By light-skinned, I mean people who are mixed black and white. Like their mom is white and their dad is black, or vice versa. A light-skinned dancer is going viral on Facebook for all the wrong reasons. People are saying she can’t dance since she’s ’a white girl’ and ‘light skinned’ or ‘mixed bred.’ She’s been compared to another dancer, who’s black. Both women are doing the SAME dances, mind you.
Even in school, I remember mixed girls being treated differently. Like they weren’t seen as black enough. Even if someone’s parents are both black, but they happened to have light skin and green eyes, they were treated differently too.
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People seem to struggle with this concept, but here it is: black people can be racist too.
I am light skinned, though both my parents are mid -dark skinned. Both my grandmothers had white fathers so my “high yellow piss-colored” complexion came from them. As a light skinned boy I was always challenged to fight by my darker skinned peers. For the girls, I was always “too light”, or “too white.” I didn’t have any particular skills found useful in the poor black community, so I was pretty much excluded from that community.
Some people are just racist lol, especially on facebook it wouldn’t make a difference if they were blasian or afro-latino.
Alternatively there could be some cultural aspect to it. I’m not trying to justify it, however there has always been colorism against dark skinned people in the black community, especially due to slavery and eurocentric beauty standards. “Good hair” or “light-skin” is often seen as the ideal.
The colorism towards light-skinned people is somewhat reactionary.
Some black people see light skinned people as more privileged and what not and feel like they’re “punching up” at them. Still not justified, because at the end of the day they have just as much as a claim to blackness as anyone else. And bullying random biracial chicks facebook is going to make racist dichotomy worse probaby.
I’m not sure Reddit is where you’ll get a nuanced response that considers history, colorism, racism etc
A lot of it is due to resentment over how light skinned people are treated better due to their proximity to whiteness, even if they’re not white.
I’m biracial and light skinned, I’ve had people blatantly tell me that they’re okay with me because I’m not fully black. Colorism definitely exists within the black community too. A lot of black men try to compliment me by saying I’m not like black women. I really despise that, but some biracial women like it. This all breeds resentment.
That’s not to say that it’s okay to be mean to light skinned people for no reason. But I will say that we 100% benefit from colorism way more than we’re harmed by it. It sucks that sometimes we’re not accepted as black, but I’ve been called black by black people so many times, I’ve never been called white even once despite being 50/50 genetically. Overall the black community is very accepting of biracial and light skinned people, usually more than other racial communities.
I absolutely hate people that sell skin bleach and I refuse to speak to people that use it.
However, if someone is biracial, I don’t have an issue with them.
Basically if you’re born light skinned it’s fine, but if you are born dark skinned then it’s not fine to turn yourself light skinned.
I’m light-skinned, mostly because my dad is supposedly a really white Latino.
From as early as I can remember, my black family, who I was raised by, treated me differently because I “talked proper.” I can’t even count the amount of times that my cousins and aunts thought that it was amusing that every other word out of my mouth wasn’t hood slang.
And when I was growing up in elementary school, a lot of the black kids treated me like I was white because I simply didn’t have the same interests that fit in with the majority and I was excluded because of it until I found my own group.
But at the same time, I cannot deny that I have been treated differently than other black people who are darker skinned than myself. Especially when they hear me speak. I can just see the way their expressions lighten up as if they no longer feel suspicious.
Racism.
>By light-skinned, I mean people who are mixed black and white.
Bi-racial black people are often presented as “good kind of black” which causes resentment amongst Black people who are darker skinned.
> Like their mom is white and their dad is black, or vice versa.
Black mom and White dad isn’t nearly as heavily stigmatized as White mom and Black dad. It still is, but not as much. The reason being that it’s assumed that the mom will be the primary parent, so who your mom culturally and racially identifies with “determines” who you culturally and racially identify with.
There’s also the stereotype that a lot of Black men who get with White women are colorist or self-hating. There have been some Black male celebrities that get power and status and start talking trash about Black women and get a White wife as a “status” symbol that has reinforced this stereotype for many people. There’s this assumption that their biracial children will be ignored and will be disconnected from Black culture.
> Even in school, I remember mixed girls being treated differently. Like they weren’t seen as black enough. Even if someone’s parents are both black, but they happened to have light skin and green eyes, they were treated differently too.
Yeah, that’s just plain colorism. There’s this assumption that light-skinned people are “better” or that they think they’re better than everyone else, so some people resent them. If I had to compare it, it would be like how some White women are obsessed with being blonde, and being brunette is seen as being boring, nerdy, etc. and being blonde is seen as beautiful and ideal. Which then leads to some people who are brunette resenting the blonde people and categorizing them as vain, “bimbo”, stupid, etc.
I wonder about people who ask questions like this because it seems like it’s their first day on planet earth and they’ve never heard of colorism or understand the historical and modern contexts.
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Dude, colorism is a thing in ALL former colonies. It’s not unique to black ppl
Racism that stems from slavery,the slave masters treated his offspring better whom was light skin than the other slaves which created an issue that never went away
Because black people in the Americas are a matriarchal society, since there’s a shortage of “good” black men who are marriage material, a lot of black women see light skinned people as the result of a white woman “snatching” one of the eligible few.
Black American culture socially passes through the mother and biracial people having white mothers is why they are seen as “not black enough” or “whitewashed with no “culture” “.
It’s why white dad black mom is socially acceptable because of matriarchy in their communities due to a lack of fathers alongside a inferiority complex towards whites but that’s a whole different kettle of fish…
As a result of this alongside preferential treatment from white society, resentment breeds. Biracial men especially suffer from this, “shit tests”, seen as softer and feminine and constantly have to fight for respect.
African American women(especially young adults) tend to not like mixed men, specifically. They also tend to hate any of us that generally prefers non-black women as well.
For 1 – light-skinned is 2 African American parents, traditionally speaking. Saying mixed race is light skin confuses actual light-skinned African American groups.
2 – You are seeing the inverse of colorism. For the majority of African American history up until about the 1990’s light-skinned black folks were the upper class of the black community; they treated black(brown and dark skinned) black people as bad as white folks socially, besides the physical and all-around racial terrorism. Look up the Blue Vien society – https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Vein-Society-within-America/dp/1479775754
Even Jack and Jill has that history
My mother herself was disowned by my actual grandfather’s family because my grandmother was darkskinned.
So for reasons of number 2, there is a stereotype of light-skinned African Americans being softer( they worked in the house during slavery, and were the upper crust of the black community until recently. So it’s not racism or colorism, it’s more so the brown and dark skinned getting back at the being made fun of and treated poorly by this group of our own community.
Mixed race people are a whole different topic.