PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — As legend has it, if a person’s skin is darker than a brown paper bag, that person was unwanted in certain — to use the term of the era — Negro circles.
Decades after the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the vestiges of slavery have produced an intractable climate where melanin still matters. The people of the African Diaspora, and even people in a single family, have skin tones that resemble the lightest of cafe au lait to a rich espresso. The biracial, including 10 On Your Side’s Aesia Toliver, often experience colorism that cuts both ways.
“So it was hard finding a place where I felt like I fit in having my mother white and my father black,” Toliver said. “It was like when I would hang out with the White kids, I felt like I wasn’t quite White enough. When I would hang out with the Black kids. I wasn’t quite Black enough.”
While on a stroll in downtown Portsmouth, Carlton and Ashley Bland offer a microcosm of colorism. Bland’s skin tone is significantly darker than his wife’s.
“Well, I mean, I definitely see that as some privilege attributed to lighter-skinned people,” Carlton Bland said. “It’s like a preference or something like that. But I haven’t really experienced, like, too bad of a prejudice. But you know, I was subject to the dark jokes and stuff like that coming up in the nineties as my childhood. But I think nowadays, it’s getting a little bit better, but it’s still there.”
Ashley Bland said that, in some cases, friction follows when she meets a woman with darker skin.
“I have noticed that darker-skinned females tend to maybe look at the lighter females as wanting to become that complexion,” Ashley Bland said. “They might dislike us because we are lighter than them, which is wrong, but it’s the way the society is.”
From Hampton Roads to Hollywood, experts say colorism can play a role in personal and professional circles. Hampton University alumna Tiffany Burgess, who landed a role in the movie musical The Color Purple, has researched the issue of skin tone-based bias. It is believed the term colorism was coined by author Alice Walker, who won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize-fiction for her book, The Color Purple.
“Colorism occurred during the slavery times when you would they would separate, purposely, African-Americans and put darker-skinned African-Americans in the field, and lighter-skinned African-Americans in the home,” Burgess said. “Then you have this separation between us because we start to build this resentment between us.”
Decades after singer James Brown penned the protest song, Say it Loud- I’m Black and I’m Proud, social media sites are proudly promoting skin-bleaching products, and rapper Miss Mulatto, under criticism, changed her name to simply Latto. Rapper YG came under fire in 2019 after stating he and the late Nipsey Hussle had pretty light-skinned girls to care for.
To prepare the next generation for skin tone-based bias, Burgess penned a children’s book titled Skin Like Mine. It reflects the bias she was exposed to as a child from a family with a wide range of skin tones.
“Those big brown, those big, pretty dark brown eyes of yours are from your grandfather. My dad, she said your curly hair. Well, that’s from me,” a portion of the book reads.
Burgess offered additional context for the excerpt.
“And so, she just gives her this background about what makes her who she is, what’s in her DNA,” Burgess said. “The last part I want to read is, she says, ‘you have to be confident in who you are.'”
With confidence, 10 On Your Side’s Aesia Toliver said that, like other vestiges of slavery, the stain of colorism will fade.
“I think the great thing about where we’re headed now is there are so many mixed people out there and now it’s becoming a norm,” Toliver said, “whereas growing up, there was not a lot of mixed children that I could look to really feel like, ‘Oh, you understand me?’ Now, I feel like color is becoming a little less important and people are mixing all different types.”