"If you is white, you's alright....": stories about colorism in America.

• Published date: 22 December 2015
• Author: Norwood, Kimberly Jade
• Date: 22 December 2015

I. INTRODUCTION

                 In a land that loves its blond, blue-eyed children, who weeps for
                 the dreams of a black girl? (1)
                

I am well into my fifties now and yet I can still remember vividly interactions with complete strangers, at a very early age. Whenever my mother and I were out in public together, I almost always felt that something was wrong with me. You see, I have the same skin color as the current First Lady of the United States, Mrs. Michelle Obama. My mother has the same skin color as the actress Halle Berry. My hair was very short and kinky, "nappy" some would say. My hair was so thick that it would literally break combs on occasion! My mother on the other hand, had long, straight, flowing hair. People would see us walking down the street together or on a bus, on a train, in a doctor's office, in a retail store, and the eyes would flip back and forth from mother to daughter and back. By all accounts my mother was then (and still is) quite attractive. People who looked at my mother physically responded to her as if they were looking at a work of fine art. As the eyes rolled over and down to me, something would happen. The final landing gaze on me always stung. The eyes said--yes, they spoke!--"poor you" or "I'm sorry." I could not put my fingers on what I was experiencing at the time, but I eventually came to understand that those looks of contempt and pity related to the color of my skin. I cannot recall how many days--and there were many--that I spent looking in a mirror and wishing I looked like my mother (I actually favor my father). I wanted her skin color most certainly and also her hair! Long, straight, acceptable. If only I could have just those two things, I'd be beautiful and smiled at too. Like eleven-year old Pecola Breedlove in THE BLUEST Eye, (2) I understood that things light and white were loved and valued. Who doesn't want to be loved and valued?

Colorism, a term believed to be first coined in 1982 by Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker, was defined by her to mean the "prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color." (3) It is not racism although there is a clear relationship. A clear example of racism would involve a business that refuses to hire black people. Colorism would not preclude the hiring of a black person, but there would be preference for a black person with a lighter skin tone than a darker skinned person. From this example one can see too that colorism can not only occur within same-raced peoples but also across races. (4) Colorism also is often gendered. Because of its unique relationship to who and what is beautiful, it has a tendency, although not exclusively, to affect and infect women more than men. (5)

Although my first experience with colorism occurred very early in life, it never went away or otherwise resolved itself. Rather, it grew with me. And in many ways, I grew to understand that the color hierarchy was simply the way of the world. I would eventually marry and have children of my own. And through those children, I would again see colorism grow and sting. I saw in my male children a preference for white over black. My girls watched boys make choices based on skin color and hair length and texture. I listened to their friends and observed the interplay in their social interactions. I watched school plays with Black children playing roles but almost never Black children with my skin color. I knew that, some day, one day when I had time, I would spend time discussing, highlighting and helping to eradicate colorism.

II. MY EXPERIENCE WITH COLORISM IN AFRICA

                 Women in Africa are economically dependent on men.... Women need
                 men in their lives to survive
                 If the general view is that light-skinned women are more
                 attractive, then it's an investment to try to lighten one's skin
                 They are not just buying cream. They are buying a dream of a better
                 life." (6)
                

The power of colorism struck me again during trips to the Motherland. My visits to Ghana, to South Africa, and to Zambia in the mid-2000s opened up a whole new world to me. Even there, in a world of Black and shades of brown, lighter was better. I am embarrassed to admit that this shocked me. I did not understand the continued hold and power that the legacy of colonization had on African communities, no longer under colonial rule. Judges in Ghana dressed in long black flowing robes, white shirts with long flowing ruffles and most importantly--and shockingly of all--donned white wigs with the big curls and long flowing hair. Fifty years after their independence from British rule. I was seeing deeply entrenched British culture thrive. I had many women share with me their dreams of lighter skin. I do not mean to cast this as the universal story in Africa or even for the few countries I visited. I am simply revealing something I experienced, an experience that left me reeling.

