I’ve heard about this on more than one occasion. It sounds so silly to me.
I’m wondering how common it is.
Any of my fellow Dopers ever been subjected to this?
I don’t know if I’d call it racism, but there are some hard feelings between the groups in general in my experience. Some darker skinned blacks feel that the lighter blacks are treated better, or that lighter blacks feel that they’re better than darker blacks. There’s a perception that lighter blacks don’t really know what it’s like to be a black person, because they get perks that a darker person wouldn’t. I have personally seen people lavish attention on lighter skinned children, while overlooking darker skinned children. This can obviously cause hard feelings. Sometimes this does result in producing a light adult who feels superior to darker blacks. A lot of this is rooted in issues from the past (ex: the paper bag test, good hair, the one drop rule etc.).
Yes, it’s very silly. But I guess no less silly than other kinds of racial prejudice. All of it is monkey dung.
I’ve had people wrongly assume things about me because I’m light-skinned (that I’m biracial, that I’m wealthy, that I’m stuck-up, that I’m not “culturally” black), but AFAIK, I’ve never experienced real hatred. As a kid, a stupid boy decided to call me “ole yella” but it didn’t sting in the same way as “tarbaby” probably does.
I do know people who are “color struck” and they irk me. I recently learned that my father chose my mother partly because of her skin tone (which he wrongly assumed would translate into “good haired” kids…not knowing that my mother’s nappy hair was hidden under her hairpieces and weaves! Ha!) My brother seems to have a thing for light-skinned women, but I suppose that doesn’t mean he doesn’t find darker-skinned attractive (but maybe sexual attraction doesn’t qualify in this discussion? I don’t know).
Black people aren’t the only ones who are like this. One day I overheard an Indian girl telling her friends that she wished she was lighter. The way she said it was so casual…almost like she was talking about her hair color. But you would NEVER hear a black person say this in public, especially in the company of other blacks. They may think it privately, but they wouldn’t confess to it. Skin color is hugely political for us…many of us carry some degree of baggage because of it.
New Orleans has had a complex culture built around it for few centuries now and it is still apparent today. There are even terms for it such as octoroons, quadroons and mulattos to identify degree of blackness more specifically. I think there is much more truth to the phenomenon than you seem to believe.
I was going to bring this up but wasn’t sure if it would derail the topic since it’s about another culture. It is very very much ingrained in Indian culture that fairness is preferable and until recently most Indian actresses were extremely light-skinned (that Rani Mukherjee chick looks pretty different though). My mother defensively describes my skintone as “wheatish gold” which is just something Indian moms make up to defend their darkie daughters. I am quite jaundiced in hue, but this is definitely on the non-preferable end of South Asian looks.
The best bit is how so many illustrations colour Krishna BLUE because they can’t deal with the fact that Krishna was black (not as in African-American but as in extremely dark). If I recall correctly, even the Sanskrit word “Krishna” means “dark”.
One thing you always see in a TV commerial or a print ad with a black couple is that the male is always darker than the female. You never see a darker black female with a lighter skin black male.
Yes, it exists. It’s not called racism, but colorism.
As a light skinned black woman, I think I have an advantage that my darker compatriots do not. Some of these advantages are just like the advantages that white people have over blacks. A lot of the assumptions that people make about my darker friends are not made about me (no one has stalked me in stores, for example).
I haven’t encountered any real negative discrimination by dark people, though. Certain comments which reveal the belief that I’m better off because of my color, yes. But nothing that made me feel bad or inferior.
Check out an early Spike Lee joint, School Daze. Much of the sub-plot is light vs. dark.
Huh. I’d always heard it was the other way around – light skinned blacks racist (colorist?) against dark-skinned blacks.
A black friend of mine claimed that whenever she a new grandchild was born in her family (she apparently came from a very large family) her grandmother would come on seen and everyone would eagerly await her judgment on how light skinned the baby would be…! I knew my friend to be a very liberated, black pride type, so why she seemed to accept this so unquestioningly surprised me.
Scene.
Last year one of the girls at a middle school where I was subbing expalined to me that there’s “black”, “red” and “yellow”. This girl was “red”, or what I would call “brown”. She said she hated “yellow” boys because they’re stuck up, they think they’re “all that”. The other girls in the class seemed evenly split as to whether they agreed or not. I’ve also heard the term “high yellow” as a black person who could pass as white.
Well, I’ve more than occasionally heard the terms “field nigger” and “house nigger” bandied about, and fields are always darker skinned. So I’d say it happens sometimes.
Thank you for the link [ASTRO/].
I suspected that was it.
Could it be that the lighter color is denigrated because of inbreeding?
The less black a person is the less pure they are?
Thank you for the link ASTRO.
I suspected that was it.
Could it be that the lighter color is denigrated because of inbreeding?
The less black a person is the less pure they are?
Tried to fix my own bad coding… Sorry for double post!
Wasn’t the term “macaca” (sp?) first mainly used by one shade of black Africans against another?
That’s also partly because the “lines” are commonly drawn in black and because of problems with colors mixing. X-Men Beast and Nightcrawler were supposed to be covered in black fur, with blue used in highlights (like it’s often done in 4-color black-haired people; dark-brown haired ones get brown highlights); but lazy inkers intervened aaaaaand… while the techniques for silk painting and miniature painting aren’t the same, it’s the reason why you see European books where a character is described as black but painted red (pre-America).
The denigration seems to go the other way much more often.
I think it’s more of a chain reaction. The lighter coloring, and good hair are more prized in American society in general, which causes some lighter people to look down on the darker people, and causes some darker people to feel jealous, and wish they were lighter. The darker people resent the better treatment that they feel lighter people get, and prejudge lighter people as being stuck up, whether they are or not.
This isn’t surprising to me, because my grandmother does the same thing. Well everyone doesn’t eagerly await the news, but my grandmother does let everyone know what color the new kid will be. Black babies are usually born several shades lighter, and with straighter hair than they will have as a child. From the time I was little, I knew which body parts you were supposed to be able to use to determine a child’s final coloration. No one bothers to stop her, or complain because she’s old, and from a time when things like that really mattered.