Why Should Your New Normal be AntiColorism

[Music]

hey

so i’m just gonna go ahead and break the

ice

i can already feel a huge wave of

discomfort and exhaustion

coming from my listeners and yes i’m

tired too

this year has definitely been rough but

if you think about it

there’s been some plus sides like we’re

all beginning to realize that

there’s issues out there and that white

supremacy is alive

and well we’re beginning to confront

those issues

and realize that it takes every single

one of us to dismantle

this oppressive and pervasive system i

know i know

we’ve got covet on one hand a pandemic

that has changed everyday lives then we

have

black lives matter where it’s really

making a lot of people uncomfortable

but all of this is really just bringing

up debris

really showing us that it takes every

single one of us

to dismantle this oppressive and

pervasive system that we live under

and hey if you haven’t had this aha

moment in the past couple of months

you must not be on facebook twitter

instagram

or tick tock any of the social media

platforms

honestly it all got me thinking while

everyone’s been using this time to have

their wake-up call

mine happened a while back alright it’s

story time

picture this fall 2013 me

a young whippersnapper who just got a

bright idea i go up to my mom

so excited to hear what she thought her

words

good luck with that tamiya your hair

it’s a lot more difficult than you think

whoa this is what my mom told me when i

said to her

for the very first time that i wanted to

stop getting relaxers

for the majority of my childhood i

didn’t even know what my actual hair

texture looked like

because i got a chemically straightened

and now

around this time at age 15 i could tell

that

my mom’s face spoke way more volumes

than her words did

it told me that society was not gonna

think that my hair was beautiful

deep down inside i already knew what it

was gonna say

it was gonna say that my hair was too

kinky too difficult

too hard to manage too rough oh and of

course the dreaded words

too nappy for most black women all

around the world

the kinkier your hair texture is the

more these words

and its connotations are stuck to you

now

let’s cut to summer 2016. i like to call

this the glory summer i was having a

good time

it’s right before freshman year i was

going to virginia for a family reunion

and i was at my pop house house when all

of a sudden

we were eating breakfast and he said

very seriously looking across the table

at both me and my sister

tamia you’re going to have a lot more

opportunities

because of your lighter skin complexion

jalen your sister

she’s gonna deal with a lot more because

she has a darker skin tone

that that was a hard pill to swallow

both me and my sister are black women

and we deal with both racism and sexism

in our lifetimes

but i’m supposed to have more

opportunities in life just because of my

lighter skin

both those moments in 2013 and 2016

had me bugging like what what did it all

mean i didn’t understand it

it wasn’t after much digging and a lot

of soul searching

that it hit me my mom and my papa’s

reaction

they were a lot more protective and

defensive to how they grew up in society

it’s connected to a phenomenon that

don’t nobody

wants to talk about it all comes down to

one word

colorism colorism is most commonly known

as the prejudice or discrimination

against those with darker skin tones

this is different from racism i can

already see some people getting confused

but this is different because this form

of discrimination

happens largely within communities of

color where people of color have been

conditioned

to police themselves as well as their

own people

based on appearance it was a term coined

by pulsar prize winner

alice walker in 1982

but y’all 2020 it really demands a new

definition

colorism is not just the prejudice or

discrimination against those with darker

skin tones

this is a huge part of it but what we’re

missing are two other things

it also holds futurism where people with

non-white features are discriminated

against

and texturism where the looser or

straighter your hair texture is

the more value you have in society this

new definition is needed because you see

the intersectionality of privileges and

disadvantages

in people’s lives and contrary to

popular belief

this does not just affect us black

people all right

do me a favor go to google search

most beautiful woman in insert any

country

india brazil south korea nigeria

tell me what you see this simple google

search demonstrates

just how much whiteness and westernized

features have been deemed better

all over the freaking world and it leads

to these popular manifestations that

maybe you haven’t thought about

chemical relaxers racialized plastic

surgery

and skin bleaching and skin lighting

creams now

my understanding of colorism goes far

beyond just my own personal

experiences i’m truly able to speak

toward this because

in spring 2018 i joined with ut faculty

and three other amazing students to

become

the color complex team we were awarded

money by ut’s president’s award for

global learning

can i say cha-cha okay and we were

given this money so that way we can do a

research and social impact project over

colorism

and as you can tell by this picture with

veda

rebecca and christina standing right

beside me

were all very different but that

didn’t stop colorism from impacting our

