Scribbles

colourism

So that's a thing.

The definition is "prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group".

While this may come across as petty and "oh no it's harmless it's just what the aunties say", it's not. It would be petty if it was just one aunty or just one family. It's not. It's not even just in Bangladesh (but I'm mainly going to focus on Bengalis), it's spread out over the whole of Asia, Africa and well, you name it, it's there.

It is so toxic when the media is constantly pushing it down our throats that white skin is the more superior skin tone. That being white makes you better than everyone else. That you're nothing if you're not white.

Let's take it back to the beginning of time. There are a lot of mentions in both religious and scientific texts of how we generated in the Middle East. So technically we were all brown to start and due to environmental issues our genes mutated and some of us turned lighter. It was not of human doing; it was nature and the will of God.

Now let's come back to current times. Countries except white dominant ones are all on the globe in environments where it's sunny and placed in places where people would generally be darker due to environmental factors. Now, this leads to generation after generation of coloured individuals. Let's take Bangladesh, for example (well this whole thing is going to be just Bangladesh so...).

Bangladesh has a history of predominantly brown skin tones. due to our placing on the globe, we have an entire palette of skin tones ranging from light to very dark brown. It's always been like that. We are a mix match race of people and we don't make sense. I remember growing up in Bangladesh and there was always product advertisements of skincare dedicated to making your skin lighter. "With this product, you'll see a difference in your skin colour within 28 days! Try it!". It was almost like teeth whitening with the showcase of the different stages and everything. That was the norm and I didn't really think twice about it. Bangladesh media: TV shows and films all had actors with fairer skin. The portrayal of dark skin was kind of like what Hollywood is doing now. An entire cast of white people with one or two dark-skinned people for representation. It was exactly like that. So growing up I never really saw anyone on TV who looked like me. They were all fairer and skinnier(oh god let's not go there today). I didn't think the 8/9 years of my life I spent in Bangladesh really affected me that much until I sat down and thought about it. It was always there and I dismissed it thinking "oh yeah that's normal."

It's not. It is not normal to be shamed for something you have no control over. It is not normal for people to be influenced to lighten their skin colour to...I don't even know what the point of that is. The world wasn't created to be uniform and one colour. That is the beauty of this world. That we are all different. God didn't make us all different so that we strive to become one. We were made different for a reason. We were made different to show that it doesn't matter what we look like, at the end of the day we're all humans.

Growing up I had the lowest of the low self-esteem. I didn't always love my skin colour and how I looked. It had been the bane of my existence until literally like 2 years ago. It was not a pleasant childhood. I grew up with the constant taunt of my literally family. Scratch that, my literal mother. I have a very weird looking family. My mum is very fair and my dad is very dark. So they had a first born and she looked exactly like my mum (skin colour wise that is) and then they had a second offspring and she was the exact in between of the two parents' colours. Because what else are you supposed to get other than a mixture of the two right? Well, I had hell for that for most of my life (even now fuck!). My Nan (my mum's mum) has a practical joke that been alive for as long as I have which goes something the line of she got diabetes from the shock of seeing me when I was born due to the fact that I was "so dark". Yeah! Try telling that to a 5-year-old as a joke and expect her to not to take it seriously. It ain't gonna happen, sis. It then got cemented into my tiny little spongey brain when my Nan gave my sister the nickname of "fairy" " just like her skin colour" and mine was just "blunt nose" because you guessed it, I had a blunt nose. Anyways that wouldn't be so bad right if it was just your Nan, right? Well to that I say haha you're so funny. It wasn't just her. I mentioned earlier how my mum did it as well and well she still does it now. She has a catchphrase which goes something along the lines of "I should've married a lighter guy so my kids could've looked more like me". Yep. Try living with that for 16 years. Not very fun. I had constant comments from various aunties about home remedies I should try to lighten my skin. "oh try this cream my daughter got so much lighter with it!" "Oh I heard turmeric is good for lightening your skin, try it" "oh sister don't let your daughter out in the sun that much, she'll go darker" and on and on and on.

I grew up hating myself and while I would never try any skin whitening products, it scarred me for life.

Colourism is real. Colourism isn't petty and it's certainly not something we should be sleeping on. My eyes got opened by a YouTuber called Asia Jackson who has an amazing hashtag for her fellow Philippinos and I want to do something similar. I want to create a hashtag universally for darker skinned people. I want to spread this issue as this is real and it is a lot of our reality. It is happening and it is not something that will go away anytime soon unless we do something. Let us challenge the media and say "brown is beautiful".

One person's story can cause a domino effect and if this relates to you in any way, I want you to be vocal. It takes one person to start something but it takes a community to get rid of it.

#brownwearsthecrown

i dont really know where else to put this. i'll probably try twitter when i manage to tidy it up.

raima <3