How Can We Heal from the Shades of Colorism
[Music]
hello everyone
so my mom tells a story of when i was
about five years old
we were visiting some extended relatives
and i sat on the floor
playing my own little make-believe world
something i still do today actually
but during that visit some older
relatives great aunts i believe
started complimenting my older sister
singing her praises
saying how pretty she was telling my mom
to watch out for her because she is
going to break some hearts one day
so i hear this i hear what they’re
saying about my older sister
but i also hear loud and clear
what they’re not saying about me
so then that’s when my mom overhears me
whisper to myself
that’s because she’s light-skinned
what i know now is that i was witnessing
and observing
something called colorism
see if this gets on there we go
so colorism is less often talked about
but it is a global issue that
rivals things like racism sexism
classism
and the other isms it’s a system of
oppression that privileges lighter skin
tones over darker skin tones
one thing to remember about colorism
versus racism is that color
is not a synonym for race people can be
the same race and have different skin
tones
and people can be different races and
have very similar
skin tones what i experienced at five
was an example of colorism because my
sister and i
have the same mother we have the same
father
we are the same race so these women were
distinguishing between us based on the
particular shade
of our complexions growing up in a
household with a
as a dark-skinned girl with the
light-skinned mother and the
light-skinned sister
the differences in how people treated us
was very apparent to me
and the notion that i could not be a
heartbreaker because i was darker
skinned
showed up many more times throughout my
life and while heartbreaker status was
supposedly inaccessible to me
heartbreak seemed readily available
so then we might ask how does a person
heal from something like the
heartbreaking reality of
colorism people say
it starts at home if that’s the case
then where does it end
today i’d like to share with you just
one lesson that i’ve learned
along my own healing journey
throughout my life throughout my
childhood teenagers and even as a young
adult
i suffered from colorism but alone
and in silence i didn’t think anyone
would listen
or understand or care and i was afraid
to speak about it
i was afraid that people would judge me
that they would label me jealous
or insecure or accuse me of being too
sensitive or
causing greater division
and yet despite those years of fear and
silence
here i am today talking about colorism
yes and here’s why
here’s what changed for me i was in my
early to mid 20s teaching high school
english back in my hometown
and i adored my students
but it surprised me to hear them say
things like
i wish i was light-skinned like my mom
or i don’t like this picture of myself
because i look
too black on here or
i’m less proud of myself because i got
darker over the summer
and even i don’t like dark-skinned
people when i first meet them
hearing multiple students express these
negative feelings and negative
attitudes about dark skin about their
own dark skin
as well as well as the dark skin of
others that was yet
another form of heartbreak for me
but that’s when i knew i had to say
something
i chose to break the silence because i
wanted to break
the cycle for the generations coming
after me
now i’m a writer so when i thought about
how i could personally address this
issue i turned to my writing skills
and in the wee hours of a july morning
in 2013
i started a new blog i knew a couple of
things
one i wanted the blog to be a source of
information to raise awareness about
colorism
and two i wanted it to be an opportunity
to discuss
what we can do about colorism what are
some possible solutions
so i thought long and hard about a title
and i settled on
colorism healing now the colorism part
might be obvious it’s literally the
subject of the blog
but that healing word has three key
components
the first component is individual
healing and that’s primarily what the
focus of my talk is today
individual healing includes personal
mental health
but also reprogramming our unconscious
biases
about certain skin tones now the second
key component
is healing relationships between
individuals
and amongst groups of people and the
third
key component that we cannot forget is
systemic
change across the larger society
so i started that blog and i ended up
stepping into
a new era of my life and over the years
i’ve had the chance to meet
thousands of beautiful souls from around
the world
and in particular it is my international
colorism healing writing contest
that perfectly illustrated for me how gl
colorism is truly a global issue
and that we are not alone in our
experiences of colorism
one of the contestants said i thought it
was just
me i thought it was just in my culture
and so many people come to this work and
have their eyes opened
to the vast diversity of people who all
have something to say
about colorism having the honor to
collect these stories and
facilitate this chorus of diverse voices
from different countries
different ages different races different
ethnicities
different languages that continues to
reaffirm my faith
in the healing process so i’ve learned
more about colorism i’ve learned more
about healing
but i’ve also learned more about myself
no surprises there
but in particular i’ve learned more
about my relationship
to my younger self to this little girl
i call her little sarah and i can still
feel her with me
i still recognize her expressions of
sadness
of hurt of anger
and disappointment i can still feel her
broken heart i think of our relationship
like a set of nesting dolls where
there’s adult
me big sarah and inside are all the
smaller
younger versions of me so i still carry
little sarah within me
which means the healing work i do in the
present also extends
back to her as well and it was only a
few years ago so relatively recently
when i found the words to really express
the healing work i had been doing
there’s a song because with me there is
always
a song but this particular song is
called breathe by sanibu c
great song i suggest you listen right
after this event
but within the song lyrics there’s a
vivid contrast between
home where they love my broken heart
as opposed to here where my beauty
and my worth are simply a given
so i was listening to this song on
repeat when i saw
an analogy to colorism colorism
is that home where they love my broken
heart
it is growing up a dark-skinned black
girl in a society
founded on white supremacy and
anti-blackness
it is a birthplace where your darker
complexion
will have a negative impact on how
you’re treated by
school teachers by police officers
judges jurors lawyers doctors nurses
grocery store clerks your managers at
work and yes
far too often your own family
so colorism may indeed start at home but
here’s
where i believe it ends on the personal
level
healing is when here
that place where my value is never
questioned and never denied
becomes me i am that place
and then i become home
i am home
to be able to say i am home not as a
matter of
geographic location or physical space
but as a state of being
that’s healing to me
and so after all the heartbreak
and after all the joys after meeting
each and every individual
that i’ve met on this journey hey y’all
i think about my five-year-old self a
lot and here’s what i’d like to say to
her
and to all of you here now
who wants to be a heartbreaker anyway
just wait you’ll see
healing hearts now that’s really where
it’s at
thank you
you