Light Skin, The Right Skin

1268 Words3 Pages

Light Skin the Right Skin Colorism is a form of discrimination based on the color of someone’s skin tone. Colorism has the greatest impact on the African American culture and community. It is sad that we have to face discrimination within our own ethnic group, Along with every other ethnic group in the United States. Colorism has been passed down generation after generation. It is dated all the way back to the slavery dates. The idea of light skin being better than dark skin has been deeply rooted in our culture. We see colorism in our everyday life on social network, in our workplace, school, and relationship. We don’t even recognize it because we are unfamiliar of the word colorism and its meaning. So we ignore the fact that people are being treated different in their own race because of the shade of their skin. People are taught colorism growing up informally and don’t realize the effect it has on our culture, because we see it as normal and we were brainwashed to think that. Colorism is an issue amongst African Americans that is slowly tearing down the culture as it has been for centuries and still is today. “I have a foolproof method for controlling your black slaves…it will control the slaves for at least 300 years…I take these differences and make them bigger…you must use the dark skin slaves vs. the light skin slaves and the light skin slaves vs. the dark skin slaves. William Lynch 1712¹.” During the time of slavery African Americans were segregated by their white masters based on the color of their skin color. I found out that there were two kinds of slave’s back in the days, the house slaves and the field slaves. Most of the field slaves would have a darker skin tone and would be the ones working outside picking cotto... ... middle of paper ... ...e Nation's Definition. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1991. Print. Gabriel, Deborah. Layers of Blackness: Colourism in the African Diaspora. London: Imani Media, 2007. Print. Hawkins, Robert Lewis James. Selections from Shades of Brown. N.p.: n.p., 1978. Print. "Social Forces." The Skin Color Paradox and the American Racial Order. Oxfordjournals,org, 2007. Web. 29 Mar. 2014. Smiley ,Tavis. "Interview: Marita Golden Discusses Colorism In The African-American Community." Tavis Smiley (NPR) (n.d.): Newspaper Source Plus. Web. 29 Mar. 2014. Vedantam, Shankar. "Shades of Prejudice." The New York Times. The New York Times, 18 Jan. 2010. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. Walker, Alice. The Color Purple: A Novel. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. Print. Wegmann, Andrew N. "Historical Roots of Colorism." Colorismhealing.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.

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