Is My Blackness Enough?

For years people in the African American community have had to deal with discrimination because of the simple reason that they are black. However, in our community, we discriminate against ourselves as well. People with a darker complexion face difficult challenges and even go as far as bleaching their skin to make themselves more “desirable.” From childhood, those with darker skin are taught that your skin color determines if your ideal in the eyes of society. Bryisha Terrell, a senior Biology major, agrees to that “they have a harder time in life in general. They are bullied more than people of the lighter complexion.”
The negative impact of dark-skinned people goes all the way back to the time of slavery. During those days, dark-skinned slaves were forced to work in the fields while light-skinned slaves worked in the master’s house. Here we are, hundreds of years later and not much has changed. The dark skin complex damages a person’s self – identity.
Darker skinned people have taken drastic measures to change the way they look, including using bleaching systems to lighten their skin color. This process strips the skin of its melanin, rendering it weak due to what is in the product. For instance, recently Jamaican rapper and star in Love & Hip-Hop Atlanta, Spice, posted a picture of herself with bleached skin on her Instagram. Spice’s intention was to create awareness of colorism and to create a shock value. In “Black Hypocrisy”, a song off her album, she says that people in the black community have said that she was “too black.” She used herself to make an example of how people in Black America are causing women to do because of how they are making them feel.
Lil’ Kim, an African American rapper who first debuted in 1996 was undeniably beautiful. Over the years she appeared lighter and lighter. Even though she denies the claim of bleaching her skin and having work done, it is evident that she did. Something about the world’s standard of beauty pushed upon women of color, made her hate what she saw in the mirror. Lil’ Kim even admitted to having low self-esteem and have men cheat on her with women who maintain the standard of beauty that society has placed, in an interview she did in 2000 with Newsweek.
Instead of tearing each other down and stopping the progression of the Black community, we need to be lifting each other up with positive comments. Kennedi Shields, a 20-year-old, Psychology Major, agrees with saying that “I would let them know that they are just as beautiful as someone who has more of a fair skin complexion. Do not let anything, including your skin, stop you. Always know that you are a boss.”
People in the African American community have come along way and that the constant tearing down needs to stop. Michael Davis, a senior English Major says, “A good place to start is getting rid of the societal notion that light or anything close to it is pure and good when a sense of a good can be born from anywhere.”
So, no matter what someone may say your skin is always beautiful. Your skin does not define your character or who you want to be.