Colorism

I would like to see an end to the colorism that was created by slavery that keeps us separated as a people. I can't go so far as to say that light skinned slaves had it just as bad as dark skinned slaves. The rigors of slavery were far more physically demanding and psychologically damaging for those who were the rich, deep tones of ebony and mahogany. I respect that the horrors of slavery ravaged all those that were considered property and unjustifiably so in every instance but I wouldn't go so far as to say that conditions for slaves were the same for the lighter and the darker. I wouldn't even go so far as to say that the colorism we face today, as a direct result of the debilitating messages we learned in slavery are the same for light and dark skinned people. To deny that the shade of one's color was directly proportionate to the types of debilitating abuse one suffered might not be the most noble objective. While it was truly horrific to be sold for $1000 to be the slave master's pretty mulatto concubine, it was far more damaging to be sold for $100 to be the field work horse AND the slave master's ugly nigger concubine. Both are horrid but one certainly carried with it privileges that the other could not attain.

And today, while I'm sure it must eat at one's self-esteem to be challenged as to your "authentic blackness" because of one's light skin, I am not so sure that compares to the constant barrage of messages that tells dark skinned women of color specifically that they are light years away from anything of value or beauty. Being right in the middle, a beautiful shade of cocoa, I can empathize with my light skin sisters who don't wish to have their blackness invalidated by their skin tone, I can also say, as sister to many dark skinned women, that the barrage of psychologically damaging messages that they get on a daily basis FAR outweigh the ones that light skin women get. To truly liberate ourselves from the shackles of slavery, we must first acknowledge that the disparity due to skin color was not of our own making but it, in fact, does paralyze the darker members of our families much more so than the lighter ones. While light skin women today experience objectification and stereotypes whose origins were created in slavery, I think it's a bit extreme to say that their plight in any way compares to the beautiful women whose skin tones today are skin tones are dark and their features thick and full who have no reinforcement of their beauty, who must endure the pain of seeing their fairer skinned sisters being extolled as beautiful while they are left to feel ugly and unwanted.

I would like to see an end to the colorism that was created in slavery by the white man in order to justify his abuse. I would like to heal the wounded psyches of us as descendents of Africans so that we might unite and see our sameness as survivors of a horrific tragedy rather than continue to give privilege to those that were the "beneficiaries" of rape and miscegenation and continue to denigrate those whose blood remains relatively pure.