Light Skin vs. Dark Skin

I totally agree with Laide. There is a lot of discrimination when it comes to skin tone amongst Black People. I watched a documentary on TV (London) some time ago carried out by a dark-skinned "Sista" to investigate this dilemma. Lighter skinned people tend to be placed above darker skinned people . They are seen as smarter, better... etc, which is not true. And so you
find a lot of women bleaching their skins in order to be more acceptable, with little or no thought for the damages risking their lives (Shame...) 

While it is okay to have a personal preference for a lighter or darker skin tone person when it comes to dating, marriage... etc; I believe it's TOTALLY WRONG to ELEVATE light-skinned people above dark-skinned ones [or vice versa]. If people must be judged at all, it should be based on their abilities and internal qualities. Our skin colour is only about one-tenth deep. So to write someone off just for their skin shade is PREJUDICIAL and shows a high level of IGNORANCE!!!

  I'ts so glaring. Black is beautiful. The "light" spend so much money to maintain their skin colour and once they do not have the money anymore, they back out. It is really expensive to maintain your light skinned colour. The more u use cream, the more the damage u cause to your skin. There are very attractive and beautiful light skinned people; the likes of, Stella Damascus, Omotola Ekeinde, e.t.c. It is just somehow expensive and artificial.

The darker the skin the more beautiful it is . I am a brown skinned carribian girl, and I always wished I was jet black. Jet black skin tends to hide all blemishes and the dark skin looks like velvet.  I think if the black race realise that  all other races came out of the black man and woman they would respect their blackness. Even the the white man knows this and are envious of our black skin.


Some of this colour issue stems from slavery. many nigerians tend to forget that they were enslaved by the white man in their own country Nigerian and raped and inter bred by the white man, just as was done anywhere else where the white man ruled. Some of these cliams to have true african blood made by nigerians is not true.

This bleaching skin business and ligher skin issues also happen in the carribian.

Nigerian women love your blackness and your blackman because they are sure beautiful. i think that you are fortunate that your own men find you attactive even when they have moved to the west. It is not so for us carribian women, the best of our  carribian men tend to marry white women.

Sometimes I see some beautiful nigerian women in the UK married to some extremely ungly white men who have lots of money and I wonder how they do it.

You get it Madam!

I know for a fact that darker skinned individuals are less accepted than the lighter skinned individuals. I myself am dark. I have no problem with my skin, I love it.  It's just when you go outside in public people view you different. The darker you are the more likely you are to want to steal or be disruptive or cause trouble. Darker people are seen as evil. It's like we're slipping back into thinking, "the lighter the better." It's not true. All skin colors are equal. To know if someone is truly sinister can't be determined on skin color, but by personality and character.

Geez!!!!!! if your 1st post is this long den i wonder wht your 2nd n 3rd would be
that can make a whole bk  it's good u brought out your thoughts
some light skinned people re good-looking so re some dark-skinned people
some people'e darkness is 2ooooooo much that sort of darkness aint nice

Dear Naijadiva,

Do you have any thoughts about why the black community does not discuss this issue in a more public forum? Is it just that we do not consider this to be an important issue? Is it embarrassment? What do you think?  Because if it bothers others as much as it bothers me, why don't we discuss it more openly?

Honestly, I think that it's more than being light-skinned.  I think that the standard has been internalized among black people that anything that is close to European features is beautiful.  Obviously, skin color plays a major role here, but also, look at why we straighten our hair or how the girls that are considered the prettiest look like dark white girls.  For example, look at Tyra Banks or Beyonce.  Honestly, if you lightened their skin, they could pass for white girls.  Why do black women dye their hair blond or red or wear blue or green contacts when it is so obviously unnatural?  But to honestly admit to ourselves that we don't like what God gave us and wished we looked like someone else is too shameful to admit so we pretend that it's not a problem.

