Biological Pigment Bias: Perspectives On Colourism

because once we dig into the issue we will discover some painful truths about past hurts and our own ongoing complicity. But dig we must, so let’s proceed.

Whole Communities An extremely valuable feature of the works presented here is the cross-cultural framework they collectively provide, providing perspectives ranging from the United States, to Australia, to Europe, and the Carribean. No matter what race or color, we have all been complicit in perpetuating colorism. Usually, when we talk about colorism in general conversations, we’re limited to the individual, interpersonal experience. Sometimes we only think of colorism as “that girl’s insecurity,” or “that girl’s low self-esteem,” or “that girl’s jealousy.” We often think of healing from colorism as “teaching dark-skinned people to love themselves.” But the global diversity represented in these articles demonstrates that the problem is much bigger than that.

Colorism is not just a personal problem. Colorism is a social problem, an international one. Colorism influences a society’s legal system, politics, educational system, healthcare system, crime and violence, and media. No social problem can exist or cease to exist without community level action.

Teaching dark brown people to love themselves is a worthy and necessary goal, but it’s often a cop-out for doing the additional, more difficult work of teaching the entire society to love dark brown people. Would we solve racism by merely teaching black and brown people to love themselves? Would we solve sexism by merely telling women they just need to love themselves? Would we solve homophobia by merely telling gays and lesbians to just take pride in who they are? You can love yourself all you want and still be negatively impacted by colorism in the larger society. All the self-love in the world won’t stop a kid from getting shot and killed because of how someone else perceives them.

Now, I’m all for self-love. I really am. But too often we pretend like that alone is the answer to colorism. Perhaps we’re too afraid, too self-absorbed, or too lazy to confront the rest of the problem. In order to really heal from colorism, we must seek to address it at the community level (just like we do with racism, sexism, or crime, etc.) and stop centering the problem and its solutions on the people who suffer from it.

Whole Families I could have lumped this into the community section, but it’s such an important and complex piece of the puzzle that it needs to be singled out. For many people, the earliest and clearest ideas about skin color, hair texture, and facial features come from family members. This includes parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles.

Although a lot of people point to the media as a primary factor in colorism, I think what goes on in our families is even more important. When we consume media, we’re merely observing strangers. Although those images are powerful, discrimination within our own families is actually a lived experience that directly involves us and those we have intimate relationships with, making it that much more painful and traumatic. And our generational legacies of colorism get passed down through both biology and nurturing.

We see and hear from writers and artists in the following pages how relationships with 16 // BIOLOGICAL PIGMENT BIAS: PERSPECTIVES ON COLOURISM