Gabrielle Union Schools her Step Sons on Colorism
Col·or·ism
ˈkələrˌizəm/
noun
prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group.
"colorism within the black community has been a serious emotional and psychological battle"
Everywhere I turn, I'm "greeted” by videos, TV shows and social media posts where black people are shaming and degrading one another on the basis of light skin v. dark skin. It's embarrassing and sickening honestly. A lot of the conversations I've been hearing have been among young people who all seem to have this warped perception of beauty.
When I came across a recent article from Refinery29, featuring Gabrielle Union and her discussion on colorism, it made me want to share it with all of you. I'm sharing it in hopes that someone who has been a victim of colorism realizes that he or she is beautiful and people are just brainwashed. I'm also sharing it for the perpetrators of colorism, to shed a light on how backwards his or hers thinking really is.
Gabrielle spoke to Refinery29 and shared a story about how she had to have a real conversation with her three boys (stepsons Zaire and Zion, and husband Dwyane Wade’s nephew, Dahveon, who lives with them) after she noticed they only responded to light-skinned girls on social media.
via Refinery29:
In a recent conversation with them, she asked the teens about the hottest girls at their high school, and requested to see their Instagram pages. “Literally, probably about 10 girls I looked at had the same light skin, curly hair, tiny waist, butt, boobs — it was the same girl over and over again,” she says. “So I asked them to show me the most beautiful chocolate sister they’ve seen. They say there are none. I was like, ‘Why do they get exed out so fast? What is happening in your brain that is causing you to look at these women through a prism that is distorting their actual selves?'”
To prove a point, Union showed them Ryan Destiny‘s Instagram. “They’re like, ‘Oh, she bad!’ But do you know how many Ryan Destinies there are? I pull up every Black model, women from all over the world, and they’re beautiful. But they don’t see the beauty unless it comes from an actress or a supermodel or a video vixen. They have to have somebody else tell them that a chocolate woman is attractive for them to believe it.”
To read more from Gabrielle’s interview with Refinery 29, click here.