Now, as for why I think black people don't discuss it, I honestly don't know.  I do have some theories, but I've never tested them out so I can't be for sure.  I think that it's been perpetuated for so long that people would have identity crises if forced to address this.  After all, this situation is not a new phenomenon.  Read "Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore."  You'D be surprised to find out how many famous black intellectuals and heroes we have who were light, and if they were not light, they often married light-skinned people to help move themselves up in society and to assure themselves that they did belong in the elite class.  Yet when we do learn about these people, we are only taught of the great contributions they made to black people - nothing about their own deeply rooted self-hatred.  So if this was never addressed back then and was passed onto the following generations, it seems to me that people are in a deep state of denial.  

Lastly, I think it is much worse for females than it is for males simply for the fact that women are held to a higher standard of beauty, but no one will admit to discriminating against their own people.  A woman was conducting a study for a class at the institution I attended for undergrad, and she came across some interesting perceptions, but this is the one I found to be most odd.  When she started her interview, the man she was interviewing stated in the beginning, "There's either light or dark - there's no such thing as in between." Notice the extremity of that statement.  Then when she asked him what color he was, he responded that he was "medium."  Clearly, he knew he wasn't light, but he seemed to have a negative perception of being dark so he couldn't call himself that, even though he'D previously stated that one was either light or dark.  Then she asked him about the type of women he had dated in the past and he admitted that they tended to be light-skinned.  When she questioned him about this, he said that light-skinned women were attractive and he had never really come across any attractive dark-skinned girls.  By this time, the interviewer was confused because she honestly couldn't understand how he had never seen an attractive dark-skinned girl.  So she asked him what he thought of the actress/model Gabrielle Union simply because she knew most guys find her attractive.  He responded that she was beautiful, and when the woman asked him how he would categorize her complexion, he said that she was light-skinned.  Now, I'm not sure if you know who Gabrielle Union is, but do a search for her on the Internet until you find a picture of her.  She is a beautiful woman, but she cannot be mistaken for light and the fact that he could only call a dark-skinned woman pretty by convincing himself that she was light displayed his obvious contempt for dark-skinned people, but his denial is obvious by the fact that he can't call himself dark even though he believes you can only be light or dark.  Just to make sure his sense of color wasn't completely skewed, she also asked him what color Oprah was (who is close to Gabrielle Union's complexion), and he responded that Oprah was dark.

I apologize for the length of this response, but I honestly believe that blacks are in a state of denial and shame about who they are, and that's why these issues can't be openly and honestly addressed.

I'm sorry, I don't have any suggestions for you on how to deal with your light-skinned friend, but I actually have the same experience with my sister, but it's not because of skin color because I'm fair and she's brown, and we're both pretty, but when a guy looks in our direction or calls out to one of us, she always assumes that they must be talking to her, and I made a joke about it one day (well I wasn't really joking) and was like "Yes, of course because you're the only person here so they must OBVIOUSLY be looking at you."  She became embarrassed and tried to say that wasn't what she was saying, and I just attributed it to the fact that she just likes attention so she likes to believe that all eyes must be on her.  Your friend's sense of entitlement may be due partially to her light complexion (maybe even entirely), but do know that there are other people out there like that and it's not always because of  complexion. 
If you were to say something to Jane about her superiority complex because of her complexion, you will come off as looking jealous.  I'm just being honest because when people make fun of me for being so light, I do believe that on some level they must be envious because I know for a fact that I don't flaunt my complexion as an asset.  I can honestly say that I've never once thought that I had some sort of advantage so the only way I can make sense of it is that they must be insecure about their own complexion.  It's like when a woman walks into a room and then other women make unnecessary comments like "She thinks she's cute" and they've never seen the woman nor interacted with her and she was minding her own business.  That pettiness comes from their own insecurity, and I wonder if your friend Jane is envious of her model friend and tries to make herself feel better by putting the woman down.  After all, why is she deliberately trying to piss her off?  If you don't know how to address the issue directly, the next time she makes fun of her friend, I suggest you say something like "Yeah but with her short hair, she's a model and you're not."  It sounds mean, but honestly, some people do need to be put in her place.  If she responds by trying to put the woman down even more, tell her directly that she sounds jealous because she has no reason to pick on the woman.