lives in one form or fashion

and so this really pushed us to look at

this issue through a global

and comprehensive lens so first we did

our qualitative research at ut

austin with a total of 20 interviews

with both black and asian female

students

we were asking questions that were

unbiased trying to understand

their thoughts around beauty identity

and self-worth

then the following summer we went to

accra ghana and did similar research

at the university of ghana lago we were

able to achieve around 40 interviews

with local women on campus and a local

fishing community in showcore

all of this research helped us see that

there’s universal themes

both populations were connected through

colorism

for instance how many times have you

heard this phrase

from somebody you know don’t go outside

in the sun for too long

you’re gonna get too dark too dark

too dark that’s a thing people say when

they don’t want your complexion to be

darker than what it already is

we found that this was something that

more common than that was an

easy quote for people to relate to one

of our biggest discoveries was that

colorism is reinforced through everyday

language in social encounters

it can be your family friends colleagues

who create

an environment of discrimination with

just merely their words

this common hesitancy of getting darker

might seem harmless but in reality it

only furthers

stigmas of colorism this theme of social

language

really impacted both black and asian

students at ut

austin even in ghana we saw how it

ultimately

amplified the culture around skin

bleaching in the

in the country which brings me to my

next main thing

while we were in ghana we saw that the

majority of the darker skin

complexions within the population was

not really being

reflected in the media television radio

ads anything most of it all says that to

be anything

positive in life you have to become

something that isn’t naturally you

this theme of lack of inclusive media

representation

was something we saw at ut austin with

our black and asian interviewees

our findings were screaming that this

was a huge and important

part of colorism because it actually

contributed to how people

self-perceived now i’m going to get you

with this really really big one this is

the most

important discovery that we were really

able to see which is that

colorism is not just this intangible

thing

that you can’t touch or feel it’s real

and it’s structural we were able to see

at ut with our research that

black women really questioned they

should be able to

change their hair or not before job

interviews

there’s this perception that people

especially

specifically black people’s hair is

naturally unprofessional

and unkempt entities even go as far

as to use a sense of professionalism

work policies

and student guidelines to control and

conform

this is why you have the stories like

the new jersey high school wrestler

who had to cut his locks off just to be

in his championship match

or the mont bellevue texan high schooler

who couldn’t even walk across the stage

unless he cut his hair

it’s stories like this that really

helped us to see that this is a

structural issue within our society

but the last thing that i want to leave

you with one of the things that i really

want you to see is that

colorism stays a part of the society as

long as we let it it stays normalized

unless we start to look

at the deeper history we were able to

follow up on some of these themes

through our teammates story christina

growing up

hated how our monolids look and she

wanted to

change them as a graduation president

her family from korea

offered to pay for her to have double

eyelid surgery just as they had done

years before

for her cousins this was sort of like a

rite of passage going into

higher education in the professional

world but

it wasn’t unique what we saw at ut was

that our research

pointed out a culture around southeast

asians going abroad

to get this plastic surgery because of

the stigmas

placed upon their features what’s even

more important is that

nobody really knows the deeper history

around

the double eyelid plastic surgery it was

actually first developed and performed

by dr g ralph miller y’all

that name is american as heck okay so

you can already know

that this is not an asian person

creating and developing

this surgery it was an american military

plastic surgeon

that created this in the 50s during the

korean war

this was created and pushed by the

korean war

that really made asian seem as an

ambivalent threat

and so what you would do is have people

altering eyes

just to make their features look more

trustworthy in good nature

it’s facts like these that show us that

double eyelid surgery is not just merely

a beauty choice

it was only through unlearning

relearning

and redefining that i was really able to

start to see past

all of this and that’s what i leave with

you today you really have to begin to

unlearn

all of the stuff that society has told

you re-learn

what’s the true history and redefine

what the real

value is in our society yes

i’m a black woman in the u.s who has and

still struggles

with the negative connotations put with

afro-textured hair

but at the same time i’m a lighter

skinned woman

who benefits greatly from a society that

upholds white supremacy

all over the world with this

breakthrough i’m determined to make my

new normal

anti-colorism i ask what will your new

normal be

thank you