Last night I watched the sequel of Dark Girls which is called Light Girls. I must say that I enjoyed Dark Girls because I got to see (what I already knew) the different stigmatisms that unfortunately come with being black and dark skin in America. It not only showed colorism in America, but abroad.
The women who were apart of Dark Girls, explained where colorism started within the black community during slavery (in America) and how its a prevalent topic today. The women that have darker complexions, shared how they have been discriminated against and how in result to that, their self-esteem has often faltered.
I loved this documentary and as a lighter skinned black woman, could even relate in my own way to some of their testimonies. However, I was disappointed that the lighter skinned black woman's struggle was not prevalent until I saw the commercials for "Light Girls".
*The following is MY opinion on Light Girls and some of the Twitter Comments
Once I began to watch the documentary, I immediately identified with some of the stories some of the Light Girls had. I have been bullied, talked about and even shamed to be a light girl just like some of the other women that were featured on the documentary.
I was also live tweeting as the documentary was on, just to get a general idea of what the thoughts my fellow black women were having. And let me tell you, I was MORTIFIED! Many women of all races empathized. Some dark girls mocked the lighter skin woman's struggle and that's the part that hurt the most. As a race, womanhood and people we need to come together. Other races try to conquer and divide us, but we help them out with this team light skin/ team dark skin foolishness.
A little background on me...as I stated earlier, I have been bullied, talked about and even been ashamed to be a lighter complexion. In my earlier years, I was often times the only black girl in my class because I went to predominately white schools and I didn't feel the grunt of being light skinned because I was merely black in their eyes and that's another talk....I did however experience something's around that age from my own family.
I have a cousin who is a dark girl and she would often times tell me that boys only liked me and not her because I was light. Thus making me think, would my color alone gain me the acceptance from the opposite sex and not my personality? No one wants to be in a shallow relationship, everyone wants to be loved because of who they really are inside. And she would often take out her frustrations of the known stigmatism out on me. And that was the first time that I had ever realized a difference in skin color.....you are never fully aware that you are different until someone tells you are different (think about that). So, I would feel bad about being light skin, as if I could do something about it. Some of my family would even refer to me as a white girl or I act white....and to this day, I don't know what that means. I was being myself, being a product of my environment and the LAST thing I was doing was...acting. If I swung my hair I would be considered trying to be white or acting white when in actuality, I was removing hair from my face...like white girls are the only ones who can have long hair that often gets in their eyes....really people? This had been told to me by people who I loved the most and it hurt.
Just imagine someone mocking you or degrading you for being yourself! For simple mannerisms you cannot control and for simply removing hair out of your eyes. (SMH) But in this day and age my generation, the millennium's, we need to educate ourselves so that our children will not have these stereotypes and complexes about themselves and can grow up to maybe change the worlds view.
Fast forward to High School...I was not only the new girl with no friends at all, but I was clearly different and these kids let me know. I had come from predominately white schools so my appearance and mannerisms were different than these kids. I was often called white girl here as well (this name followed me into college by those kids as well).
I could not escape this label and now I have developed a complex. Now that I was at the predominately black school I tried to learn the "black" lingo, or what I thought would gain me acceptance from my peers. But at the end of the day, I still had girls saying nasty things to me and even attempting to fight me because "I thought I was all that" or "She think she cute cause she light skin". I have always had confidence about myself and I owe that to my parents. They always told me I was pretty and etc. They did the things you are supposed to do when you are raising a future Black Queen because society will try tear her down because of her skin. And they let me know that I was smart, funny and could do anything and I have always had that mentality. So, it wasn't that I thought I was all that because I was light skin, it was I knew I was a Queen at a young age. And maybe those girls didn't have anyone to instill that into them. (On one of the first days in high school, I had a girl pull my hair in class and ask me if my hair was real!!! At this point I was not only offended (because black girls can grow hair, not all of them wear weave), but somewhat intimidated by her because who just pulls your hair....in class?!)
In the documentary, some of the women shared stories like mine and I have some stories but I won't relive them here but I did want you to get an understanding of how ALL people of all skin tones have struggles.
Often times people...dark girls in particular believe that light skin women have no worries or struggles in life and its this unspoken privilege that we have but let me tell you, we are seen as black and get treated the same by other races.
My issue with dark women arose when I looked on twitter, most of the dark skin women did not get the point of the documentary and how they were trying to shed light on colorism or the struggle that the black woman has in general. Regardless if she is light or dark, and that is sad because they don't see we have the same struggles as BLACK women.
One woman tweeted,
"When I see #lightgirls cry about the pain of being light skin I laugh. They have no clue what their darker sisters endure systematically". The point that I took away from both documentaries was, here is a look at what we go through as light and dark skin women, and hopefully now we can bridge the gap between light and dark skin women and we can now become educated on colorism as a group and change the outcomes of these stereotypes and build ALL of our black babies up to be proud to be black regardless of their skin tone. But by some of the comments by our dark sisters, it seems like they didn't catch that memo. Some people are so wrapped up in themselves to see another hurts just like they do.
I often hear how some people say, "oh, you're light skin so you would have been in the house and I would have been in the field" but my response is, that may or may not be true but WE are still ENSLAVED TOGETHER, RIGHT?! There is no superiority in anyway shape or form with that analogy because at the end of the day we were not free. Therefore, we have the same struggle!
What really pissed me off about the documentary was the men portion. I don't know where Oprah, OWN or the producers got these fools from because they had no sense of intelligence at all. They had young boys on here perpetuating the very stereotype we are trying to break! And I don't think they are speaking for the black male population because the black men I know, worship the black woman as a person not for her color. They are keeping this divide in sisterhood prevalent! That is why as black women we all need to stick together because we go through many different things that no other woman can relate to and if we continue to be team light skin and team dark skin we are playing into the indefinite division of our race.
I had to cut this blog extremely short because it ended up being VERY long but based off what I have said above or if you saw Light Girls, please comment below. I would love to get a conversation started. And if you didn't live tweet, search #lightgirls on twitter to see some of the comments.