No, I like having this dialogue with people who acknowledge this situation instead of pretending that it doesn't exist or that it's all in people's heads.  I honestly don't know what to tell you to do about your friend except perhaps saying to her that the way she talks about other people or tries to put her model friend down is unnecessary.
For the black is beautiful movement, I agree with it because it is trying to make blacks see the beauty in their color rather than being ashamed, and I've never felt offended by it even though I'm light-skinned.  I think the problem occurs when people take it out of context and go to the extent of trying to put light-skinned people down.  Like earlier in this discussion, some people said darker skinned people are beautiful and light-skinned people are only all right or attractive, and not only is that an illogical statement but then it's doing the same thing that we're complaining about.  I don't know what to do about the situation, but I just wish we all saw our beauty no matter our shades and that people didn't make things worse by judging us based on our complexion.

I have been told by a good dark skin male friend of mine that men who set out to exclusively date light skin girls have some sort of inferiority complex.  I am dark skin and I work it.  I love it and I make it shine!!

I went out with a guy who told me he preferred light skin girls but I was the exception.  Unfortunately, many of our women bleach their skin and the only advice I have for them is to love yourself.  Don't harm yourself because of some IDIOT.  There is more to beauty than skin tone.  Look after your skin and wear it with pride.

I guess I'll never fit anywhere my own people wouldn't accept me.looks like people havent been nice to you at all don't mind them we are all unique in our own way don't say that because i do accept you even if it's just me still you know someone welcomes you

You have been to hell and back.  Luckily for me I have never had any bad experience because I am dark.  I just think we as black people may well be free from physical slavery.  Mentally, we are still slaves and unfortunately we are choosing to remain so.

Fortunately for me, I am not shallow minded enough to define beauty in terms of skin colour.  It helps if we think outside the box a little bit.  Otherwise we shall remain in our little boxes forever.

Somebody wake me up when all this nonsense ends.

@ Ama

As the SUPREMES would say, "I second that emotion!" I'm going for a nap.

I'm a college student in the US and my friends and I had a pretty interesting discussion the other day about dark-skin and light-skinned blacks and how it relates to our race.

One of my friends thinks that it seems that even within our race there is a prejudice against people that are darker than others. Like Wesley Snipes type dark. There is also a theory here in the US that the darker your skin, the more likely you are to get pulled over by the cops. I think its also a factor in our relationships with each other. My theory is that dark women like lighter men and lighter men like darker women, but that's just me, maybe.

All I know is I LOVE darker complexion women, but I want to see what you all think about this,

Hi ya'll. I was reading on the 1st post about light skin against dark skin. And I agreee that it is very true that people discriminate againt dark skinned people. I'm nigerian and I am dark skinned, I don't feel people really go against me for my color but I do feel that if I were lighter I would look a lot more attractive and pretty. One of my close friends is very very dark, when I say dark I mean dark, and I do feel people do discriminate her because of her color. And that of because of her color you can't see her true beauty. Lots of people would tell me she is very black and just sooo ugly. Lots of guys comment her so in these ways. I really hate hearing this, not once since she's been my friend have I heard someone besides me and our other friend say she is pretty and not ugly. That's very sad. To me I feel that i want to become lighter, I really do not like my skin color at all. And it has become darker over the years of my life due to over sun exposure! When I was younger around 4 to 9 in my pictures I noticed I was much lighter. That was during the days I used to spend most of time inside the house being kept away from the big beating heat of the sun of America. Now I just am disgusted with the way I look, I feel I have to put on makeup just to feel better with my self. When I used to put makeup on during the beginning of my school year lots of people would call me pretty. I think the foundation powder I had on was lighter than my skin which made me to appear looking lighter than what i really am. Now that I have decided to stop wearing makeup, I don't get as much comments as I used to sum people even call me ugly. It's really hard to deal with this, and that's why I really want to try to make my self much lighter. I am starting to use facial cleansers that is said to really clear out your skin to make it much healthier and lighter and fresher. Hopefully this will work for me. I am right now currently 13 Years old in the 7th grade. Yeah I'm quite young but there's a lot of pressure in NYC to look as good as you can. And I have to try my beast to become lighter. Ooo, and I also noticed that my cheast area is very light, it's sort of like a yellowish brownish color, very light. I wish my whole skin color could become like this or even a little lighter. Hopefully I will meet my goal.