Author: Naima Autumn Rose

The Problem With the Light-Skinned vs. Dark-Skinned Debate

March 29th, 2020

Another casting announcement for a popular movie series or TV show about a black character is released, and there is a debate about the character’s skin tone. It happened to Alexandra Shipp with the Storm casting for the X-Men movies, and it happened again to Amandla Stenberg with The Hate U Give. I remember the second controversy in particular because it upset me as well. My sister and I both read the book The Hate U Give the summer after it came out, and I loved the illustration of the dark-skinned girl on the cover. As I read the book, it felt nice to imagine a character that looked like me, which is so rare for darker-skinned women. So, when the casting came out, I felt disappointed. It didn’t align with what I, and many other readers, had pictured. More recently, Yara Shahidi was cast to play a darker-skinned Jamaican immigrant in A Sun Is Also A Star. Why are black people finally get the diverse stories we’ve been asking for, but without the casting representation of a variety of skin tones?

I remember a lot of people on social media exclaiming “What’s the problem! We’re all black!” In some ways, I understand where this idea comes from, but in many regards, I find it tone-deaf to the issues of darker-skinned black people. It has the same energy of being “colorblind”– seemingly well-intentioned, but most people of color have interpreted it as an excuse for people who just don’t want to talk about race. Whenever I hear people dismiss a dark-skinned person’s story with the mantra of “we’re all black!” it instantly strikes me as an attempt at silencing the struggles of other people, just because it is not something that affects everyone. We may all be black, but there is a clear difference in the way lighter-skinned and darker-skinned people are treated. It is seen in the way so many of our black icons have lighter skin and the way that children are told to stay out of the sun for fear of becoming too dark. The Hate U Give could have been an amazing moment of representation for a lot of black girls who often don’t see faces that look like theirs on movie screens, but instead, darker-skinned women were overshadowed again.

Still, it is undeniable that the light-skinned vs dark-skinned debate creates a divide between African-Americans. It was designed that way, starting right at the beginning with slavery. Lighter-skinned African Americans had more educational and work opportunities, and were treated much better than darker-skinned slaves. Even after slavery ended, it continued with certain privileges being based on whether an individual could pass the brown paper bag test. Now, it seems like casting movies involves a metaphorical “paper bag test” as well, allowing big movie studios to preach diversity while avoiding the casting of darker-skinned people, most commonly women. There are so few up and coming dark-skinned actresses, yet we seemingly have a surplus of girls with light skin and loose curls, ready to be cast for new roles in a supposedly increasingly diverse Hollywood. Where do dark-skinned women fit in in this Hollywood? There needs to be a way to acknowledge privilege, but also a way to acknowledge how divides are being created. I think it starts with a willingness to listen– or else there can never be healing on either side. It’s not as if representation for all black girls isn’t important– girls like Yara Shahidi and Amandla Stenberg are talented and deserve success, it just shouldn’t come at the expense of colorism. The best interpretation I’ve ever heard of this issue came from Zendaya, another light-skinned actress. She called herself Hollywood’s “acceptable version of a black girl.” And that’s all it is, the definition of “acceptable” is one that has to be changed.

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credits: image from medium.com
My 6 Favorite Black-Girl Books to Read During Quarantine

March 26th, 2020

Like many other Americans this week, I’m locked away at home practicing social distancing. It has been difficult to find ways to make myself feel busy and purposeful, particularly with the news that my school will not be returning for the rest of the semester. Nevertheless, I have reminded myself to remain optimistic, as the situation provides a time for personal reflection and growth as well. Being able to “social distance” is a privilege in itself. The isolation is ultimately what brought me to start this blog when I was in search of a creative outlet.

Other than blogging, I’ve tried to get back into reading as well. I remember when I was in seventh grade, I could finish a full book in less than 24 hours. The increased workload in high school made it so that it takes me weeks to finish one book if I even bother to read one at all. So, while we all have this excess of time, I decided to craft my ultimate quarantine reading list for a black girl, filled with stories of amazing black female heroines capable of letting you escape from the outside world, if only for a few hours.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Children of Blood and Bone is the first novel in the Legacy of Orïsha series, and the sequel (Children of Virtue and Vengeance) was released in December 2019. The story follows Zèlie, a maji living in a world where magic was stolen away by a tyrannical king. Zèlie’s people are oppressed in her society, and when she finds an opportunity to bring magic back to the land of Orïsha, she sets out to revolt against the oppressive monarchy and frees her people. When I read this book for the first time in March 2018, it was instantly one of my favorites. Despite being fantasy, it alludes to many systems of racial inequity I see in real life, making it an impactful read.

