Color Struck by Zora Neale Hurston

[@christianprottenuldrich1512]

Colorism is a big problem in our community.. We need to be strong and come together than to "reflect the Willie Lynch letter".

[@jasonito23]

FYI - That Willie Lynch Letter is fake. The stuff stated in the letter sounds real and good but if you have been listening to my reviews and reading the slave narratives, you realized that the "Willie Lynch Letter" is false and complete BS. Go by what the slaves themselves wrote. Don't trust anything written by someone else. Especially the white men of that era. We have many slave narratives. None of them say anything remotely similar to that fake Willie Lynch Letter.

[@jasonito23]

As far as colorism, that was created by blacks in their community. White people don't even know what colorism is. Ask some white people. They have no idea. The master had mixed babies with his slaves to make more slaves. Not to create "colorism" on his plantation. Frederick Douglass was biracial. He never got any special treatment. Read his narrative.

[@candace5106]

@@jasonito23 I have to disagree with you on that. Colorism is an offshoot of white supremacy. If you teach a group that the white skin, straight hair, and high bridge noses of a lot of Europeans is beautiful, then those beauty ideals will be internalized. Wherever white people have gone, the people they have colonized have ended up idealizing the child mixed with European. And whites have uplifted Black Americans with more European-like features in the media for decades.

[@jasonito23]

@Candace: It's an offshoot of white supremacy right. But it was still created in the community by blacks though. Back in the day, the light skinned blacks made separate organizations "Blue Vein Society" and stuff like that. White folks weren't trying to unite or relate to blacks "one drop rule" to ensure that. Even my own experience, when I was growing up in the black community I always got praise for my hair etc. and some women dated me just because I was light skinned (wanting light skinned babies) etc. It definitely is a product of white supremacy, but blacks created it in the community: unconscious. (sorry for responding so late. I didn't get a notification when you initially commented here.) Whites had a big hand in creating it too. Many of the HBCUs were created by white men who only accepted lighter skinned blacks. I attended Morehouse. We had to send in pictures. The reason was referenced as "tradition" because when Morehouse was created, they only accepted lighter skinned blacks. Racism is in America's DNA like Obama said.

[@candace5106]

Thanks for your response. I appreciate it but I still have to disagree. Whites were giving preferential treatment to individuals of African descent with lighter skin/more European phenotypes--and still do to this day. In other countries, Europeans even established numerous distinct racial categories between black and white, attaching more privilege and superiority to the categories as they moved towards the "pure" European category. Blacks did not create colorism, they just jumped on the bandwagon. You can look at statistics and see how dark-skinned and light-skinned blacks get treated differently by whites to this day and have been treated differently for generations. We did not create the system that is in place that prefers and gives preferential treatment to those on the lighter end of the spectrum but we have noticed that such a system exists, internalized it, and even perpetuated it. However, we did not create it. There are colorist systems in place in other colonized areas, and they do not exist because black people went there and established such systems. They exist because Europeans went to various territories and used similar tactics to create systems in which there is a totem pole with European-esque phenotypes at the top, African/Asian /Native American phenotypes at the bottom, and admixed phenotypes in the middle.

[@mariejilberia5908]

Speaking of Fire, you are on 🔥 this morning, but I'm here for it lol. Wow how sad, I actually feel for Emma. I'm sure all of her issues came from being teased and made fun of for being dark skinned. All of her insecurities and hatred towards lighter skinned women was actually her desires and wishes to be like them. The irony is that she ended up having a near white daughter. Even that didn't stop her from feeling threatened by a lighter version of herself, her own daughter!

[@jasonito23]

This story took some time to sink in for me. I really think that for Zora, she was more interested in the language and demonstrations of black culture with the cake walk and how it was conducted rather than the Colorism subject. But I like how short stories like this can cover serious issues. It is a fun story to read out loud.

[@mariejilberia5908]

@@jasonito23 I agree, never heard of cake walk before today or this magazine. There's so much to learn... Thanks for sharing.

[@bj77755]

Colorism was definitely created by blacks , especially in the southern states. My mother being from Louisiana had a serious issue with dark complexion blacks. Out of six daughters with four being light and two being dark, I am one or the darker daughters, my mother constantly reminded myself and other darker sister of how black we were and said don't date dark men and told my lighter sister's how beautiful and lucky they were. My mother constantly bought me bleaching cream which I refused to wear So so sad for her...

[@jasonito23]

I had a conversation with a friend from the West Indies and she said the same thing happened between her and her lighter skinned sister. Her mother outright treated the lighter skinned sister better. That's terrible. Bleaching cream sounds like it hurts.

[@dojakatt1724]

@Barbie. Colorism also happen in other POC i.e Asians, Hispanics, etc.

[@lyndawilliams4570]

It wasn’t created by blacks. It developed from the their interaction with oppressive whites who taught them to hate themselves. Blacks in Africa prior to colonialism by whites were proud of their own inherent beauty. It’s sad your mother did this but she and her generation was duped