My work is dedicated to the mental, emotional, spiritual and financial healing of African descendants spread across the Diaspora. In this work I am constantly pulling back the layers of our hurts by reaching into history to dig up the root causes so we can heal at the source. To do my work I talk about subjects many people don’t like to touch. Recently I discussed the colorism faced by lighter skinned African descendants and I was blindsided by attacks from a plethora of darker skinned women. They were adamant that their lighter skinned brothers and sister could not in any way face colorism because colorism was created to make darker skinned people feel inferior.

Many of them felt this way because the definition per the dictionary defines it as “predjudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group.” There are two vital issues with this definition. It doesn’t tell you what the purpose of colorism is and it puts the onus of colorism on the people affected by it and not those who created it. As we rectify these issues, I believe we can create healing with our people.

The overwhelming belief about the purpose of colorism was that it was created to make people of darker skin feel inferior. One of the reasons we haven’t healed properly in all these years since slavery is because often times we are too shallow in our analysis, so we equate what a system does with what the goal of that system is and that is never the case. Yes colorism was used to make darker skinned people feel inferior, but WHY?

Everything done to us on the plantation was done to maintain control of us by keeping us fighting each other and not our common enemy: the slave master. The plantation had many differences highlighted to create interracial conflicts. Whether you believe the willie lynch letter is true or not, the truth that what’s in the letter actually happened is in the pudding and has still lasted until today. There was the light vs. the dark, the old vs. the young, the field slave vs. the house slave, the men vs. the women etc. All of these illuminated differences and pitting against one another did something different to each party but the goal was still the same.

The men’s plight was different from the women’s but when they argue with each other saying “you’re not going through what I’m going through” the goal of the system wins. This is exactly what was going on in my comment section. The darker skinned women adamantly refuted that lighter skinned people dealt with colorism because they wholeheartedly believed its goal was to make them feel inferior. But colorism is NOT in any way shape or form about making anyone feel inferior, it’s about DIVISION! Even though the lighter skinned enslaved African may have been treated a little better, they were still slaves and the only reason they were treated better was to make their darker skinned brothers and sisters mad in order to make the division strong.

The biggest misconception of slavery is the thinking that every light skin house enslaved African loved their master. THAT IS ABSOLUTELY FALSE. Many of them worked hand and hand with those in the field to work against the slave master but when colorism does its job, it makes those of darker skin feel so inferior that they’re convinced every lighter skinned person feels superior. The anger set in so deep with some, that 152 years after slavery, many darker skinned people are still mad at those of lighter skin. The argument in my comment section was nothing but African descendants feuding with each other and no one was talking about who created the colorism in the first place.

This leads to my second problem with the definition. Saying colorism is “typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group”  further shows what its goal was, they start it, get it going and then remove themselves from the equation and let us fight for all eternity with each other. Meanwhile they still control the world. We will never heal if darker skinned people feel colorism is something lighter skinned people do them. No, colorism is what caucasians did to both light and dark African descendants. This is why it’s not solely about making those of us who are dark feel inferior. Colorism makes the darker have animosity towards the lighter, so they will treat them negatively in order to make the lighter want to distance themselves from being Black so when they do that they make the darker even more mad so they treat them more negatively so the lighter wants to distance themselves even further and be even whiter and make the darker more mad. Do you see this cycle? I don’t give a damn what the definition says, clearly, colorism affects both light and dark African descendant.

Remember, this cycle starts from how caucasians treated the light skinned enslaved Africans. The enslaved themselves had nothing to do with being chosen. They had nothing to do with any extra unfair treatment of the darker enslaved Africans. They were thrown in the middle and became a buffer between the most cruel treated field slaves and the master. This buffer was used to make the darker enslaved Africans more mad at the lighter than they are the actual slave master.

Till this day there is tons of data that shows SOCIETY (emphasis on society) treat lighter skinned Blacks better. It shows they get lesser sentences, are less likely to be pulled over or abused by a cop etc. Again, these treatments are completely out of their control and if we would be honest, if the shoe was on the other foot a darker skinned person wouldn’t tell a cop “shoot me like you shot the light skinned person” or tell the judge “give me the same sentence.” Even though slavery is over, our enemy has founds ways of evolving the tactics they used during slavery, so the same way they made those enslaved in the field mad at those enslaved in the house, they are still doing it today and we are still mad each other instead of real enemy.

