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As the colorism debates gain momentum, we also need to start addressing the many vicious ways Black women are mammified and expected to give mixed/bi-racial people the benefit of understanding and empathy
Resulting in us doing emotional heavy-lifting to alleviate them from feelings of survivors guilt for having access to privileges, darker-skinned people are barred from
The issue I have with reducing colorism to a “privilege” discourse is that it merely analyses the a person’s relationship to power without addressing “how that power” is actively used interpersonally to move through the hierarchal structures that condition our existences
Colorism is not just something that happens to you, it is a regime we have been socialized to all participate in whether or not, we are conferred proximity to anti-Black power systems. In this system, lighter-skinned people are socialized into dominating positionalities
and darker-skinned people are socialized into positionalities of subordination. Colorism is thus a relationship to shared power that is misappropriated by people who have access to regimes of oppression in this sense white supremacy
Colorism is thus not just a signifier of privilege, but it is about how that signifier can absolve you from being held accountable
for participating in systems of oppression that confer you power that you benefit from by excluding, marginalizing & denying access to Darker-skinned people demanding liberation and transformative justice
