Our perception of skin tone has been corrupted.
It was filtered through racism.
Dark skin.
Light skin.
Black.
White.
These were never neutral descriptions.
Not all light-skinned people were mixed, and there were dark-skinned people who were mixed. Yet we used a spectrum built on racist ideas to explain differences in skin tone.
That system became colorism, featurism, and texturism that still plagues us.
We associated “Negro” with features that were defined and reduced to a list: dark skin, coiled hair, full lips, broad noses. The more visibly Black you were, the more colorism you faced. The further away you were from this, you received a sort of social privilege.
Don’t get me wrong light-skinned people faced it too because of the false equation that light skin automatically meant mixed. It was a halo effect that still dehumanized and caricaturized Blackness despite skin tone.
Racism affected our perception by fixing and locking tones to levels of admixture. Race theory further distorted this by use of semiotics such as Black absorbing the racist concept of “African”
Africa and “African” was framed as something both negative and positive at the same time
The greatest lie they told the “American Negro” was that they could become white either by via assimilation or via blanqueamiento. White society made whiteness the standard default and everything else was either “impure” or a “degradation” it is the absence of “other” this was textbook Racism.
In this society, people are comparing themselves to an impossible standard that they could emulate but never truly become no matter if they choose proximity via divestment or collaboration. This affected of perception of skin tones, features, and hair textures.
White became European and Black became African and the middle ground became “other”
This is again the paradigm Racist deployed to structure their societies
The truth is, our relationship with skin tone is deeply unhealthy. When racist semiotics filter how we understand ourselves, the question becomes what do we replace it with?
We exist on a spectrum of different shades of dark brown moving into lighter brown. Even among dark-skinned people, there is no single complexion. I used to think I was the darkest person on the planet. I used to want to be darker actually became I wanted to be more African. I associated that darkness with being what I thought I was supposed to be. I didn’t know but it was internalized racism affecting me
Going to Africa and interacting with various African culture altered my perception of myself and of Black Americans in general.
I seen plainly that everything here in America was filtered through a form of racism that had us using inaccurate terms to describe ourselves. It was like a different OS when leaving and understanding.
I was told I wasn’t “African” I seen how people could spot the differences in phenotypes common to their own and to other groups. African cultures have Ana danced view of ethnicity that’s built on systems of integrity and not broad administrative conflations like here in America.
Seeing people within the same shade range but with completely different undertones and descriptors altered my perspective tbh.
I realized that skin tone in the United States is measured against white people in a very racist way.
Light(er) skin was valued and dark(er) skin was devalued along and features and textures added to this.
I grew up in NOLA which is extremely colorist.
We’ve all heard these terms and their use. It operated like a scale. “Lily white” “White” “Light bright, damn near white”
Yellow. Red. Were considered “lighter skin”
And then there were the dark(er) skin tones that we would say like dark skin could mean anything brown and darker. I remember in my youth when some of my friends who were lighter shades of brown considered themselves light skin. (Remember I grew up in NOLA) and i was confused because “light skin” were I grew up were lighter skin tones in NO.
Then the dark skin tones were subject to fetishization that was expressed differently depending on the gender. Chocolate. Dark chocolate. Etc.
So many were bullied for being darker skinned. I also seen lighter skinned people fetishized and bullied as well. They associated certain qualities to skin tones as well that made people think their behavior was predisposed. These things were memified (I don’t know if that’s a word yet) or allegorized. Lighter skin was seen as soft, gentle, nice, feminine and privileged or spoiled etc and darker skin was seen as masculine, hard, fierce, defensive etc
These racist things were maybe people reacting to their environments due to colorism they were facing.
I used to say things like “Y’all just don’t want to be Black (African)” but now I see the truth I was a colorist just like everyone else and that realization required honesty. I deployed it in a reactionary way by chasing darker women (this was natural tho ngl still my weakness)
What had baffle me was how a lot of people in Africa used lighter skinned digital avatars or bitmojis. I was confused. Minus the rampant skin bleaching in some regions. I then understood that the context was different for each individual but patterns were revealing themselves.
Lighter skin tones were valued because of its proximity to whiteness. Different hair textures were valued over the 4C supremacy! Darker skin was demonized and Lighter skin was anglicized
Both were dehumanized and had positive and negative language deployed. The people in the middle with brown complexions were often casually weaponizing this scale just as much as the other two were affected. Many would roast you if you were “too dark” or had features and hair textured that were associated with racist concepts of “African” I would see people casually draw comparisons “you’re darker than me” as if it was something to be ashamed of. I seen people with darker skin tones say things like “I want a light skinned baby w/ good hair” I seen lighter skinned people reduced to crystallized stereotypes esp if they slightly deviated from these stereotypes
I could go on and on here but the same internalized racism was playing out around us. I think one of the biggest myths today is that BW were the only ones affected by this disease in our community.
The society created this value system environment.
This all changed within the last decade with renewals in Black Pride which renewed interest in our collective histories that ideologues related back to Africa. It reminds me of my personal journey. Although I am speaking in general, I am hyper aware that it was everyone and could be regional. Colorism was in the media, the movies, the art, the music, everyone and so many adopted these concepts
Our perception of color here is entirely different from much of the rest of the world. Once I deprogrammed myself from that colorist point of view and once I decoupled race from skin tone I could finally see clearly.
There are many shades and those tones are gradients along with many undertones. Different types of light and dark that should not be conflated.
People saw movement away from “dark skin” as movement away from a baseline of who and what we were. But I learned that in Africa there are wide ranges of complexions, tones, and undertones and that this rigid thinking was uniquely American.
I witnessed this myself while in North East Africa. Black Americans, light and dark, often share red undertones but it is not limited to this but it’s definitely a marker not a universal rule or standard no matter how average or common. I’ve dated women that have been different ranges of dark skinned and some were from amongst the darkest people on the planet in the Nile Valley. Their rich skin tones varied and we all noticed how different our perceptions of dark skin was depending on our POV.
Were all various shades of brown with various undertones and we must decouple ideas of race theory and its political correct semiotics from this as we move into systems of integrity
It’s a very beautiful thing now. These ideas are conflated due to racism but people are breaking free
That is visible Colorism has shaped how we see ourselves. It is a side effect of internalized racism and recognizing our individual place and behavior within these systems is the first step toward identifying it and healing.
