I'm Black.
Ever since I can remember, this is how I describe myself.
Now, describing myself as Black was never something I did with hate.
I was one of those kids that had to think about race
because when you grow up with a white Jesus,
you will have some questions as to why he doesn't look like you.
My mother was the first person
to really shape my views on race and diversity.
Her explanation was simple:
there are people who are Black, White, Asian, etcetera,
and although we all look different, we're all the same.
And that was that.
I was in sixth grade when I found out that I wasn't just Black -
I was, in fact, brown-skinned,
so in the middle of the Black color spectrum.
The term brown-skinned is a relative one.
Compared to whom?
No one knows because it's all made up and varies from person to person.
And yet, there's a very clear understanding amongst most people
that Drake is light-skinned and Lupita Nyong'o is dark-skinned.
I thought, "That's plausible."
There are people light-skinned, brown-skinned, dark-skinned.
And in my Brooklyn middle school full of Black people,
I thought there was no divide between said shades of Black.
I mean, everyone hung out with everyone, and everyone was generally respected,
even if there was the occasional, "Yo, you mad dark."
Basically, there were other things
that we, as kids, focused on that determined our social stratification.
Then I went to high school, and I began to notice a couple of things.
I realized that the world around me
was a little biased towards people with lighter skin.
I realized girls with lighter skin got more likes and comments on Instagram.
And that guys I liked only went after certain kind of girls.
I also realized that darker people
were not being represented in the TV shows and movies that I was watching.
And if they were,
they were the ghetto all-up-in-your-face like this,
secondary character.
However, the effects colorism had on me at the time
were things I thought I could avoid and even counter
by not giving it my energy and living my life.
And so I did.
And for a while, it worked
because I managed to convince myself - if I can separate myself from the problem,
I could avoid it.
That all changed when I got to college.
Because here, amongst all the college boys and college pressures,
I learned a lot about myself and a lot more about the world around me.
For the first time, I no longer had the safety net
of having people who thought exactly like me.
For the first time, the spectrum of brown wasn't a spectrum.
It was a dichotomy.
You were either light-skin or dark-skin.
I was considered dark skin,
and people didn't see that as a good thing.
I mean, of course, no one said to me,
"Amaya, you're dark-skinned, so you're ugly."
But there were plenty of microaggressions that made it very clear.
You know, the whole:
"It's not that dark-skinned girls are ugly.
I just have a preference for lighter girls."
It was here that I realized that colorism is alive and well,
and people don't like to talk about it.
So what is colorism anyways?
Although this is not a new phenomenon -
it was finally coined in 1982 by Alice Walker, who defined it
as prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on color.
The key term here is same-race people,
which makes it just a little bit different than plain racism.
It's kind of like this:
if America was a tree, and its roots were racism,
colorism would be like a leaf
stemming off of the branch that's Eurocentrism.
This is because since Europeans came into contact with Africans,
they believed that they were the better race.
And this whole idea that light was better than dark -
because white was better than Black -
never really went away.
And this is bad
because this means that not only do darker Black people
have to deal with racism from white people and people who aren't Black,
they also have to deal with harsher treatment from other Blacks
because they're darker than a brown paper bag.
There are so many reasons this phenomenon is problematic.
However, for the sake of time, I'll only share a few.
Colorism creates a stereotype about what acceptable Blackness is.
It creates a model Black, if you will,
and colorism pits Black people against each other,
which is what the white man wants.
So understand that light-skinned people are not to blame for colorism.
They can't help the way they were born.
However, light-skinned privilege does exist
because along with these views and notions and stereotypes
of what acceptable Blackness is come negative views
and notions and stereotypes
of people who do not fit into this "whitist" Black box.
These stereotypes include: being less educated, more ghetto, uglier
and, overall, less proper than their lighter-skinned counterparts.
And this is seen everywhere throughout time.
