Candice Brathwaite on colourism in TV
After hitting the headlines for speaking out about colourism in television, author, presenter and Grazia contributing editor Candice Brathwaite sets out her call to action
IF 2020 WAS the year you were introduced to racism, in 2021 you should definitely meet racism’s awkward younger cousin, colourism. By dictionary definition it means ‘prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group’.
I’m not new to this. Living in skin that is a darker shade of brown has impacted my life ever since I was a little girl. Fortunately, I came from a home that celebrates all shades of Black. So, it wasn’t until I was about six that I was able to discern how harmful colourism is.
I didn’t have the language to explain it back then – I was just acutely aware of how much nicer my classmates were to my lighter-skinned (mixed-race, so having one white parent), longer-haired best friend than me. As I got older, those twinges of discomfort became full-on body shots, as I was told by Black boys with the same complexion as me that I was ‘blick’ – a derogatory slang term for being very dark – ‘ugly’ and that no man would ever want me.
I noticed colourism in other forms, too: it was the South Asian hair shop owners always trying to sell me harmful skin bleaching creams, when all I wanted was shampoo. (And, for some dark-skinned Black women, it was their own mothers encouraging them to use bleaching creams, so they had better chances of securing a job or husband.) It was being obsessed with fashion and beauty magazines, but having to acknowledge that dark-skinned Black women were rarely, if ever, asked to grace the cover. To put it bluntly, it was living in a world that never, ever seemed to see dark-skinned Black women as beautiful.
Given that colourism disproportionately affects dark-skinned Black women, it’s often a subject that gets swept under the carpet. It’s far easier to say that they are being too
sensitive, overreacting or just not accepting that there are perhaps better people to do the jobs they’ve worked for.
I remember once watching the BRIT Awards and wondering aloud why no darkskinned female musicians were performing, yet a plethora of mixed-race, lighter-skinned singers were on stage. But I knew the answer. It’s because beauty standards have long been dictated by those who are white, so the further someone is away from that, the less beautiful they are thought to be.
(And I must note: Black men’s dark skin colour doesn’t hold them back in quite the same way. In fact, history shows that they are often hyper-sexualised and positioned as bodies that should be lusted after, rather than entire beings. That is also a problem. But in this moment, I can only hold space for the dark-skinned Black woman who is chastised, bullied, overlooked and then erased, even though she has the same complexion as her male counterpart.)
So why is there still a very obvious positive bias towards Black or mixed-race people with lighter skin? Sadly, we still occupy a world where a person’s value is placed on their proximity to whiteness. If you are in entertainment, being ‘racially ambiguous’ is less threatening to white people watching, so the audience can believe the person they are being entertained by perhaps isn’t very Black at all. It also allows the powers that be within media and advertising to say, ‘We’ve hired someone Black – our job is done.’
In a past interview, Beyoncé’s father, Mathew Knowles, acknowledged his daughter’s career was ‘affected’ by her lighter skin, and that the effect might have been the opposite for her Destiny’s Child bandmate Kelly Rowland.
While I’m not an international pop star, due to our complexion there are things I and other dark-skinned presenters, singers and actresses have in common. Trying to develop a career in the media, I cannot tell you how many times I have been witness to or been the victim of flagrant colourism.
After posting a video to IGTV recently, speaking about the effects that colourism has had on my career, my direct messages exploded with similar stories from those who knew that it was at the heart of their setbacks. ‘I’ve been turned down six times this week after some acting auditions. I know it’s because I’m dark-skinned and that it isn’t palatable hurts,’ read one message.
‘I’m so happy to hear someone I look like speak about colourism,’ another message began. ‘I’ve been bullied for years for having dark skin and it has really begun to affect my mental health.’
My eyes filled with tears as I read on. ‘I work in TV and I hate to tell you this but someone who looks like you is always going to be seen as a risk,’ was one of the frankest responses. And I could not disagree, as the current state of pop culture echoes that.
Why was Emily In Paris, a light, nonlife-changing series, nominated for a Golden Globe and Michaela Coel’s blistering and important I May Destroy You left out in the cold? One could say that it just wasn’t good enough (often the retort when a dark-skinned Black woman doesn’t get what she deserves), but with a writer from Emily In Paris offering Coel an apology, saying, ‘I May Destroy You deserved that nomination,’ those of us who look more like Michaela than Emily already knew what was up. Her face didn’t fit.
It’s the reason why I and all my darkskinned friends have not watched Bridgerton. The casting has been heralded as ‘colour blind’, yet with no dark-skinned Black women in the mix it is not something that any of us are willing to spend our time on.
A dramatic shake-up is overdue. And yet again this is going to take group effort because, to address this issue, we must first admit that it exists. If you struggle with that, over the next week or so, keep a tally of how many dark-skinned Black women you see on your TV compared to lighterskinned, mixed-race women, so you’re able to see just how insidious colourism is.
We need the gatekeepers of media the world over to start including dark-skinned Black female talent, and to stop supporting the falsehood that there can only be one Viola Davis, Oprah Winfrey or… (I wanted to offer the name of a dark-skinned Black female musical powerhouse, but there are currently none in the charts) at any one time. We should be allowed to share space and be uplifted, just as there are a plethora of lighter-skinned and white female artists who don’t have to petition so hard for that right.
But most importantly, we are going to need light-skinned Black women to question whether they are truly the most appropriate for a role they have been offered – especially if they are telling stories about the Black experience – or if they may have been gifted the gig because they are deemed more palatable to everyone. If they are honest with themselves and believe it might be the latter, they should step aside.
As with all matters of equality, those with privilege are going to have to get better at giving up some of that power. A brilliant example of this was when Amandla Stenberg backed out of playing Shuri in Black Panther so that Letitia Wright could go on to play the role. ‘These are all dark-skinned actors playing Africans and I feel it would have just been off to see me as a bi-racial American with a Nigerian accent just pretending that I’m the same colour as everyone else in the movie,’ Stenberg said. ‘I recognise 100% that there are spaces that I should not take up.’ It was the right thing to do.
I am well aware that asking for anyone to relinquish privilege is not an easy task, so I won’t hold my breath. Instead, all I can do is be kinder to myself and hope that one day the world will see my dark skin as an asset, not a liability.
‘I HOPE THAT ONE DAY MY DARK SKIN WILL BE SEEN AS AN ASSET, NOT A LIABILITY’