A couple of weeks ago there was a picture floating around social media. The picture was a painting of women lined up from fair skinned to dark skinned. It was an innocent photo until internet trolls took the picture and started writing mean captions underneath the photo.

These captions included but were not limited to: "Okay now ladies. Line up in order from highest to lowest GPA," "Ladies line up in order from chill to petty," "Line up in order of a good woman to a wh*re,""Ladies line up in order from beautiful to ewwww," and "Ladies line up in order from happily married to single as sh*t." Of course, in each situation the darker skinned woman was put in a negative light.

As a black woman, I was absolutely disgusted from the captions that were put on the picture. What made me shake my head in shame even more is that these comments were coming from Twitter user @CliffBreazzy, a black male. Many people on social media found these comments "funny" and retweeted many of his posts. To my "surprise," what I noticed was that a lot of black men were retweeting his tweets. This is another example of a topic that I believe is a silent issue: colorism. Colorism is the discrimination towards those with a darker skin tone; this discrimination usually comes from people from the same background.

There is the white beauty standard that we as a society have. Basically, if you don't look like Barbie, you're not as pretty as someone who does. Some wonder why people start bleaching their skin and getting skin lightening cream in hopes to be lighter. It's important to remember that this didn't come from out of the blue. Instead, it comes from years and years of black women being told they are "not beautiful enough," that they are "pretty for a dark girl," or "you're the prettiest black girl I have ever seen." Should I be swooning over that "compliment?"

Singer India Arie summed it up by saying: “I think the bottom line of everything, when we talk about healing this colorism issue around the world, is that it starts with healing yourself.”

The stigma that comes from being a darker tone person is ridiculous. So me being a darker skinned woman, I am seen in society as being ugly, not worthy of love, stupid, and as having a high chance of being a baby mama.

Well, Twitter user @CliffBreazzy and those with this same type of ignorance, I've got something to say. Many people/women of color and I are none of those things. I am in college, with a 3.7 GPA, I have edges laid by the gods, I don't have any kids, I rock cute skirts and all of this is being done in my flawless dark skin. There was a study done by the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2015, that found that BLACK WOMEN are the most educated group in America. Black women have the highest numbers of enrollment, and more and more women of color are graduating college.

But even with all this greatness, we are the most targeted.

I am less because of my darker shade. I am less because of my hair texture. I am less because I am black. I am less because I am a woman.

So, of course, I am mad as heck and I won't stand for it anymore. Brothers and sisters of all skin tones, we need to come together and stop tearing each other down! There is too much oppression going on in this society from all different angles to start going against each other. By realizing these problematic issues and attacking the issue head on we can attempt to have a world where our children and children's children can grow up where skin color isn't the determining factor if they make it in life or not.