Another refutation to lighter skinned people dealing with colorism was the mistreatment of lighter skinned descendants was not colorism but the backlash of colorism. Their position was, darker skinned people only treat lighter skinned people bad because those of lighter skin use their privilege to work with caucasians. Now I would never say there was never any lighter people who mentally fell victim to colorism and felt superior but if the way colorism is performed can make darker skinned people subconsciously and consciously feel inferior then it has the ability to make lighter skinned people feel superior. Whatever side of the coin you’re on, be it the superior or the inferior, both feelings are a product of a caucasian system of division.

Now I would never excuse the behavior of a lighter skinned person for projecting superiority by acting as if they are better but I also cannot excuse the behavior of a darker skinned person for projecting their inferiority by lashing out because they think somebody thinks they’re better than them. Every light skin person does not feel superior; in fact many of them wish they were darker. My mother (who is light) subconsciously hated her skin. The same way some dark men hate their skin so they chase after lighter women, my mother married my father, the most blue black man she could find. Colorism works both ways but if either side is so deep in their hurts that they can’t listen to the other was also hurt and recognize it was an outside factor that made us hurt each other, healing is unreachable.

Another thing I noticed is it seems the idea of colorism has evolved to only be concentrated on the dark skin woman. The dark skinned man has become considered attractive (even though he is still the most likely to be killed by a cop and sentenced the harshest) but darker skinned women, in many instances are still considered unattractive. To be historically accurate, the passing down of this colorism directed at young African girls wasn’t from light skinned Africans or caucasians, it was from dark skinned grandmothers. Because of what how bad these women were beat down, they began marry light and teach their darker children to marry light so the next generation wouldn’t be cursed with the dark skin she had.

In the early 2000s, my sister (who is darker than me) started dating a guy who was just as dark as the both of us. His dark skinned grandmother would ridicule him for dealing with my sister because she didn’t want him producing any more dark skinned children in their family. So when we deal with colorism, we cannot act as if the only people who continued this attack on African women are lighter skinned Africans or caucasians, it was also us darker skinned people ourselves.

Why would we do this to ourselves? Because colorism is brainwashing. It doesn’t matter if it’s the darker skinned people feeling inferior or the lighter skinned feeling superior, it is all a brainwashing from our common enemy. WE as African descendants can no longer keep this in fighting going if we want to change our condition. No, I did not grow up as a dark skinned girl so I cannot fully grasp the pain of what they went through. I will not act like I know and I WILL NOT try to diminish their pain or say just get over it. In fact I will say remember your pain, never get over it, keep your animosity but aim it at the rightful culprits: the europeans who created this system.

We as a people love to be mad at each other but are afraid of being mad at those who have done us the most harm. We will kill each other all day long but if a caucasian cop is choking one of our brothers to death all we’ll do is record it. FUCK THAT. Now is the time when we direct ALL of our anger at the people who deserve it. Yes we harm, rob, kill and mistreat each other but everything we do is a result of the conditions we were placed in. We are always likened to crabs in a barrel and that analysis is 100{9c4894d8d84789fd9dbc6ac72b5d605407abbbce150dd0041f8be6ae2d1a6325} accurate. We were taken from our natural habitat with ill intent, lumped on top of each other boats, pulled from those boats for the enjoyment of others then judged by how we respond to it all.

To my dark skinned Queens, I want to apologize to you on behalf of all the ignorant, brainwashed, mentally conditioned and socially constructed African descendants who have treated you as less than. I own up to all the years I proudly stated “I only deal with light skin women” and I humbly ask for your forgiveness. Not to belittle the pain we caused you at all because it is real and DEPLORABLE on our behalf. The truth is, we didn’t know any better. Our thinking was hijacked and controlled by our oppressors. I know it may be hard to forgive after all you’ve been through but understand this one thing, colorism was not, is not and never will be about making you feel bad, colorism is about making us fight each other and not our real enemy so they can continue being modern slave master and we’ll stay modern day slaves. If we really want to end colorism, we have to band together and fight our true enemy because colorism isn’t about color at all; it’s about dividing and conquering and we’ve been divided and conquered. We don’t overcome this pointing fingers at each other, we overcome this putting those fingers together and creating a fist.