“Dark Girls,” the documentary which candidly and provocatively explores colorism among African-Americans, is finally making it to the small screen. Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network will air the ‘Dark Girls’ documentary next Sunday. The film, which premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in 2011, has generated a lot of buzz for its compelling interviews with dark-skinned…
Lee Daniels’ highly-anticipated film, “The Butler,” sparked a heated debate on social media after a photograph from the film made its rounds on the internet. A still from the movie, which follows Eugene Allen (Forest Whitaker), a head butler at the White House, displays Mariah Carey as a slave picking cotton in the field. The…
Most ’90s hip hop fans are familiar with Inga Marchand, the New York-born, Trinidadian rapper who rose to fame rapping beside Jay-Z and as part of NaS’s The Firm crew. After her glory days appearing on tracks like “Ain’t No” and making her own hits like “Gotta Get You Home,” Foxy became somewhat of an…
I don’t remember when I learned about colorism, but I know it was early on in my childhood. Family members assessed my color in hushed whispers (“she’s getting darker, huh?”) and as I got older and began dating, compliments from the opposite sex always hinged on my skin tone (“You’re a pretty dark-skinned girl”). When…
In a comprehensive list that touches on the relentless insults — both blatant and subtle — that many black women face on their daily beauty journeys, Gradient Lair makes it very clear that conforming to standards of Eurocentric beauty is so 2012. Tackling everything from patriarchy to weight bigotry, the list seems to have it…
This past weekend, CNN’s Soledad O’ Brien took a deeper approach with the In America series by exploring the complex ideologies behind colorism within the African-American community for “Black in America 5”. Among the many individuals she spoke to – posing the question ‘who is black America?’ – commentary about the difficulties that blacks still face,…
Time and time again, casual in-person or online conversations about skin tone have proven to be counterproductive, when the discourse becomes either deeply personal, accusatory, or insulting. With a subject with such deep historical and psychological roots, it’s probably best not to broach any serious discussion about it without the aid of a moderator–preferably someone…
In a recent interview with KNBC-TV’s Michael Brownlee, U.S. hurdles champion Dawn Harper lamented the fact that her competitor Lolo Jones gets a ton of press, while she gets very little. “Since the ['08 Beijing] Olympics, [Jones] hasn’t really beaten me outdoors at all,” Harper pointed out. If Harper’s the more consistent athlete, ousting all…
