Next week, at the international black film festival in Nashville, Bill Duke and D Channsin Berry will premiere their new documentary, Dark Girls. The film looks at the everyday experiences of dark-skinned black women in America. The blurb from the official site promises the directors will "[pull] back our country's curtain to reveal that the deep-seated biases and hatreds of racism – within and outside of the black American culture – remain bitterly entrenched".

When the film-makers released a preview of Dark Girls in May, it spread like wildfire across social media sites and black entertainment blogs. Commenters wrote about being moved to tears by the nine minutes of film they'd seen and many mentioned how long in coming such a film was. Why did the documentarians decide to tackle this subject and why now? For Duke, a veteran of Hollywood – co-star of Car Wash and Predator – it was down to personal experience. "It came from me being a dark-skinned black man in America, and also observing what [dark-skinned] relatives like my sister and niece have gone through. The issue exists externally of our race, but a lot of it comes within the race itself and our perception of ourselves." Berry recalls being called "darkie" at elementary school by his fellow classmates, "and even some family members were like: 'He is really dark. Why is he so dark?' It left a scar. So when Bill came to me, within the first couple of seconds, I was on board."

Shadism lurks in our collective peripheral vision and rears its ugly head every so often. Earlier this year, there was a Twitter storm over a promotional flyer for a party in Ohio whose theme was "Light Skin vs Dark Skin". In May, the Afro Hair and Beauty show in London had a stall advertising and selling skin-lightening products. The stall was called Fair and White. In an interview with black newspaper the Voice, the co-organiser of the show, Verna McKenzie, said that she had "a responsibility to cater to the marketplace". Two years ago, makeup giant L'Oréal was accused of lightening the skin of singer Beyoncé in ads (it denied the claim), and last year, Elle magazine was accused of doing the same to actor Gabourey Sidibe (it said "nothing out of the ordinary" had been done to the photograph). Last month, a study conducted at Villanova University in Pennsylvania found that lighter-skinned women were more likely to receive shorter prison sentences than darker-skinned women, receiving approximately 12% less time behind bars.

I am a dark-skinned girl. I always have been – I was never fair-skinned, not as a baby (like my sister), not as a child (like one of my brothers) nor an adolescent. My parents did not wait for my colour to "come in". I was born a deep brown, and have pretty much remained so all my life. My extended family is pretty diverse-looking – from my second cousin Ruka, who looks white in certain lights, to my cousin Baraka, who is dark as night; I never had any real inclination to be lighter-skinned, but almost every Nigerian Briton I spoke to while writing this article reported having seen bad bleach jobs at weddings, church and parties.

Growing up in Nigeria during the 90s, I remember being offered a soft drink, and my hostess jokingly telling me to choose something other than a Coke because it "would make me darker". Even being a fairly confident and logical child, and despite understanding that a drink had no effect on my complexion, I changed my mind. During a decade there, it would not be the only time I would alter my drink order.

Continued  --- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/04/racism-skin-colour-shades-prejudice/print