I grew up watching the X-Men cartoons every Saturday morning and skimmed through my brother’s comics, and Storm was always my main girl. She comes from a Kenyan tribe and is the descendant of African witch-priestesses; and Black Twitter just doesn’t seem to think actress Alexandra Shipp isn't fit to play the role, and her light-skin has something to do with it. If you don’t know who Alexandra Shipp is, because you’re most likely not alone. So, here’s a picture:
If she looks familiar to you, you’ve probably seen her in X-Men: Apoloypse or the trainwreck of an Aaliyah biopic that Lifetime stupidly put out. But this past weekend, twitter was having none of her tom foolery.
Baby girl put her foot way too far in her mouth. From one biracial, light-skinned, black girl to another, I want to start a conversation, I’m not going to come at her with anger or hate, but I just want to open her eyes a bit. So, if my readers don’t mind, I’m going to talk to Alexandra directly (and if she really does read this, then)
Dear Alexandra,
In no way, shape or form am I trying to negate your experiences growing up, and I’m sorry you went through the things that you did. But as a young, black actress in Hollywood, it’s important that you know and understand the difference between racism, colorism and prejudice and that you’re incredibly defensive tweets were ignorant and problematic.
Racism: The belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
Prejudice: A preconceived judgement or opinion formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge.
Colorism: Prejudice or discrimination in which people are treated differently based on social meanings attached to skin color. Typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group.
Alex, what you experienced was in fact colorism. Racism and colorism are not synonyms of each other and should not be treated as such. We see colorism all over the world in Asia, Southeast Asia, in Latinx and black communities, and of course Europe and America where light skin is often considered more beautiful than dark skin. The mentality of colorism stems from colonialism, where the closer you were to looking white, the more favorable you were. In the slave era, slaves that looked like you and I would be “house negroes” and the darker skinned slaves would work in the field. Often time house slaves, were related to the slave owners. House slaves would get better treatment, clothes, and privileges. This created a sense of entitlement for the house slaves and resentment for those that worked in the field. And unfortunately, this mentality has trickled down through generations, with things like “team light-skin” and “team dark-skin” being a thing. I’ve even heard dark- skin black men say that the women they date or marry can’t be too dark, their hair can’t be too kinky, because they want cute light-skin babies with “good hair.” That in itself gets under my skin. I obviously don't know what was said to you, but it probably fell along the lines of you thinking you were better because of your light skin, or because you're mixed. We have young women like Zendaya, Yara Shahidi and Amandla Stenberg who make a pint everyday to call out racism and injustices. But they also realize, that their light skin gives them a platform for people to listen to them, whereas dark skin black women might be shut down. Even though Hollywood is growing more and more diverse every day, they still have to work harder when it comes to including dark skin black women into its narrative, and you as a light- skin woman need to understand your privilege, do more and do better. Even though you said in a later tweet that you weren’t “dismissing colorism” but getting as defensive as you did, negates that. Hopefully you can learn from this entire ordeal and move forward.
Sincerely,
Alysia
