Quotes About Colorism

whites' obsessive preoccupation with the happenstance of skin color?

I mean in the community that I grew up in, you know, a very, you know, mixed, almost entirely African Diaspora community, one of the things that we were not ever supposed to say was how much self-hatred and colorism determined and guided what we would call our desire. In other words, what we would consider beautiful.

When I was young, I went to a church where the lighter-skinned you were, the closer you sat to the altar.

New Orleans invented the brown paper bag party - usually at a gathering in a home - where anyone darker than the bag attached to the door was denied entrance. The brown bag criterion survives as a metaphor for how the black cultural elite quite literally establishes caste along color lines within black life.

I've experienced colorism in that way: where if you're lighter, then you'll potentially be accepted into society better than if you were darker-skinned.

I saw the things that my sister went through - she's dark skinned - with boys not considering her attractive in her youth and the pain that it caused her.

I wanted people to begin dialogue about racism, about colorism. I wanted people to really become honest about our beliefs, about racism and how it exists in America today.

In African American culture, class bias is the handmaiden of intraracial prejudice that privileges the near-white or light-complexioned person over the darker-hued.

We're all complaining about diversity in Hollywood, but we've got to address the colorism within the black community of Hollywood first.

For black people who are really dark - and a lot of black people were averse to be dark skinned - it was believed that you'd be so dark that you couldn't see them at night unless they were smiling or you could see the whites of their eyes. At one time, it was a sharp comic barb that got levelled at some people.

There were two off-campus Negro fraternities, one of which Chester pledged for, but even these, he said later, admitted students on the basis of skin shadings, with men of lighter complexion being viewed as more desirable.2

Light-skinned women, we can break them down more easy.

Mariah Carey, Rihanna, the female rapper Nicki Minaj, my kids - and what do they all have in common? They're all lighter skinned. Do you think that's an accident?

There's one disturbing notion throughout India that light skin is more attractive than dark.

Yes colorism does exist if you look at historically what's happened as far as crossing over to pop radio.

Basically, when I went to school in Sri Lanka from age five onward, the classes there were sometimes sorted into a hierarchy of your skin tone. So the fairer-skinned kids sat at the front row, and the darker-skinned kids sat at the back by the poor ones who played out in the street all day long.

Anytime you get this many light-skinned black people together at least half of them are going to be folks who act light-skinned.

I would be ignorant to say colorism doesn't exist; it's gross and disgusting.

Barack Obama would not be President if he were dark skin. You know what I mean? That's just the truth. I might not be as successful as I am now if I was dark skin.

There's this issue where I'm really doing well and got hate 'cause I'm too light-skinned. I understand why people say that - throughout history, the lighter you are, that's how it's been. But it's not my fault. My mom and dad had me! I look how I look.

In order to describe and explore these questions I needed 1) to examine the definition of paradise, 2) to delve into the power of colorism, 3) to dramatize the conflict between patriarchy and matriarchy, and 4) disrupt racial discourse altogether by signaling then erasing it.

I wanted to use my voice to address colourism because I am so aware of how awful it is and it is just something that needs to be spoken about.

Dark skin is considered less than light skin in the in the minds of many in our community and in the media.

We shouldn't be discriminating against each other. The whole 'light skin versus dark skin' is an idea we need to break down.