http://www.bet.com/news/national/2011/05/31/the-stupidity-of-black-colorism-.html


This article is an opinion piece about colorism in response to a documentary about dark skinned women called "Dark Girls".  It talks about how even though blacks are still looked down upon by some whites, they are even now being figuratively segregated by other races and cultures.  As I talked about in a previous blog,  Beyonce is a lighter dark skinned person, and sometimes they lighten her more, and some people don't appreciate that.  They think that people view her as what all dark skinned people should look like, which obviously is not the case.  In the documentary, it shows girls who want to bleach their skin so they can look lighter and "beautiful".  That is really tragic to think that people will go to such poisonous lengths to look like how they think society wants them to look.  Even though this article is biased, the point is true enough.  It is ridiculous for minorities to be racist themselves, when they don't like being looked down upon because of their race.  In order to have worldwide respect and peace, everyone needs to move on and not care about a color.  It's just a color.

This is a promo video for a longer documentary about colorism.  Although I did not watch it, I think this video gives a good idea of what exactly colorism is and how far and deep it runs.  I did not know that it went back to slave days.  The slave owners would favor lighter slaves and give them more privileges than darker slaves.  They thought they were more white, so close enough to be nicer to them.  This ridiculous idea has lasted all these years into today.  I suppose if you backtrack to the slave days, directly after they were liberated, people still judged them and thought that the lighter newly non-slave people looked more like them, the might have figured they had more of a chance becoming more like regular white citizens versus the really dark people.  This theory had then been passed down generation to generation all the way into today.  Dark people are more easily associated with gangs and general criminals, while lighter people, even like Soledad O'Brien in this video, are more easily recognized as close-to-white-non-gang-like people.  Hopefully someday this can change, but for now, lighter is still better.  

   
blog.wildirisbooks.com
                                                                                       
                                                                                     thisblksistaspage.wordpress.com

These two pictures really speak to colorism. The first picture is of Beyonce.  The picture on the left is about how she really looks, and the picture on the right is a publicity shot.  The magazine shot is obviously a lot lighter.  Along with touching up photos of celebrities and making them look younger, they also sometimes lighten them.  I don't really see the purpose of this, only because they think that society wants to see lighter dark skinned people.  On the other hand, the second picture of OJ Simpson taken at the time of his trial.  For his picture, they darkened his skin. This was a huge controversy at the time. This goes with what I have been reading about.  Light is good. Darker is worse. So they darkened his skin.  They wanted to make him look darker and meaner and more of a monster.  They thought that darker dark skinned people are worse than lighter people.  He didn't pass the brown paper bag test, that's for sure.  I think that was the deal. Either way, lightening or darkening skin for publicity is ridiculous.