How Can We Heal from the Shades of Colorism? | Dr. Sarah L. Webb | TEDxUofISpringfield

[Music] hello everyone so my mom tells a story of when i was about five years old we were visiting some extended relatives and i sat on the floor playing my own little make-believe world something i still do today actually but during that visit some older relatives great aunts i believe started complimenting my older sister singing her praises saying how pretty she was telling my mom to watch out for her because she is going to break some hearts one day so i hear this i hear what they're saying about my older sister but i also hear loud and clear what they're not saying about me so then that's when my mom overhears me whisper to myself that's because she's light-skinned what i know now is that i was witnessing and observing something called colorism see if this gets on there we go so colorism is less often talked about but it is a global issue that rivals things like racism sexism classism and the other isms it's a system of oppression that privileges lighter skin tones over darker skin tones one thing to remember about colorism versus racism is that color is not a synonym for race people can be the same race and have different skin tones and people can be different races and have very similar skin tones what i experienced at five was an example of colorism because my sister and i have the same mother we have the same father we are the same race so these women were distinguishing between us based on the particular shade of our complexions growing up in a household with a as a dark-skinned girl with the light-skinned mother and the light-skinned sister the differences in how people treated us was very apparent to me and the notion that i could not be a heartbreaker because i was darker skinned showed up many more times throughout my life and while heartbreaker status was supposedly inaccessible to me heartbreak seemed readily available so then we might ask how does a person heal from something like the heartbreaking reality of colorism people say it starts at home if that's the case then where does it end today i'd like to share with you just one lesson that i've learned along my own healing journey throughout my life throughout my childhood teenagers and even as a young adult i suffered from colorism but alone and in silence i didn't think anyone would listen or understand or care and i was afraid to speak about it i was afraid that people would judge me that they would label me jealous or insecure or accuse me of being too sensitive or causing greater division and yet despite those years of fear and silence here i am today talking about colorism yes and here's why here's what changed for me i was in my early to mid 20s teaching high school english back in my hometown and i adored my students but it surprised me to hear them say things like i wish i was light-skinned like my mom or i don't like this picture of myself because i look too black on here or i'm less proud of myself because i got darker over the summer and even i don't like dark-skinned people when i first meet them hearing multiple students express these negative feelings and negative attitudes about dark skin about their own dark skin as well as well as the dark skin of others that was yet another form of heartbreak for me but that's when i knew i had to say something i chose to break the silence because i wanted to break the cycle for the generations coming after me now i'm a writer so when i thought about how i could personally address this issue i turned to my writing skills and in the wee hours of a july morning in 2013 i started a new blog i knew a couple of things one i wanted the blog to be a source of information to raise awareness about colorism and two i wanted it to be an opportunity to discuss what we can do about colorism what are some possible solutions so i thought long and hard about a title and i settled on colorism healing now the colorism part might be obvious it's literally the subject of the blog but that healing word has three key components the first component is individual healing and that's primarily what the focus of my talk is today individual healing includes personal mental health but also reprogramming our unconscious biases about certain skin tones now the second key component is healing relationships between individuals and amongst groups of people and the third key component that we cannot forget is systemic change across the larger society so i started that blog and i ended up stepping into a new era of my life and over the years i've had the chance to meet thousands of beautiful souls from around the world and in particular it is my international colorism healing writing contest that perfectly illustrated for me how gl colorism is truly a global issue and that we are not alone in our experiences of colorism one of the contestants said i thought it was just me i thought it was just in my culture and so many people come to this work and have their eyes opened to the vast diversity of people who all have something to say about colorism having the honor to collect these stories and facilitate this chorus of diverse voices from different countries different ages different races different ethnicities different languages that continues to reaffirm my faith in the healing process so i've learned more about colorism i've learned more about healing but i've also learned more about myself no surprises there but in particular i've learned more about my relationship to my younger self to this little girl i call her little sarah and i can still feel her with me i still recognize her expressions of sadness of hurt of anger and disappointment i can still feel her broken heart i think of our relationship like a set of nesting dolls where there's adult me big sarah and inside are all the smaller younger versions of me so i still carry little sarah within me which means the healing work i do in the present also extends back to her as well and it was only a few years ago so relatively recently when i found the words to really express the healing work i had been doing there's a song because with me there is always a song but this particular song is called breathe by sanibu c great song i suggest you listen right after this event but within the song lyrics there's a vivid contrast between home where they love my broken heart as opposed to here where my beauty and my worth are simply a given so i was listening to this song on repeat when i saw an analogy to colorism colorism is that home where they love my broken heart it is growing up a dark-skinned black girl in a society founded on white supremacy and anti-blackness it is a birthplace where your darker complexion will have a negative impact on how you're treated by school teachers by police officers judges jurors lawyers doctors nurses grocery store clerks your managers at work and yes far too often your own family so colorism may indeed start at home but here's where i believe it ends on the personal level healing is when here that place where my value is never questioned and never denied becomes me i am that place and then i become home i am home to be able to say i am home not as a matter of geographic location or physical space but as a state of being that's healing to me and so after all the heartbreak and after all the joys after meeting each and every individual that i've met on this journey hey y'all i think about my five-year-old self a lot and here's what i'd like to say to her and to all of you here now who wants to be a heartbreaker anyway just wait you'll see healing hearts now that's really where it's at thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 13,914

Keywords: Body Image, Empowerment, English, Global Issues, Global issues, Pain, Personal growth, Racism, TEDxTalks

Id: W5eQyHBfgTs

Length: 10min 25sec (625 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021