Dark Girls

Although the term colorism has only existed for around 35 years and is quite young, the concept has existed for centuries. Colorism by definition means to discriminate within a single race against those with a darker skin tone in favor of lighter skinned people of the same race. The idea behind this concept comes from early slavery when the slave masters would sexually assault the female slaves and the result was lighter skinned slaves that were kept inside the home to do house work while the other slaves had to work the fields (Kerr 273)..” During this time, it was believed that the fair skinned slaves and/or the mixed children of slaves and master were “gentler, kinder more [attractive], smarter and more delicate"(Kerr,273). During that

This common incident rooted a seed in millions of dark skinned black girls that their skin is not good enough, that they need to do whatever they can to become lighter. The women relay to the audience that they were discriminated on a different level from their lighter counterparts in that they were being called monkeys, tar babies and a variety other slurs aimed specifically at them. For them, this shaped their reality for years to come. They faced feelings of insecurity and self-hatred. Tales of hating their skin so much that they tried bathing in bleach or would try scrubbing their skin off as if it were just dirt and not a part of their being resonate with millions of black girls (“Dark

Dark skinned black children who grow up seeing lighter skinned women of their race in more positive positions will go through life believing that there is something wrong with their skin. As portrayed with the Doll Experiment, recreated by various people in a compilation video of the test, and originally conducted by Kenneth and Mamie Clark in the 1940’s. This experiment showed how colorism affects even the young children. Multiple elementary school age children were asked different descriptive questions about a fair skinned doll and a dark-skinned doll and were supposed to pick whichever doll matched the description. When asked “Which doll is the ugly doll?”, an overwhelming amount of the children picked the darker doll. Same results when asked which doll is the mean doll. They were prompted with another inquiry of which doll was the pretty, nice doll and the decisions were mostly the same across the board amongst the children (“Doll Test”). They picked the fair doll because that is what is being shown in media from early on. The children have been conditioned with these beliefs for essentially their whole lives. In media, there should be more variety with how darker black women are shown. They are not a monotonous group of people. Just as lighter women are shown to be multi-faceted and beautiful, dark skinned women are no