Winter by Marissa Meyer

Winter is the final book in the Lunar Chronicles series, a series I highly recommend. Each book is based on a classic fairytale and retold to fit into a futuristic world that includes earthen humans, cyborgs, a race of people living on the moon, and android robots. The titular character, Winter, is based on the tale of Snow White, and all the characters of the past books team up to defeat the evil Lunar queen who aims to take control of Earth’s people. I reread it during this quarantine, and it remains one of my favorite books years after I read it the first time.

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

My Sister, the Serial Killer is the perfect book to read if you’re looking to lose yourself in a novel for only a couple hours. At under 300 pages, it’s short, but exciting nonetheless. It tells the story of Korede, a nurse harboring a dark secret: her beautiful sister, Ayoola, is a serial killer. Ayoola has killed her last three boyfriends, and Korede has always been there to help her get away with it. When Ayoola sets her sights on the handsome doctor Korede had been crushing on, Korede must fight to stop her sister before the doctor ends up like Ayoola’s other romances- dead.

My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due

My Soul to Keep has elements of mystery, horror, and paranormal genres. Dawit is an immortal who has been living for over 400 years, a result of a ritual done alongside many others, all who have been sworn to secrecy. This immortality caused him to travel around for many years, knowing that whatever family he created he would eventually have to abandon. Yet, when he falls in love with Jessica, he just can’t seem to leave her behind. Jessica knows him as David and believes he is the perfect husband: caring, attractive, and intelligent. When the other immortals command David to leave his wife and child behind, he decides to attempt the dangerous ritual that made him immortal all those centuries ago on his wife and children, all while Jessica searches to find the truth about her mysterious husband. This book was actually recommended to me by my father, and though I don’t think I would have picked it up on my own, it was a thrilling read.

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

A light realistic fiction read, With the Fire on High is about an Afro-Latinx teen mom and high school senior, Emoni Santiago, who has a passion for food. While she struggles to take care of her young daughter and support her Abuelita, the kitchen is the one place where she feels truly in control. When her school introduces a new culinary class, she jumps at the chance to take both the class and fundraise for the trip to Spain. A new boy in school only complicates Emoni’s life further, causing her to learn to balance her responsibilities in new ways.

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Set in 1990s Nigeria, Purple Hibiscus follows 15-year-old Kambili, who lives a seemingly privileged life. However, inside the walls of her beautiful home, her father is abusive, controlling every aspect of his wife and children’s lives. When Kambili and her older brother Jaja get the chance to stay with their free-spoken aunt, they leave home for the first time. There, the siblings discover aspects of life they had been shielded from their whole lives, including what it’s like to have freedom. I initially read this book for school, and it remains the best book I’ve read in a class thus far.
A Letter to Every Dark Skinned Girl

March 22nd, 2020

Dear Dark Skinned Girl,

First of all, you are beautiful, and you must learn to know your worth. It can be difficult, especially with the years of society telling you to believe the opposite. Start to remind yourself that you are unique, and the melanin in your skin is a blessing.

If you had asked me what my biggest insecurity was a year ago, without hesitation my answer would have been my skin tone. For many years, I felt angry. I always felt a persistent notion of self-doubt every time I looked in the mirror or every time I saw a photo of myself in the “wrong” lighting. I still believed that being lighter would make me prettier, happier, or more popular.

What I realize now, that I didn’t realize then, was that what society said didn’t have to define me. I could choose to abide by the arbitrary beauty standards created long before me, or I could create my own. I sought to surround myself with information that would inspire me, uplift me, not bring me down. I began to follow more black models, beauty gurus, bloggers, artists on social media. I followed them not intending to compare myself to them, but as a reminder of all the diverse beauty of Black Women. Every woman is beautiful in their way, and doing this helped me see that more clearly.

