Colorism & Internalized Anti-Blackness
The mirror was taught to lie to us. How do we unlearn the ranking of our own beauty and worth?
One of the cruelest inheritances is being taught to measure our own beauty, intelligence and worth against a standard designed to exclude us — and then to turn that measuring stick on each other. Colorism, 'good hair,' and the quiet preference for proximity to whiteness are wounds we carry in the family, the workplace, and even in love. Let us speak honestly and without shame: where did you first learn these messages? How have they affected you? And most importantly — how do we raise a generation that sees the full spectrum of Blackness as beautiful and whole?
2 Voices in the Circle
First learned it from a relative calling the darker cousins 'the burnt ones' as a 'joke.' I'm the darkest of my siblings. It took me thirty years to look in the mirror without flinching. We have to stop passing this poison at the dinner table.
The way we raise a generation free of it: represent the full spectrum at home. Every skin tone, every hair texture on the walls, in the books, in the dolls. Children believe what surrounds them before they believe what we tell them.