💾 Archived View for tilde.pink › ~scumware › gemlog › 2022-07-02.gmi captured on 2023-09-08 at 17:35:15. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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7/2/2022 - lightskins ignoring colorism.
Mood: Perceptive.
Look, I need all my lightskins and mulattos out there to listen to me. I'm choosing to be a mediator here because I'm one of you and clearly none of y'all are interested in listening to darkskin/fully black people.
We have a colorism problem. I know that we all had that same thought process of "well, I was treated different because I wasn't 'black enough'", but you gotta let go of that shit one day. We are not discriminated against by ANYONE because of our lighter skin, okay? You might get a comment here or there but it really ain't all that. We are also not discriminated against in the same way that our darkskin brothers and sisters are discriminated against by nonblacks. When was the last time you heard a nigga like Drake or, hell, Logic, got shot at 20 times by the cops? Alright then.
For the record, I'm gonna be using lightskin to represent lightskins AND mulattos. Nonblacks may think I'm basically saying the same thing here but I assure you that I am not.
Speaking of Drake, this gemlog was prompted by an interview I saw of his. I had the displeasure of listening to one of his interviews where he goes on and says that he isn't necessarily celebrated as a black artist. On the one hand - I get it. He was never treated as seriously as his peers, especially in the rap game, both due to the fact that he was "sensitive" and lightskin. In fact, I'm pretty sure the sensitive emotional romantic lightskin trope comes from how people reacted to him. But on the other hand, why does he play dumb about this when he repeatedly shows that he just doesn't care about black people? Y'all remember that photo of him in blackface, right? He explained that as him trying to expose the harm of antiblackness especially in entertainment... but when was the last time you ever heard him address black issues in his music? How often has he attempted to address some social issues, period? Why should we be celebrating this guy if he clearly does not want to celebrate black people or the black art form that he commercialized?
Sorry if that sounded like a really pointed complaint about Drake, but I feel like his behavior extends to what you see other lightskins doing. So so so often will we see lightskin people try to hide behind "we're all black" without giving a single care for what darkskin people face. If we all face the same problems, why do we never feel the need to talk about them? And even further - how can we all face the same problems if we begin to handwave away problems that our darker skinned brothers and sisters have to share?
Let's not get it twisted. White society sees us as the smarter, prettier black people. This is why every time we get a live-action adapatation of some book or cartoon with a black character in it, they'll pick someone who looks like Zendaya to play them. It's why the only black character in Strawberry Shortcake went from dark skin and textured hair to light skin and straight hair. You even sometimes will hear black men talking about how they think darkskin girls are ugly and will only date white women and lightskins if they're "willing to compromise". We, as black people, all have a shared culture - this is true. But historically, society has loved black culture but hated black people. What does it say about our place in the community that society prefers us lightskins over the rest of our community?
I think one of the best things that we, as lightskins, can do to be better is to just sit down, shut up, and listen. We are all too obsessed with pushing our tragic mulatto nonsense and playing oppression olympics to truly listen to what goes on in the rest of our community. We owe it to all the darkskin people to listen and support them and recognize the privilege we have. In a way, we are seen as sort of a bridge between white people and black people, and the last thing we should be doing is painting other black people as our enemy and allying ourselves with nonblacks.
Anyways, the next time you see a darker skinned person making jokes about us being "hueless" or whatnot, realize they're just tryna let off some steam because of how we treat them. But if you're really hurting about it, go listen to Complexion (A Zulu Love) instead of posting some dumbass tweets about not fitting in.