hard manual labor. These early skin tone preferences set the
stage for what we see today in the way society ranks our skin tone. In the book,
“Shades of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters” by Evelyn Nakano Glenn, the
history of skin tone is described in terms of being more or less European and
so in turn being more or less refined versus primitive (p.5).
I
feel as though I see the aftermath of slavery’s impression on the black skin
tone when I look at my brother and how he views black women. He has never dated
a black female with a darker skin tone and I naturally ask myself why. Is it
because darker toned women do not find him attractive or is it because society
has told him that dark is not beautiful? Why is it the norm in music videos
today to only see lighter skinned women with long, fine hair? Were those girls
the best for the job or were they selected based on what is seen as most
attractive in society today?
Today we even see the aftermath of a hierarchy of
skin tone taking hold in the plight of blacks in the education system and our
economic system. We see a higher number of lighter skinned blacks in high
powered positions and performing better in school. In an article called, “Minority
Status and Schooling in Plural Societies” John U. Ogbu describes the category
of castelike minorities which blacks fall into and how “…the variation in skin color
permits members of these minorities to ‘pass’ into the dominant group in order
to overcome castelike barriers in social, political, and occupational positions”
(p.171).
Part
of the negative stigma assigned to dark skinned blacks in society comes from
within our own community. We have taken the attitudes forced upon us during
slavery and now force them upon each other. We as a community have become
perpetrators of “colorism” and have failed to negate and reject the idea that
lighter is better, a success for our past oppressors (Herring, p.3).
References
Herring,
Cedric, PhD, (2004). Skin Deep: How Race and
Complexion Matter in the "Color Blind" era. 1st ed.
chicago: Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy and University of
Illinois Press.
Nakano Glenn, Evelyn (2009). Shades
of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters. 1st ed. Stanford, California
: Stanford University Press.
Ogbu, John U. (1983). Minority Status and Schooling in
Plural Societies. Chicago Journals .
27 (2), pp.168-190
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