My experience in Africa comports with what other scholars have found. And many of those scholars have pinned contemporary African preferences for light skin on colonization. (7) Others have offered evidence that the preference for light skin had some hold prior to colonization. In some parts of precolonial Africa, light-brown, yellow, or reddish tints were the favored pigmentations for women. (8) Yet, in precolonial Congo, dark skin was preferred to such an extent that babies were put in the sun to become darker. (9)

Today many African countries continue to be affected by colonialist skin color ideologies. Evidence of this is reflected in the large percentage of women who use skin-whitening creams. For example, 77 percent of women in parts of Nigeria, 60 percent of Zambian women ages 30-39, 59 percent in Togo, 50-60 percent of adult Ghanaian women, 52 percent in Dakar, Senegal 50 percent of women in Bamako, Mali, and 35 percent in Pretoria, South Africa, report using skin-whitening products on a regular basis. (10) Lighter-complexioned women in many parts of Africa are considered more beautiful. (11) Light skin is believed to be necessary to attract, and even keep, a husband so many women in this vast land bleach their skin. (12) The practice is so widespread that in some areas, the women are known as "the bleachers." (13) This dangerous practice risks cancer and mercury poisoning, among other ailments, (14) but it is the price they are willing to pay for desirability, love, and economic stability. (15)

III. CHINA OPENED MY EYES YET AGAIN TO COLORISM

                 Data collected within the industry shows that 90 percent of the
                 pistachios sold in the Chinese market have been bleached, said Fang
                 Ming, dean of the food science and engineering department at the
                 East China University of Science and Technology. Pistachios have
                 become a major snack in China only within the past few years, Fang
                 said. With no knowledge of the nuts' natural look, most consumers
                 mistake the white-shelled pistachios as the good ones. The
                 bleaching is to cater to the mass consumer idea of "the brighter
                 the better," which covers up quality flaws. (16)
                

My experience in Africa really opened my eyes to the power of colonization on how one valued, or not, their own skin in a country where the majority were ruled by people with brown skin. But it would take a trip to China a few years later to finally push me over the edge and force me to make time to study colorism. While teaching in China in 2010, I read an article in the China Daily titled "New Standards to Ban Bleaching of Pistachios." According to the article, China was then the world's largest consumer of pistachio nuts. Before making them available to the consuming public, however, the nuts are bleached. They are not bleached to clean them or to remove natural bacteria or contagions. Rather, they are bleached solely "to cater to the mass consumer idea of 'the brighter, the better.'" The article shared the "mass perception" that brighter was better and that the lighter ones were the "the good ones."

From that day on, I began to experience my surroundings while traveling in China through colored lenses. I began to notice the skin colors of the professionals--usually legal professionals as I found myself, invariably, at one law firm or another--and compared their skin tone with that of the working class. I noticed television commercials and programming, magazines, billboards, advertisements of all sorts. In virtually every case, the professionals were lighter in skin tone than the laborers, and the Chinese images portrayed in the media were of very fair Chinese people. Indeed, not only were models, particularly the women, very fair in skin tone, one could just barely spot any remnants of their "Asianness." Eye shape, eyebrows, noses, mouths, looked strikingly Caucasian. The Chinese are not Caucasian but yet they clamor for lighter and lighter skin. (17) Even lighter nuts are better!

Of course, the preference for white food is neither new nor foreign. Consider flour, rice, and sugar, naturally brown, bleached for color. (18) There is even evidence of a preference, or valuing differently, of the color white in animals. Consider the rare white bison, which when born, is glorified and cherished in some Native American communities as the rare jewel that not only is sign of prosperity from a prophet but also brings good things to all people in the world. (19) In Spain, the famous white stallions, Lipizzaners, are not actually (or should I say naturally) white at all. Historically, they were black stallions but a line has known been bred to become white. The famous white stallions out of Spain today are cherished and revered but even now, despite the best science, the colts are still born black and dark brown. They do not turn white for several years. Once white, however, they are eligible for greatness. (20) Lighter is better, the world says, in people, in food, and even in animals.

During my return trip home, I thought about my experience with colorism in China. I reflected on what I already...