It's seen in minstrel shows
where white men would dress up as a dark caricatures
and look almost idiotic to make fun of Black people.
It's still seen in television today
where dark characters are used as tools by writers
to contrast light characters,
so that the lighter characters seem more vulnerable and soft.
For example, Penny Proud from the Proud family
and her best friend, Dijonay Jones,
with their eight brothers and sisters and a hard-to-pronounce name.
Or Pam and Gina from the Fox show Martin.
It's also in critically acclaimed literature.
For example, Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye,"
where the main character, Pecola Breedlove,
was told over and over again
that because she was dark, she was not pretty.
And she internalized that,
and that made her hate light-skinned people.
The reason why this is so problematic
is because darker people will go to drastic lengths
to become this model Black
to receive the privileges associated with it.
This is why Caribbean people bleach their skin.
This is why women tell their children,
"Don't go outside for too long or you'll get too dark."
And this is why some dark men, and women, in fact,
find the lightest person they can to marry and have children with,
so that their children aren't dark like they are.
This percolates the self-hatred and pits Black people against each other.
Another thing to understand -
pitting Black people against each other -
not a new phenomenon.
It was used during slavery from white people to divide and conquer.
White people do it now for the same reason.
If you get Black people to hate each other
for something so natural and biological as the color of their skin,
it's less likely that they'll come together,
which means it's less work you need to do to stay in power.
This phenomenon is shown best in Spike Lee's movie "School Daze"
where one highlight of the movie is a musical scene
where light-skinned and dark-skinned women spew insults at each other, including:
jigaboo, nappy-headed and wannabe.
White people will also use this to excuse their racist intentions
or notions.
By giving these model Blacks special privileges
and helping them rise to the top,
they can hold these model Blacks over the rest of the race, saying,
"The system isn't the reason you're failing.
Look at these people:
They're succeeding. You're the reason you're not.
These model Blacks ...
are succeeding."
And the craziest part is ...
this isn't even a phenomenon only seen in the Black community.
Communities such as the Asian, South Asian and Latinx communities
experience the same thing.
Colorism in these communities takes many different forms.
Whether it's a Chinese laundry commercial
featuring a dark man going into a washer machine
to become a lighter, more Chinese person
or Filipino people being told
that they're at the bottom of the Asian totem pole
because they're dark.
In Bollywood, there's been an outcry in recent years
because Bollywood movies use too small of a range of skin tones
to represent the entire Indian population.
As a result,
some people have started countermovements to counter this harmful propaganda,
such as Nandita Das and her "Why Dark Is Beautiful" campaign.
Latinx stars such as Amara La Negra receive significant backlash
over trying to break the mold of what mainstream Latinx stars look like,
including hyper-scrutinization over her hair and skin,
being accused of Blackface and not even being considered Latina.
So because this is something that affects so many people,
you'd think it's something that more people spoke up about.
And yes, there's been increased interest in the whole colorism thing.
However, the reason it's not as loud
as it could be is because people think it's natural.
They've never been exposed to anything different.
It's what they grew up on.
And even if you did grow up in a household like I did
where you were taught
that your Black's beautiful or your brown's beautiful
and that your dark skin was great and your hair's also great,
once you walk out that door,
you will feel all of the effects of colorism.
Period.
So what was the point of me telling you this?
Well, I believe the famous quote goes,
"The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem."
And yes, there are a lot of problems out there - er, Trump.
However, the reason they're being fixed is because there are people out there
who are working tirelessly to get the public
to acknowledge that there's something that needs to be fixed.
And this is one of them.
I don't have one particular solution to colorism
because I'm one girl, and I've had only one experience.
However, I do want to stress something.
Once America and the rest of the world, really,
recognize that colorism isn't natural,
and that instead it's been instilled in our minds for generations
that lighter is better,
then we as humans can start the decolorization process.
We need to kick this to the curb and leave it in our past
because do we really want our time on Earth to look like this?
Thank you.
(Applause)