Dear Fellow Black Girls,

Being black is hard. Being a female is hard. Being a black female, though, that is a true challenge. We deal with racism, sexism, and colorism.

You have probably heard of the first two but are wondering what is colorism. Colorism is prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group. In our Black community, this has become an epidemic that has some roots in the light skin vs. dark skin debate.

There is this inaccurate idea that a light skin tone is the ideal and dark skin tones are less desirable. I didn’t realize this was even a thing until I came to college. What bothers me the most is that this light/dark skin debate was brought about by the black community. Members of our own community found a way to segregate us from each other even more. Now people make memes and jokes assigning certain characteristics to the tone of someone’s skin. “Oh, he’s sensitive because he’s light skin."

So the pigment of his skin determines his ability to show emotions? This makes perfect sense. The same goes towards black females as well. I have a friend who texted me and asked me to help find him a girlfriend. Being the nice person that I am, I agreed. I asked him what his type is. He replied “It doesn’t matter as long as she is a cute light skinned.”

Pause. Why does she have to be light-skinned? I proceeded to explain to him everything that was wrong with his previous statement and why what he was saying was not only stupid but highly offensive and racist. Being a light-skinned black woman, I find it creepy that the lighter tone of my skin is fetishized by some men. It makes me highly uncomfortable. You shouldn’t choose to love someone or be in a relationship with someone based solely on the color of their skin. In a society where some black men fetishize light skin black women and ridicule dark skin women, we as women need to take a stand. That is not right.

The members of society already view us, black females, as if we are on the bottom of the totem pole. Not overtly, of course. They attack us through the media and with micro-aggressions disguised as compliments. Turn on your T.V. What kind of images of black women do you see? The angry black woman. The “baby mama." The mammie. Just the stereotypes.

Black women dominate in the realms of reality television and are often shown enhancing these stereotypes, unfortunately, as we see this in shows like “Real Housewives." Rarely do you see an independent black female character; the only example I can think of is ABC’s "Scandal" and "How to Get Away With Murder." These images are constantly viewed by little young black girls everywhere.

As black females, we are going to give birth to black daughters, and it is our job to tell our kids that regardless of the pigment of their skin, they are beautiful. Little black girls grow up thinking that in order to be beautiful or important, they have to alter themselves to look more like the white majority. Never should we allow our children to take phrases like “You're pretty for a black girl,” or “You're smart for a black girl,” or even “You have nice hair for a black girl” as a compliment. Because those are not compliments.

We need to communicate to our future daughters that black girls can be pretty and smart and have good hair. Those attributes are not exclusive to one race. It seems like parts of a black woman’s appearance are not seen as beautiful. Though this is not true, we can see that many characteristics of the black woman that we were all once criticized for are becoming idolized as beauty. Full hips, luscious lips, and tanned skin that celebrities pay a lot of money to have all came from black women. While we are ridiculed for been born with those attributes, stars like Kim Kardashian are being praised for artificially altering their bodies to look like us.

Beauty should not have a specific skin tone. It is our job to educate our future young black daughters of what beauty really is. To do this we must lead by example. It starts with us. Once we learn to love the skin we are in regardless of the views of the society around us, that love and self-confidence will trickle down to our children. #BlackGirlsRock