Color Coded: Letters to My Sis

Conversations on Colorism, Sisterhood, and Self-Worth

Ari Lennox (who we have been covering since 2017) recently stirred the internet with her take on how Martin making fun of Pam made her feel as a dark-skinned woman. She’s entitled to her feelings, and while opinions are mixed, colorism is a conversation we found important to revisit. That’s why we’re including this piece from the Beauty Bible (on sale now), “Color Coded Letters to My Sis,” in today’s newsletter.

Wannabees vs Jiggaboos from Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” 1989

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As Ghanaian-American writer Zeba Blay once said, there is a “rubric for Blackness, which is really about preserving whiteness. And yet, it’s a rubric that so many Black people subscribe to in some shape or form.” Our melanin, though reflective of a spectrum of color & culture, has been distilled into just two distinctions — light or dark — and we’re tired. We asked you to write letters about your lived experience with colorism while also affirming the experiences of your sisters.

Between Two Shades

Dear Sis,
I grew up with you, but we had two different childhoods. I always felt envious of how your Blackness was never questioned, and you never had to respond to, “what are you mixed with?” Then, when we were nineteen, you confessed to feeling jealous of how I was always handed attention first, and how you only received whatever spilled over. I told you I hated it, too, and we cried because neither of us asked for the shit.

As the cousin whose melanin was somewhere in the middle — neither very light nor very dark — I always felt misplaced. When I was the lightest one in the room, I was taunted for my proximity to whiteness, the product of my great-great-grandparents’ interracial marriage. When I was the darkest in the room, I was ignored, relegated to a second-string beauty. Next to you, however, I was always lighter and therefore favored in ways both of us quietly despised.

When we would go shopping or to parties together, I was the one men came up to first, making me feel like an imposter. Someone taught boys that the less melanin a woman has, the less complicated she is, and that’s a lie that deeply wounds us all but hits you most visibly. I think when someone’s pain is discounted or silenced, they will beat their chest eventually, crying out to be heard even if their offenders aren’t in the room to hear it. So some of us compete, side-eye, ignore and put each other down when all the while, this wasn’t our hatred to carry.

Seeing Me

by Jennifer Julien Gaskin / @jennifertheauthor

Dear Sis,
I am a dark-skinned Black woman. I am asking you to see me. It’s been a lifelong journey to see the beauty in myself. There are certainly still days that I question my value in a world that continues to tell me I’m not good enough. My first memory of being told or shown I was different because of my complexion came around the age of five or six. Like many young girls, I had a crush on a boy. He was actually the son of a family friend. I knew him outside of school, but we started Kindergarten together and then went to a summer program. We seemed to be good friends. He laughed and played with me. He wanted to sit on the bus next to me. We even ate lunch together frequently. I really liked him. I figure, let me take the plunge. I wrote up a letter on a little piece of paper. Do you like me, yes or no? Do you want to be my boyfriend, yes or no? I handed it to him before we got on the school bus to go home. My heart was racing. I knew that by the time my dad picked me up from the bus stop, I’d be skipping off. But things didn’t work out as I thought. He explained to me that he liked me, but he couldn’t be my boyfriend because I was too dark. I was confused. Too dark? What does that mean? I got off the bus that day, not skipping. Sad and confused. My mom told me all the right things; “Black is beautiful.” “The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.” “Be Black and proud.” All very easy for her to say as a lighter complexion Black woman with “good hair.”

The story of colorism and its trauma starts early in life for most of us. I knew from that point on that I was different. It has followed me everywhere and in every situation in my life. When I was older and started dating, there were guys that hid their relationships with me. There were guys who cheated on me with lighter-skinned women. Honestly, most of the times when men have cheated on me, it’s been with lighter-skinned or white women. It was almost as if they were doing me a favor by being with a woman dark like me.

