Problems – Alliance Sutzie

Colorism is one of the two problems that I have chosen to talk about and might discuss in the unit 2 assignment. Colorism is very frequent within the black community, this discrimination among ourselves has existed for years which means it has happened within the older generation and it continues to take place as of today. For those who do not know colorism is prejudice against individuals with a dark skin tone, usually among the same racial group. For this assignment I want to focus on colorism within the youth because I believe I will be able to address the topic better if i talk about it based on my personal experiences and also the experiences of those around my age.

 I became interested in the topic ever since i’ve downloaded the app Tiktok last year during the pandemic and while scrolling through the app i’ve realized how colorist young black men are. As a girl I’m aware that young women can also be colorist, it is not a matter of gender but with the evidence i’ve gathered from the app is that young “dark skin” black girls are strongly disliked and disrespected by their own “Men”. There have been multiple trends where dark skin girls have been insulted based on their skin color, those trends implies that they are not beautiful, they are not wanted, they are loud, aggressive and so many other stereotypes. 

The irony is that a lot of these young undeducted black boys who participated in those shameful trends also have a dark skin tone which further proves these boys hate themselves and they are looking for validation from white people and sometimes other non black people. This topic is a very sensitive one to talk about as a black girl, whenever we call out those boys about being colorist they dismiss us by saying “it’s just a preference”. Colorism does not only happen in the US, it is very popular in my home country as well, and i’ve seen young beautiful dark skins girls who i have grown up with hating their skin color and are encouraged to bleach it in order to be lighter. 

So obviously this topic is very important to talk about even though i’m not dark skin myself but I have experienced colorism because I am not as light as the beauty standard wants me to be. So it frustrates me seeing those hateful videos getting millions of views and likes and I want that topic to be discussed more.  The other topic I’ve wanted to talk about is classism because I felt like the previous topic was a bit too much and  there is so many aspects of it I’m not going to be able to mention in my assignment or else it will be too long.