I think it could potentially be dangerous to talk about Colorism as if it’s a monolith--that Colorism only looks like the negative impact and experience that darker-skinned people have had because of how society has treated them because of their darker skin.
Now don’t get me wrong, that topic is extremely important and will continue to be discussed on this platform, but I am building a brand around the fact Colorism shows up in several different ways. It’s not just impacting darker-skinned people and while some people may say that reverse Colorism doesn’t exist, that’s not exactly true because we are literally doing the exact same thing within our communities because we are treating lighter-skinned people differently because of their light skin even though this is all a result of racism, classism, and ideals of Eurocentric beauty, especially since society has historically viewed lighter skin as the token blackness or melanin representation-- whether it’s in the workplace, the beauty industry, or even as the president of the United States.
We as a collective of all skin tones need to be better about embracing that representation and challenging the views of that representation versus being mad about that representation. I am obviously darker-skinned myself but I have been surrounded by people my whole life who have been lighter-skinned. My mother has lighter skin and has her own experience with Colorism. I have friends who are lighter than me that also haven’t been considered fully black or have been fetishized or sexualized about their skin tone because they look more exotic and none of that is acceptable so we’ll continue to dig into all of the narratives and experiences of Colorism and know that there isn’t just one way to look at it.