Dark-skinned men didn’t seem to be attracted to me, even though I was attracted to them. They wanted to date light-skinned girls and have light-skinned babies. Dark-skinned girls were supposed to find light-skinned men and do the same. I wasn’t following the rules. My dad, who was a dark-skinned black man himself, told me that he was courting a woman who was dark-skinned before my mom. He said it wasn’t accepted. He loved her, but it wasn’t allowed. It’s a journey, but I won’t give up. I will continue to show up as me, authentically. I will continue to share my story in hopes that a little five-year-old girl with a crush may read it and know she’s good enough, too. To my lighter-complexioned sisters, I want you to hear my story. I want you to love me as you love yourselves. Our shared experiences are hard enough. We need to uplift and love each other before we can expect others to do it. Be an ally, not an opponent. We are the same. I am a dark-skinned woman. I am beautiful. I am worthy. Plus, I can wear any color in the spectrum against this beautiful chocolate skin.

I love you, Black woman!

My Call to Action

Dear Sis,
Some say that colorism only affects those at the darker end of the spectrum, and while I understand the logic, I have to (respectfully) disagree.

Long before my parents fell in love and made me “mixed” (“biracial” is some new shit), my ancestors were listed as “mulatto” on the Census; the product of rape and pillage. I’ve learned to name this epigenetic trauma so that my family can begin to heal from it. But this is no light-skinned sob story — this fact serves as my own personal call to action and accountability.

I know that you’ve faced the brunt of colorism daily, in far different and more urgent ways than I can fathom. AND I, too, have been psychologically traumatized by its effects — mostly because it has artificially separated me from you.

I fully acknowledge the effects of the white gaze. AND I don’t subscribe to the beauty standards it upholds. Your melanin, pure and undiluted, is divine. You’re more effortlessly beautiful than you know.

We all know some light-skinned people can be ignorant AF. AND l know we‘ve all been conditioned to value proximity to whiteness in ways that breed toxicity.

I fully acknowledge the so-called “privilege” that light-skinned people experience. AND yet, none of us are truly free.

I recognize that we’ve been systematically and strategically pitted against each other in ways none of us can fully fathom. AND you are my family, not my enemy.

You are my sister. My favorite aunties. My daughters. My foremothers. Your blood is my blood. Your pain is my pain. No matter your phenotypic expression, I will fight and build alongside you for as long as I have breath in my lungs.

I love you, Sis.

Fetishization is Not Love

Dear Sis,
Love isn’t measured in how high someone places you above another — especially when that “honor” comes at your sisters’ expense. This world has a way of slicing us into shades and pretending that’s the sum of our worth. That’s not love. That’s a cage dressed as a pedestal.

Real love doesn’t flatten you into a skin tone. It holds the fullness of who you are — mind, spirit, quirks, contradictions — and celebrates you among, not apart from, the women who share your lineage and your light. It grows richer when rooted in connection with your brown, dark-skinned, and deeply melanated sisters.

Your value was never in your lightness; it lives in the soul you carry. Demand a love that sees that. Accept nothing smaller.

Not at a Table Without You

by Nastasia Guthrie / @nastasiaguthrie

Dear Sis,
Our experience in this diaspora — in this world — will not divide me from you. “Palatable” is not a word I use often to describe myself, but it comes to mind when I think of how I have traversed this world in my thirty years of life as a Black woman of lighter complexion. For a long time, I assumed that colorism was a wide brush that washed over us all, and in ways, it is; however, it wasn't until I reflected on my own experience that I began to see that my access was few and far between. Being welcomed into spaces as the only Black woman would, to some, feel like an accomplishment, but I had to take into account why the door was even available for me to walk through.

In romantic relationships, I am the Black love that is acceptable for mass consumption. In the workplace, I am the marker of change and liberalism — roles that I do not wish to fill and am not in the least flattered by. Equipped with this knowledge, I have begun the never-ending work to stand alongside you as we continue the work of dismantling these imperialist ideals that have invaded and divided our community. A table without you is one I don’t wish to remain seated at.

Page 88 from the Beauty Bible
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