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
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