The path to self-acceptance will always be a bumpy one. It’s not a clear upward trajectory- at least it wasn’t for me. There were many moments of ups and downs, times where I felt that I had finally begun to love my skin and other times when I still felt resentful of how I looked. I worked on defining the little things about myself I did love, and eventually, my skin became one of them. So go back to step one: First of all, you are beautiful…

Dear Dark Skinned Girl, love your skin. Love the way that it takes on a new shade in the summer, love how it shines under the sun. Love all of your black features, and walk through this world with the pride of your ancestors on your shoulders. But most importantly, love your mind. Educate it, enrich it, so that you can always feel like the strongest, most confident woman in the room. Prove the world wrong.
My Experience with Colorism and Why I Started This Blog

March 19th, 2020

As a child in my small town, it was very rare for me to see others that looked like myself. Outside of my Saturday mornings spent in African dance classes, the only other young black girl I had to look up to within my community was my older sister. Despite this lack of representation within my life, I do not remember being particularly self-concious of my dark complexion. My parents and grandparents alike had always stressed the beauty of dark skin, building my self-confidence up from the start and encouraging me to appreciate my heritage. They bought my sister and me black dolls, read us books about black children, and told us to embrace the shade our skin took in the summer.

When I transitioned to a predominantly black middle school, I began to feel self-conscious about my skin tone for the first time. Other black people seemed more preoccupied with skin tone than my white peers had been, a fact that shocked me. We were all black, but suddenly there were “light-skins” and “dark-skins,” and everyone knew that one was perceived better than the other. I have a distinct memory of my best friend, another dark skinned girl, saying that she wanted to marry someone white or with light skin because she did not want her children to be dark like her. To me, my best friend was extremely beautiful, and her not being able to think of herself as so only made me feel more insecure.

For the first time, I believed I had a reason to not love my skin. As my insecurities grew, I became obsessed with my complexion. I searched online for “brightening” creams, convincing myself that I would be a thousand times prettier if my tone was not so dark. I remember covertly trying to see whether my hands were lighter than those of my other black friends, feeling relieved when they were and upset when they were not. The most dangerous thought that began to appear in my head was“At least I’m lighter than her.” At this point, I had fallen right into the trap that American society had set for me so many years before. As a girl who had been raised to value the dark skin that ran in my family, I now hated how I looked because of abstract standards of beauty determined long before I was born. I was pressured to yearn towards standards of beauty I could never realistically reach. Constantly comparing myself to my close white friends, with their pin-straight hair and button noses, only made my insecurities worse. I had always faced racism, but this felt somehow more insidious. It grew over time, snowballing into a constant thought in my head.

Colorism seems to be a well known piece of the black experience, but it still remains a relatively unaddressed topic. It is obvious in the celebrities we praise: Beyonce, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, and countless more. Rap culture encourages the praise of “foreign” girls, which in some ways is a problem in itself. While there is the amazing Lupita Nyong’o to represent dark-skinned women, we must ask ourselves why there are not more women of Lupita’s skin tone who are widely considered beautiful. Dark-skinned women being thought of as beautiful should not be rare, it should be normalized. The images we see in the media only further these established depictions of beauty. When I began to look back at some of my favorite movies and TV shows, I was surprised at how many of them included instances of a darker-skinned woman being shown as unintelligent, controlling, and eternally angry. These stereotypes of dark-skinned women come with damaging real life consequences- the constant fear of being labeled “The Angry Black Woman.” I have felt this stereotype many times, whether it’s being afraid to be upset about topics in a classroom full of my white peers, or hesitating to speak up when I know I should be defending another person.

I recognize how lucky I have been with my struggle with my skin tone, because a supportive circle of family and friends to tell me I was beautiful when I did not feel so is a luxury thousands of people do not have when facing these same insecurities. Over time, I have come to love my skin tone. It came after a lot of time and periods of self-reflection, but I have finally gotten there.

Through this blog, I hope to create content that inspires dark-skinned women of color to feel empowered, regardless of what the world throws at them. Representation of all forms matters. I recommend watching the TedX talk “Confessions of a D Girl: Colorism and Global Standards of Beauty” by Chika Okoro, as it is what set me on my journey of learning what colorism is and addressing it. Keep reading to hear more about my path to self love and acceptance!